Google Analytics vs. Microsoft Azure

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Analytics
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Google Analytics is perhaps the best-known web analytics product and, as a free product, it has massive adoption. Although it lacks some enterprise-level features compared to its competitors in the space, the launch of the paid Google Analytics Premium edition seems likely to close the gap.
$0
per month
Microsoft Azure
Score 8.4 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
Google AnalyticsMicrosoft Azure
Editions & Modules
Google Analytics 360
150,000
per year
Google Analytics
Free
Developer
$29
per month
Standard
$100
per month
Professional Direct
$1000
per month
Basic
Free
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google AnalyticsMicrosoft Azure
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThe 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
Google AnalyticsMicrosoft Azure
Considered Both Products
Google Analytics
Chose Google Analytics
Google Analytics goes head to head when it comes to basic browser and activity tracking, but falls behind when it comes to full tracking of a request and the performance impact it has on a web site or application. A lot of this is due to the fact that Google Analytics can only …
Microsoft Azure
Chose Microsoft Azure
Azure is an ideal platform for disaster recovery and backup. It is very flexible because of its site regeneration capabilities and other features. All of our data can be backup, regardless of the language or operating system. Azure’s inherent flexibility comes from its status …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Because Microsoft Azure has more integrations and possibilities. Also most of the biggest companies are using it, so it gives the security and the back up to trust and work with confidence.
Chose Microsoft Azure
There are some impressive backup solutions. The mode of which you can spool up new websites, databases, or even entire virtual machines is incredible. You can do in minutes what would take you hours to do on site. The price is good. The support is excellent. It is very user …
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, …
Features
Google AnalyticsMicrosoft Azure
Web Analytics
Comparison of Web Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Google Analytics
8.4
11 Ratings
4% above category average
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Lead Conversion Tracking8.110 Ratings00 Ratings
Bounce Rate Measurement8.410 Ratings00 Ratings
Device and Browser Reporting9.211 Ratings00 Ratings
Pageview Tracking9.011 Ratings00 Ratings
Event Tracking8.311 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting in real-time7.910 Ratings00 Ratings
Referral Source Tracking8.510 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable Dashboards7.910 Ratings00 Ratings
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Google Analytics
-
Ratings
Microsoft Azure
8.4
28 Ratings
2% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.227 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings8.626 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.725 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings8.226 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings8.327 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings8.425 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings8.927 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings8.627 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings8.225 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google AnalyticsMicrosoft Azure
Small Businesses
StatCounter
StatCounter
Score 9.0 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Siteimprove
Siteimprove
Score 9.1 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Optimal
Optimal
Score 9.1 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google AnalyticsMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(193 ratings)
8.7
(97 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(51 ratings)
10.0
(17 ratings)
Usability
7.4
(19 ratings)
8.4
(37 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(4 ratings)
6.8
(2 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(42 ratings)
8.0
(28 ratings)
Online Training
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(7 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Configurability
6.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google AnalyticsMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
Google Analytics is particularly well suited for tracking and analyzing customer behavior on a grocery e-commerce platform. It provides a wealth of information about customer behavior, including what products are most popular, what pages are visited the most, and where customers are coming from. This information can help the platform optimize its website for better customer engagement and conversion rates. However, Google Analytics may not be the best tool for more advanced, granular analysis of customer behavior, such as tracking individual customer journeys or understanding customer motivations. In these cases, it may be more appropriate to use additional tools or solutions that provide deeper insights into customer behavior.
Read full review
Microsoft
Azure is particularly well suited for enterprise environments with existing Microsoft investments, those that require robust compliance features, and organizations that need hybrid cloud capabilities that bridge on-premises and cloud infrastructure. In my opinion, Azure is less appropriate for cost-sensitive startups or small businesses without dedicated cloud expertise and scenarios requiring edge computing use cases with limited connectivity. Azure offers comprehensive solutions for most business needs but can feel like there is a higher learning curve than other cloud-based providers, depending on the product and use case.
Read full review
Pros
Google
  • Multiple reports to see website use and behavior
  • Allows you to customize reports with days, weeks, months, and years
  • You can build out a dashboard to easily view stats from multiple websites in one place
  • You can share analytics reports via the dashboard, automatically emailed PDFs or in other formats
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Microsoft Azure is highly scalable and flexible. You can quickly scale up or down additional resources and computing power.
  • You have no longer upfront investments for hardware. You only pay for the use of your computing power, storage space, or services.
  • The uptime that can be achieved and guaranteed is very important for our company. This includes the rapid maintenance for security updates that are mostly carried out by Microsoft.
  • The wide range of capabilities of services that are possible in Microsoft Azure. You can practically put or create anything in Microsoft Azure.
Read full review
Cons
Google
  • Data sampling is somewhat inaccurate on the free tier - this is addressed in premium but is expensive.
  • Some of the UI is very similar in naming when presenting different data, some in-situ information might be useful.
  • Gotchas around filtering and data validation.
  • Implementation can be tricky, it can take a lot of time and expertise to get a full, accurate picture of your metrics.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • The cost of resources is difficult to determine, technical documentation is frequently out of date, and documentation and mapping capabilities are lacking.
  • The documentation needs to be improved, and some advanced configuration options require research and experimentation.
  • Microsoft's licensing scheme is too complex for the average user, and Azure SQL syntax is too different from traditional SQL.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Google
We will continue to use Google Analytics for several reasons. It is free, which is a huge selling point. It houses all of our ecommerce stores' data, and though it can't account for refunds or fraud orders, gives us and our clients directional, real time information on individual and group store performance.
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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
Google
Google Analytics provides a wealth of data, down to minute levels. That is it's greatest detriment: find the right information when you need it can be a cumbersome task. You are able to create shortcuts, however, so it can mitigate some of this problem. Google is continually refining Analytics, so I do not doubt there will be improvements
Read full review
Microsoft
As Microsoft Azure is [doing a] really good with PaaS. The need of a market is to have [a] combo of PaaS and IaaS. While AWS is making [an] exceptionally well blend of both of them, Azure needs to work more on DevOps and Automation stuff. Apart from that, I would recommend Azure as a great platform for cloud services as scale.
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Reliability and Availability
Google
We all know Google is at top when it comes to availability. We have never faced any such instances where I can suggest otherwise. All you need is a Google account, a device and internet connection to use this super powerful tool for reporting and visualising your site data, traffic, events, etc. that too in real time.
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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
Read full review
Performance
Google
This has been a catalyst for improving our site's traffic handling capabilities. We were able to identify exit% from our sites through it and we used recommendations to handle and implement the same in our sites. We have been increasing the usage of Google Analytics in our sites and never had any performance related issues if we used Analytics
Read full review
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Google
The Google reps respond very quickly. However, sometimes they can overly call you to set up an apportionment. I'm very proficient and sometimes when I talk to reps, they give beginner tutorials and insights that are a waste of time. I wish Google would understand my level of expertise and assign me to a rep (long-term) that doesn't have to walk me through the basics.
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Microsoft
We were running Windows Server and Active Directory, so [Microsoft] Azure was a seamless transition. We ran into a few, if any support issues, however, the availability of Microsoft Azure's support team was more than willing and able to guide us through the process. They even proposed solutions to issues we had not even thought of!
Read full review
Online Training
Google
love the product and training they provide for businesses of all sizes. The following list of links will help you get started with Google Analytics from setup to understanding what data is being presented by Google Analytics.
  1. How to Use Google Analytics for Beginners – Mahalo’s how-to guide for beginners.
  2. A beginner’s guide to Google Analytics – A free eBook walking you through Google Analytics from setup to understanding what data is being presented.
  3. Getting to Know Your Google Analytics Dashboard – The title says it all! This is a brief post with one goal: to introduce you to the Google Analytics dashboard.
  4. Google Analytics for Beginners: How to Make the Most of Your Traffic Reports– This guide doesn’t cover setup, but it does a great job of helping you to better understand the data being presented.
  5. Google Analytics Video Tutorial 1: Setup – A video presentation that walks you through Google Analytics setup.
  6. Google Analytics Video Tutorial 2: Essential Stats – A video presentation that introduces you to some of the most important data being presented in Google Analytics.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Google
I think my biggest take away from the Google Analytics implementation was that there needs to be a clear understanding of what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it before you start. Originally the analytics were added to track visitors, but as we became more savvy with the product, we began adding more and more functionality, and defining guidelines as we went along. While not detrimental to our success, this lack of an overarching goal resulted in some minor setbacks in implementation and the collection of some messy data that is unusable.
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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.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Google
I have not used Adobe Analytics as much, but I know they offer something called customer journey analytics, which we are evaluating now. I have used Semrush, and I find them much better than Google Analytics. I feel a fairly nontechnical person could learn Semrush in about a month. They also offer features like competitive analysis (on content, keywords, traffic, etc.), which is very useful. If you have to choose one among Semrush and Google Analytics, I would say go for Semrush.
Read full review
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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Scalability
Google
Google Analytics is currently handling the reporting and tracking of near about 80 sites in our project. And I am not talking about the sites from different projects. They may have way more accounts than that. Never ever felt a performance issue from Google's end while generating or customising reports or tracking custom events or creating custom dimensions
Read full review
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Google
  • It has helped us gain understanding of what is going on on our website.
  • It has helped us determine areas that need fixing (i.e. pages with extremely high bounce rates may need to be redone).
  • It has helped us understand our biggest avenues for bringing traffic to the website and business in general.
  • It has helped guide our website redesign.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • For about 2 years we didn't have to do anything with our production VMs, the system ran without a hitch, which meant our engineers could focus on features rather than infrastructure.
  • DNS management was very easy in Azure, which made it easy to upgrade our cluster with zero downtime.
  • Azure Web UI was easy to work with and navigate, which meant our senior engineers and DevOps team could work with Azure without formal training.
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ScreenShots