We compared SQL Azure and Google Cloud SQL based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
User feedback on SQL Azure highlights its fair pricing structure, seamless integration with Microsoft products, and satisfactory customer service. On the other hand, Google Cloud SQL users appreciate its scalability, ease of use, and efficient customer support. Areas for improvement in SQL Azure include enhancing query performance and reducing costs, while Google Cloud SQL users seek better performance optimization and transparent pricing models. Overall, both products offer reliable database management solutions with their unique strengths and weaknesses.
Features: SQL Azure stands out for its seamless integration with other Microsoft products, scalability, and flexibility in deployment options. On the other hand, Google Cloud SQL is praised for its ease of use, high performance, excellent backup and restoration capabilities, and automated maintenance tools.
Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for SQL Azure is deemed reasonable by users, ensuring a smooth and hassle-free experience. On the other hand, Google Cloud SQL's setup cost is well-managed, ensuring a smooth and hassle-free process. There is no mention of specific differences in the setup cost between the two products., In terms of ROI, SQL Azure received positive and satisfactory feedback from users, while Google Cloud SQL users shared their experiences and outcomes.
Room for Improvement: SQL Azure has room for improvement in the areas of query performance, storage capacity, availability, customization options, and cost reduction. Users also want improved security features and integration with other Azure services. Google Cloud SQL users have suggested enhancements in performance optimization, scalability, availability, monitoring, and management tools. They also recommended more transparent pricing models and improved documentation and support resources.
Deployment and customer support: Based on user feedback, the duration required for deployment, setup, and implementation for SQL Azure is inconsistent. Some users report separate timeframes for deployment and setup, while others view them as the same period. On the other hand, Google Cloud SQL users have varying experiences, with some separating deployment and setup durations, and others considering them as one., SQL Azure has been praised for its highly satisfactory customer service, with users commending the responsiveness, efficiency, and knowledge of the support team. Google Cloud SQL also receives positive feedback for its prompt assistance and efficient issue resolution, with users appreciating the friendly nature of the customer service representatives.
The summary above is based on 45 interviews we conducted recently with SQL Azure and Google Cloud SQL users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"Its most valuable feature is that it's scalable. I can start off with a base of a lot of data and move as much as I want and it's the same as if asked to do a lot of infrastructure changes."
"My suggestion to anyone thinking about this solution is to jump into it head-first!"
"The implementation part of the product was easy."
"It supports different databases, like Postgres and MySQL."
"I found its storage and security to be the most valuable. It was a good experience. It is also very stable and scalable, and its support is perfect."
"Ease of management and the ability to oversee the statistics of your SQL."
"It is not the cool features that I find valuable, it is the stability of Google Cloud Platform."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The administration console in Azure, all in one is the most valuable feature."
"The main advantage of it is that there is no infrastructure cost. We don't have to host it here. So, there is no infrastructure cost."
"The stability is good and the performance is fantastic. Even when we try to do an inquiry into issues we can do it easily."
"What I like about SQL Azure is that it's similar to your on-premises SQL databases. It's not much different, so it's easy to start quickly on the solution if you know Microsoft SQL. I find its ease of use most valuable, and I also like that SQL Azure is also easily integrated with the Azure Cloud platform."
"The interface is awesome."
"In terms of stability, because Microsoft is the underlying technology, they are much more stable than say Oracle. Since 2014 they did a great job in offering stability, performance and high visibility on the solution, especially in comparison to the other competitors."
"SQL is a simpler database. We use it more than other databases."
"This solution offers high availability, and business continuity is in place."
"The only thing that could be better is the pricing."
"The purging of the data could be better."
"It is hard to do logging with the solution."
"The customer support should be improved."
"I am yet to explore a lot of features that are present in this solution. However, it would be good if more documentation is available for this solution. This would help us in preparing for the certification exam and understand it better. Currently, we don't have much documentation. We do the labs for 20 or 25 minutes, but we can't capture and download anything."
"To create a seamless data integration, the title integration of these databases with the data integration platforms is essential. This is what we would like to have in a future release."
"The monitoring part could be better."
"Google Cloud SQL still needs better connectivity to outside, existing data sources."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The way it has been designed, in the on-premises deployments, the underlying Windows OS is highly scalable but has a very large resource requirement. A lot of power-related and memory-related things are there, which I have not seen in the RHEL and Oracle. I have not tried SQL on RHEL EXEC. On Windows, infrastructure-wise, a very large workload is running on the SQL. This issue is related to Windows, not SQL."
"It does take some time to learn about the environment."
"Price definitely will be the negative point. It is quite expensive."
"There could be more collaboration with other tools like Data Factory and Databricks."
"It's very difficult to investigate if something wrong is going on behind the scenes. If we are facing a problem that our application is doing a CPU spike and when we look at the dump of the details, the processes that our application is generating are not consuming more than 40-50% of CPU. But we don’t know where it is going, who's generating it, and who's consuming the CPU. Even Microsoft says they don’t know."
"Scalability is an issue because we can't upgrade to new versions due to hardware limitations."
"It's not a feature, but the solution only offers a certain amount of memory and that's limiting. The scalability should be extended to more than two terabytes."
Google Cloud SQL is ranked 5th in Database as a Service with 16 reviews while SQL Azure is ranked 2nd in Database as a Service with 90 reviews. Google Cloud SQL is rated 8.4, while SQL Azure is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Google Cloud SQL writes "An easy-to-use solution with good features and functionality ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SQL Azure writes "The SQL connector effectively syncs data to databases". Google Cloud SQL is most compared with Amazon RDS, MongoDB Atlas, Oracle Database as a Service, Google Cloud Spanner and Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer, whereas SQL Azure is most compared with Amazon RDS, MongoDB Atlas, Oracle Database as a Service, Google Cloud Spanner and IBM Db2 on Cloud. See our Google Cloud SQL vs. SQL Azure report.
See our list of best Database as a Service vendors.
We monitor all Database as a Service reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
