Liquid Web vs. Microsoft Azure

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Liquid Web
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Liquid Web is a fully managed hosting service, boasting VPS hosting on the Storm Platform, and cloud dedicated hosting on the Storm Platform. Liquid Web supports managed WordPress, managed WooCommerce, VMware Private Cloud, as well as HIPAA and PCI compliant hosting, high availability database hosting, and dedicated or server clusters available for a variety of purposes, as well as websites.
$19
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
Liquid WebMicrosoft Azure
Editions & Modules
Managed WordPress
$19
per month
Managed WooCommerce
$19
per month
VPS
$35
per month
Magenta Cloud
$49
per month
Cloud Dedicated
$149
per month
Private VPS Parent
$149
per month
Dedicated
$169
per month
Cloud Servers
$265
per month
HIPPA
$343
per month
Server Clusters
$743
per month
High Performance
1,127
per month
High Availability
1,448
per month
Database Hosting
1,498
per month
VMware Private Cloud
1,599
per month
Developer
$29
per month
Standard
$100
per month
Professional Direct
$1000
per month
Basic
Free
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Liquid WebMicrosoft Azure
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
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
Liquid WebMicrosoft Azure
Features
Liquid WebMicrosoft Azure
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Liquid Web
-
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
Liquid WebMicrosoft Azure
Small Businesses
SiteGround
SiteGround
Score 8.6 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
WP Engine
WP Engine
Score 7.3 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Pantheon
Pantheon
Score 8.6 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
Liquid WebMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(6 ratings)
8.7
(97 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(17 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(37 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
6.8
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(28 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Liquid WebMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
Liquid Web Inc.
Liquid Web is suitable for serious users who have high end web applications or critical business oriented websites. cPanel and WHM comes out of the box with almost every server you buy. And if you don't have time to manage your own server, Liquid Web will suit you well. Their support is awesome. They help beyond the scope of the support. I had to migrate almost 25 big sites to another Liquid Web server, the support guys made it so easy for me.
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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.
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Pros
Liquid Web Inc.
  • Customer Service — Amazing support, if needed.
  • Site Speed — Our website sped up by 50% just by moving our hosting to Liquid-Web.
  • Knowledge — We've learned a lot as an organization by following the Liquid Web blog.
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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.
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Cons
Liquid Web Inc.
  • The tutorial area is excellent, but perhaps they could add video tutorial.
  • Chat conversations should be added automatically to the client portal.
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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.
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Likelihood to Renew
Liquid Web Inc.
No answers on this topic
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
Liquid Web Inc.
No answers on this topic
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
Liquid Web Inc.
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
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Support Rating
Liquid Web Inc.
No answers on this topic
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!
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Implementation Rating
Liquid Web Inc.
No answers on this topic
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
Liquid Web Inc.
We evaluated Kinsta and WPEngine. Both offer great platforms but the lack of solid phone support and the substantial difference in server resource allocation made Liquid Web a clear winner.
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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
Liquid Web Inc.
  • Liquid-Web has made it easier for me to take my focus away from handling constant server issues to being able to focus on my actual job in managing our websites. While there may not be a concrete number for this scenario, being able to perform my tasks more efficiently definitely helps company growth in the long run.
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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