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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    JW Player

    Score9.8 out of 10
    N/AJW Player (or JWP) is a video platform boasting 40,000 broadcasters, publishers, and other video-driven brands whose business relies on video as users. It provides these companies with a way to accelerate and scale their video strategy and is a video platform that can be used to stream video, engage audiences on any screen, and monetize content.N/A

    Microsoft Azure

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft 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
    JW PlayerMicrosoft Azure
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Developer
    $29
    per month
    Standard
    $100
    per month
    Professional Direct
    $1000
    per month
    Basic
    Free
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    JW PlayerMicrosoft Azure
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—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
    JW PlayerMicrosoft Azure
    Considered Both Products
    JW Player
    No answer on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    92%
    Would buy again
    34 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    31 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    35 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    89%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    24 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    34 Answers
    Features
    JW PlayerMicrosoft Azure
    Video Marketing
    Comparison of Video Marketing features of JW Player and Microsoft Azure
    Feature
    JW Player
    8.6
    2 Ratings
    13% above category average
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    Support for advertisements9.12 Ratings00 Ratings
    Video SEO8.12 Ratings00 Ratings
    Video Security
    Comparison of Video Security features of JW Player and Microsoft Azure
    Feature
    JW Player
    7.8
    3 Ratings
    9% below category average
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    Video access controls9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    User management9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Video link sharing7.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    External video6.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Video Player
    Comparison of Video Player features of JW Player and Microsoft Azure
    Feature
    JW Player
    7.0
    3 Ratings
    16% below category average
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    Player customization2.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Embedded videos6.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Video quality / Bandwidth controls10.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile compatibility10.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Video Analytics
    Comparison of Video Analytics features of JW Player and Microsoft Azure
    Feature
    JW Player
    1.0
    3 Ratings
    155% below category average
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    Per viewer tracking1.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Per video tracking1.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Video analytics dashboard1.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Video Hosting, Management & Storage
    Comparison of Video Hosting, Management & Storage features of JW Player and Microsoft Azure
    Feature
    JW Player
    8.6
    3 Ratings
    0% below category average
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    On-Demand video6.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Live streaming10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Video upload & format support10.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Video library / File management7.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Video portal10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
    Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of JW Player and Microsoft Azure
    Feature
    JW Player
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Azure
    8.4
    27 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.126 Ratings
    Dynamic scaling00 Ratings8.725 Ratings
    Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.624 Ratings
    Pre-configured templates00 Ratings8.225 Ratings
    Monitoring tools00 Ratings8.326 Ratings
    Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings8.424 Ratings
    Operating system support00 Ratings8.926 Ratings
    Security controls00 Ratings8.626 Ratings
    Automation00 Ratings8.224 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    JW PlayerMicrosoft Azure
    Small Businesses
    Vidyard
    Score8.3 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Object Storage
    Score9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Vidyard
    Score8.3 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Panopto
    Score7.5 out of 10
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    JW PlayerMicrosoft Azure
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (4 ratings)
    8.7
    (96 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (17 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.3
    (36 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.8
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.0
    (27 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    JW PlayerMicrosoft Azure
    Likelihood to Recommend
    JW Player
    JW Player has flexible plans that won't cost you a lot of money. If you are a startup, JW offers a variety of plans that will suit your specific needs and grow with you as your company grows. You do not need to be a video expert to understand how to upload a video, which allows nearly anyone in the office to do it.
    Incentivized
    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
    JW Player
    • Responsive HTML5
    • Provides share functionality built into the player
    • Platform use enables playlist functionality and playlist players which can be customized or versioned for specific uses
    • Videos uploaded to the JW Platform automatically provide multiple image frame options for selecting video thumbnail
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    JW Player
    • Definitely missing the ability (in and easy way) to have clickable links in the video.
    • Analytics is a little cumbersome and not very user-friendly.
    Incentivized
    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
    JW Player
    Just made the decision to renew given demonstrated improvements being made to the platform to expand compatibility for its player use on devices such as Apple TV, as well as improvements made recently to its JW Platform Dashboard
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Read full review
    Usability
    JW Player
    Reliability and compatibility on a majority of platforms. Would have received a 10 except recent versions of browsers such as Firefox are now defaulting against Flash components and thus prompting approval from users BEFORE loading which is a HUGE obstacle to an effective user experience thus creating concerns by end-users unnecessarily and risking that they will NOT accept the prompts, thus leaving unable to view video content hosted using the JW Player. Assurances by JW support suggest they will resolve this, so we'll see...
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    JW Player
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    JW Player
    Support is reasonable. I from time to time have made suggestions on improvements that would be nice to see (like the ability to have a clickable link within the video - that is easy to create, without tons of coding) and it seems as though I never see it happen or get much response to "suggestions" to upgrade the software. The good news, other than a few things as I mentioned above, overall, I don't have many "technical issues" in the platform, which is a good thing. On occasion, I have seen some "issues" with the delivery of the video, but it has been pretty scarce. So it is dependable.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    JW Player
    One of the primary features promoted by JW Platform is its SEO definition. However, there did not seem to be a way to integrate that data to our platform if selected thus only leaving the benefits of that data to be established on the individual video page hosted by JW Platform, which isn't useful in the end to the client value we are trying to deliver for our VideoproFile.net solution
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    JW Player
    JW had more player options, a better/more intuitive user interface, was altogether faster both in rendering the uploaded videos and in time to load on the web page. The integration with OpenX for pre-roll was faster and easier than with Brightcove, and lastly, they offered a great price for service.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    JW Player
    • JW Player has was less expensive (without sacrificing quality) than our previous video platform so the ROI was instant.
    • We were easily able to add a variety of video advertising options including pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll.
    • The quality and consistancy of the look of the video has enabled us to grow our video views by well over 100% since starting with JW.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots