Amazon Web Services vs. Microsoft Azure

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Web Services
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing services. With over 165 services offered, AWS services can provide users with a comprehensive suite of infrastructure and computing building blocks and tools.
$100
per month
Microsoft Azure
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.
$29
per month
Pricing
Amazon Web ServicesMicrosoft Azure
Editions & Modules
Free Tier
$0
per month
Basic Environment
$100 - $200
per month
Intermediate Environment
$250 - $600
per month
Advanced Environment
$600-$2500
per month
Developer
$29
per month
Standard
$100
per month
Professional Direct
$1000
per month
Basic
Free
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon Web ServicesMicrosoft Azure
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAWS allows a “save when you commit” option that offers lower prices when you sign up for a 1- or 3- year term that includes an AWS service or category of services.The free tier lets users have access to a variety of services free for 12 months with limited usage after making an Azure account.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Web ServicesMicrosoft Azure
Considered Both Products
Amazon Web Services
Chose Amazon Web Services
The particular services I am using in AWS is easier to set up and manage than Microsoft Azure. IBM Bluemix/Cloud previously has too many product beta and preview released along with their products. Microsoft also releases too many products in preview or beta.
Chose Amazon Web Services
If I talk about the product capabilities, I would say AWS is better than Microsoft Azure. It also provides excellent network and security services. Additionally, I would say the security and compliance of this product helps me to scale and innovate all my databases, into one …
Chose Amazon Web Services
AWS provides a vast array of services and, compared to Microsoft Azure licensing costs, is a cheaper alternative.
Chose Amazon Web Services
Both the services are in the field for quite sometime. And the biggest competitor of Amazon Web Services is Microsoft Azure. Though, Azure easily connects with Microsoft services like a jelly, even in AWS its so easy. And the best thing is due to its vast variety community …
Chose Amazon Web Services

Better global availability and use across industries.
AWS has a great ecosystem of experts, developers, solution architects and it helps to get to know them at various AWS events across the world
Chose Amazon Web Services
The decision was made to go with AWS because of name recognition and familiarity by contractors we hired. I checked out Google Compute Engine a few years ago, and it did have similar option set, however Google in general was behind Amazon's offerings.
Chose Amazon Web Services
We evaluated Azure, Goggle Cloud, and Amazon Web Services during our cloud computing solution decision. We needed the storage and a pre-installed version of a commercial product. As we were not highly demanding in performance, all candidates were sufficient. However, we found …
Chose Amazon Web Services
At a past company we used Azure; I feel like AWS is always mentioned favorably in compare/contrast conversations regarding Azure specifically, and when I started this new company a couple of years ago, we decided to go with AWS as it seemed to have a near-pristine track record.
Chose Amazon Web Services
AWS is as good as any of the major cloud providers. I see a complete parity in this marketplace as innovations by one tend to be replicated by the others in short order. If you are looking to compare, or pilot, cloud hosting providers you must try AWS as they are a very …
Chose Amazon Web Services
OCI and Google Compute Engine are a bit cheaper than AWS but AWS has better chargeback and more granular monitoring of various KPIs. But at the same time, AWS has a learning curve while GCE especially is much easier to use. Microsoft Azur has a much better partner and developer …
Chose Amazon Web Services
AWS is very widely adopted by our development team and the industry. AWS is investing in new products and services, as well as innovating on existing offerings.
Chose Amazon Web Services
AWS, in my opinion, is the most mature and popular cloud. It provides the biggest number of services available and the provider which innovates the most.
Chose Amazon Web Services
Since most of our clients are Office 365 users, Azure holds a lot of benefit in its integration possibilities. However, AWS is still less expensive and easier to manage in my experience. There will come a time though, that I'm sure we will move most clients to Azure. …
Chose Amazon Web Services
AWS is the industry leader and is far ahead in terms of a feature rich product offering along with worldwide presence
Chose Amazon Web Services
AWS is Good for startups or FMCG customer but for FSI customer, their relationship is weak, hard to convince our client move to AWS
Chose Amazon Web Services
We like the platform agnostic approach. At the time we selected it (some years back), the security standard was higher and the price point was lower, and the global reach was at least as strong. It was very easy to get started. For our business, we also looked at Akamai and …
Microsoft Azure
Chose Microsoft Azure
Amazon Web Services dominate cloud service market as a de facto market leader in IaaS and PaaS industry. However, Microsoft, with its Azure solution, has proven to be a formidable challenger to Amazon in cloud service, and is slowly but surely closing in the gap. Legacy …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Azure is more user friendly and provides much required scalability and flexibility.
Chose Microsoft Azure
AWS is the most stable cloud options but Azure has done well in last few years and provides good options specifically for Microsoft customers and who are more familiar with Microsoft technologies like WINDOWS, MS SQL SERVER, GITHUB, VISUAL STUDIO etc. Google cloud is more …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Ease of use. Multiple Data centers across the globe. Load management. Backup and recovery options.
Chose Microsoft Azure
We actually utilized multiple cloud stacks, depending upon the customer environment and need. Those that heavily used MS products (Office on-prem or 365), Teams, etc, found it a better fit, with easier integration, for their needs.
Chose Microsoft Azure
Integration with other Microsoft products makes Azure stand out quite a bit. However, if you need to use open source software and to integrate with Linux systems then AWS or Google Cloud might be better alternatives. Google did not even come close to Azure in terms of …
Chose Microsoft Azure
AWS and [Microsoft] Azure are in a class by themselves, no matter how you look at them or what sub-area or service you focus on. No other cloud provide can match the breadth and ability of these two. Nobody else has the market share either (for a reason). That being said, …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Integration with other Microsoft products makes Azure stand out quite a bit. But if your shop mostly runs open source and Linux then look at AWS or Google Cloud.
Chose Microsoft Azure
Instead of above mentioned alternative we opted for Microsoft Azure because it is more powerful, reliable and pretty much a responsive environment.
Chose Microsoft Azure
  • Easy to use
  • Easy to Manage
  • Easy to Integrate
Chose Microsoft Azure
We do everything Microsoft and wanted the thing that would most easily be compatible with everything out of the gate. Pricing was comparable. It made sense to us.
Chose Microsoft Azure
To be honest despite UI the functionality is almost identical. It came to price and support package.
Chose Microsoft Azure
There are lots of players in this space these days, but Microsoft and AWS are the two most visible and easiest to get connected with. We were using AWS first, and have been using both for some time, but have now converted entirely over to Azure just for the ease of management, …
Chose Microsoft Azure
As we are working mostly on .net projects and Microsoft has very nice integration available for the latest versions, we can get all the latest version for hosting at the earliest time. We can use the same in .Net Core. This should be a very well known product for our any .net …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Like I mentioned earlier, it is more user-friendly when compared to any of the other. It is more flexible with the system you are using that makes it easy to set up with the migration of data. If you can bear the extra price compared to AWS, Azure is more robust, works like a …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Hosting providers are plentiful and all of them are very similar in functionality. Azure boasts a much more robust integration and management platform in my experience than AWS does and is years ahead of many of the smaller cloud providers.
Chose Microsoft Azure
MS was chosen due to the strong partner relationship that already existed.
Chose Microsoft Azure
Azure PaaS platform was better suited for us over AWS (we are a hard core Microsoft shop)
Chose Microsoft Azure
I've used Amazon Web Services in the past and Azure's API is much better documented. Since its better documented, it was much easier to integrate a custom application into Azure than it was AWS. I also had many more issues with AWS in terms of outages than I have with Azure. I …
Chose Microsoft Azure
We have used Amazon Web Services and while it's a nice start and has more granularity when it comes to permissions than Azure the overall Azure stack has more development integrations and that is a huge win for us.
Chose Microsoft Azure
Amazon offers a comparable range of services at competitive prices to Azure. As a .Net developer, however, the huge advantage of Azure is that it is .Net-centric. I can probably do everything I did using Amazon, but it is harder because you don't have the integration with .Net …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Amazon Web ServicesMicrosoft Azure
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Web Services
8.9
67 Ratings
9% above category average
Microsoft Azure
8.6
17 Ratings
6% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime8.863 Ratings8.816 Ratings
Dynamic scaling9.164 Ratings9.316 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.360 Ratings8.816 Ratings
Pre-configured templates7.956 Ratings7.116 Ratings
Monitoring tools9.164 Ratings8.116 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.457 Ratings8.415 Ratings
Operating system support9.062 Ratings9.416 Ratings
Security controls9.365 Ratings9.016 Ratings
Automation9.116 Ratings8.815 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon Web ServicesMicrosoft Azure
Small Businesses
Linode
Linode
Score 9.0 out of 10
Linode
Linode
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon Web ServicesMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(79 ratings)
8.5
(88 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.4
(10 ratings)
10.0
(15 ratings)
Usability
7.2
(9 ratings)
9.0
(27 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
6.8
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
7.2
(24 ratings)
8.8
(27 ratings)
Online Training
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(3 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Web ServicesMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
We recommend AWS Lightsail with Plesk Ubuntu Web Admin (free) edition for launching WordPress websites. Pricing starts with 3.5$ per month and they are providing 3 months free. In order to access advanced features of Plesk, consider upgrading to paid Plesk plans that starts with 13.50$ per month (10 websites supported). Up to 40% discount is available for the first year. Anyway, even the free Plesk Web Admin version is by itself self sufficient with free SSL.
Read full review
Microsoft
In terms of cloud computing, Microsoft Azure is the only comprehensive result the company offers. Regardless of how big or small an organization is, it can make use of this system. As a cyber-security professional, this is your best option for data management. A business that wants to minimize capital expenditures can use Microsoft Azure. Many Microsoft services accept it. People with little or no knowledge of cloud computing may find it impossible. It isn’t the solution for companies that don’t want to risk having only one platform and infrastructure vendor.
Read full review
Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Starting an instance and accessing it for testing purpose, demo or production deployment its always easy.
  • All the things which are available over AWS are pretty well managed and easy to use.
  • You might find everything you required for an product and other development over AWS.
  • Its suitable for both either an enterprise or an startup
  • Various resources and documentation are available in case you struck somewhere.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Azure simply provides end to end life cycle. Starting from the development to automated deployment, you will find [a] bunch of options. Custom hook-points allow [integration] on-premise resources as well.
  • Excellent documentation around all the services make it really easy for any novice. Overall support by [the] community and Azure Technical team is exceptional.
  • BOT Services, Computer Vision services, ML frameworks provide excellent results as compare to similar services provided by other giants in the same space.
  • Azure data services provide excellent support to ingest data from different sources, ETL, and consumption of data for BI purpose.
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • If there is one thing I think AWS needs improvement on, it is the administration dashboard. It can be a nightmare to use especially when trying to access billing. This could be made better, honestly, as there should be a simplified way to access simple admin features.
  • While AWS was fairly easy to integrate into our solutions, it is not as easy to use without some IT knowledge. The dashboards are complicated and designed for someone who is computer savvy. If you are just want to keep track of billing, for example, you may need to take a course or spend a few hours with someone being walked through the admin console.
  • AWS does tend to be slow at times. If you do not have a fast internet connection, it can take time to access services that are hosted on AWS. This is not always the case but we have had clients complain about this if they are trying to access a service from multiple points (IP addresses). The only real fix we found was to make our files cache to another server and only keep current data accessible to clients.
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Microsoft
  • In our experience, Azure Kubernetes Survice was difficult to set up, which is why we used Kubernetes on top of VMs.
  • Azure REST API is a bit difficult to use, which made it difficult for us to automate our interactions with Azure.
  • Azure's Web UI does a good job of showing metrics on individual VMs, but it would be great if there was a way to show certain metrics from multiple VMs on one dashboard. For example, hard drive usage on our database VMs.
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Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
We are almost entirely satisfied with the service. In order to move off it, we'd have to build for ourselves many of the services that AWS provides and the cost would be prohibitive. Although there are cost savings and security benefits to returning to the colo facility, we could never afford to do it, and we'd hate to give up the innovation and constant cycle of new features that AWS gives us.
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Microsoft
Moving to Azure was and still is an organizational strategy and not simply changing vendors. Our product roadmap revolved around Azure as we are in the business of humanitarian relief and Azure and Microsoft play an important part in quickly and efficiently serving all of the world. Migration and investment in Azure should be considered as an overall strategy of an organization and communicated companywide.
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Usability
Amazon AWS
Our cloud platform architecture was designed in order to collect, analyze, and optimize modern networks, from AWS-powered computing, networking, storage, and more. So, we needed a reliable, scalable, and secure global computing infrastructure. Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing were key features in our evaluation and later on for scalability and high performance. We being a cybersecurity company, we needed to ensure that our cloud provider utilizes an end-to-end approach to secure and harden the infrastructure, including physical, operational, and software measures - which AWS had all in place.
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Microsoft
Microsoft Azure's overall usability has been better than expected. Often times vendors promise the world, only to leave you with a run-down town. Not the case with our experience. From an implementation perspective, all went perfect, and from the user-facing experience we have had no technical issues, just some learning curve issues that are more about "why" than "how"
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Reliability and Availability
Amazon AWS
Availability is very good, with the exception of occasional spectacular outages.
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Microsoft
It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
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Performance
Amazon AWS
AWS does not provide the raw performance that you can get by building your own custom infrastructure. However, it is often the case that the benefits of specialized, high-performance hardware do not necessarily outweigh the significant extra cost and risk. Performance as perceived by the user is very different from raw throughput.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Amazon AWS
The customer support of Amazon Web Services are quick in their responses. I appreciate its entire team, which works amazingly, and provides professional support. AWS is a great tool, indeed, to provide customers a suitable way to
immediately search for their compatible software's and also to guide them in a
good direction. Moreover, this product is a good suggestion for every type of
company because of its affordability and ease of use.
Read full review
Microsoft
Support is easy with all the knowledge base articles available for free on the web. Plus, if you have a preferred status you can leverage their concierge support to get rapid response. Sometimes they’ll bounce you around a lot to get you to the right person, but they are quite responsive (especially when you are paying for the service). Many of the older Microsoft skills are also transferable from old-school on-prem to Azure-based virtual interfaces.
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Implementation Rating
Amazon AWS
The API's were very well documented and was Janova's main point of entry into the services.
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Microsoft
As I have mentioned before the issue with my Oracle Mismatch Version issues that have put a delay on moving one of my platforms will justify my 7 rating.
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Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Amazon Web Services is well suited when we have a huge amount of data to store, process, manipulate and get meaningful information out of. It is also suitable when we need very fast data retrieval from the database. They provide a superior product at a fair price which allows us to further our goals and push the limits of what we are capable of as a team / company.
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Microsoft
As I continue to evaluate the "big three" cloud providers for our clients, I make the following distinctions, though this gap continues to close. AWS is more granular, and inherently powerful in the configuration options compared to [Microsoft] Azure. It is a "developer" platform for cloud. However, Azure PowerShell is helping close this gap. Google Cloud is the leading containerization platform, largely thanks to it building kubernetes from the ground up. Azure containerization is getting better at having the same storage/deployment options.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • AWS has lowered our employee cost, because you don't have to hire Network/Server Admins to manage infrastructure.
  • Increased productivity by incorporating Continuous Integration with AWS and our development life cycle.
  • Increased customer confidence by being able to provide HIPAA level security in our development and production environments
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Microsoft
  • Brings down Capex to customers.
  • Some of the built-in security features of DDoS Basic protection that comes with VNET on Azure or even WAF on AGW brings huge advantages to customers.
  • Hybrid benefits for those who have software assurance can save even more costs by moving to Azure.
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ScreenShots