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Alibaba Cloud vs Amazon AWS vs Microsoft Azure comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 5.2%, down from 13.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon AWS is 15.0%, up from 13.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 8.7%, down from 17.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure8.7%
Amazon AWS15.0%
Alibaba Cloud5.2%
Other71.1%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Min HtetOo - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Marketing Officer at Soft Intelligence
The solution is useful for application development, but the user interface and user experience must be improved
The product must be made easier to use. The design is a bit tricky. When we log in to the Alibaba Cloud Marketplace and browse products, they look very small. The user experience must be improved. Alibaba Cloud must increase its partner network and brand awareness in our country. It will give our customers more opportunities to scale and save in the long run.
Asif  Meem - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Machine Learning Engineer at sportsbet
Managed cloud services have helped accelerate experiments with flexible configuration options
Sometimes the costs associated with spinning up a service, especially managed services, have implications. For example, if I create a Glue job, that will create S3 buckets and other resources that have cost implications, but once I clean up a Glue job, it does not delete the other accessory resources. Sometimes, I have to go hunting for what resources Amazon AWS might have provisioned and how it is costing behind the scenes. It can be complex depending on your level of expertise. It is not as easy to get started, especially when it comes to secure practices. Amazon AWS is more hands-on than other platforms.
Syed Abid  - PeerSpot reviewer
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
Versatile integrations and reliable customer satisfaction elevate cloud service experience
For Microsoft Azure improvement, they need to enhance their support system. The first level of support should be improved in terms of quality and response time. They need more technical support at the first level, as there are currently only one or two technical people among five to ten staff members at this level. They should ensure that the first level support is more technical because we normally provide services to technical users ourselves. When an issue arises, it usually escalates to the second or third level. When facing first level support, they may have limited knowledge and only collect screenshots to forward to their seniors. They should ensure that the first level support is aligned with L2 and L3 to better assist us, especially since we mention in the ticket that our issues are related to specific problems and require that sort of support.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Alibaba Cloud has lower costs and good support."
"When comparing solutions such as GCP, which is the same as Alibaba Cloud, and others such as Amazon AWS and Azure, Alibaba Cloud is the preferred solution in China."
"It's easy to use, cheaper than other solutions, and more secure."
"It is a scalable product. So, scaling up or scaling down is possible."
"Otherwise, the cost of Alibaba Cloud is reasonable, and service-wise, it's also good because it has many available services worth trying."
"Alibaba Cloud allows for easy setup of mirror sites and backup servers, ensuring data redundancy and high availability."
"We use the product for storage and as a VPN."
"The installation is easy."
"I like that is very easy to use and that it's flexible."
"Comprehensive Cloud platform offering, with a huge ecosystem of ISV partners, great selection of pre-built images, and much more!! Pricing cannot be beat, and new features and reduction in price are always in the works."
"With the pay-as-you-go model, we don't have to predict future IT needs, we can just scale up as we want, and that helps with a lot of agility in deploying stuff in our IT infrastructure."
"Setting up AWS was pretty easy. It was straightforward to set up, and it took us a year to develop and migrate our mobile banking solution to the AWS cloud. Our migration experience was quite positive."
"This solution is a good option if you are looking for cloud-based storage."
"They provide cutting-edge features compared to other cloud vendors."
"AWS has many integrations and plenty of tools available for anyone to take advantage of, and there are new features being added all the time."
"The product is easy to use."
"The user interface offers a good experience, it's better than Azure itself."
"It is a very easy-to-use platform, and it is very powerful in terms of data backup and Blob storage. It has very good features, especially if you are using Microsoft products, such as Windows, Microsoft SQL Server."
"I like the reliability of the solution and the ease of provisional services which can be a click and go."
"Azure is stable. I don't have any problems with it."
"It is quick and easy to deploy. It is flexible, and we can deploy a resource anytime. We like and prefer the pay-as-you-go model."
"The solution's technical support was very good."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the integration between all of the components in Azure."
"The solution is easy to manage within the cloud application, has good performance, and is secure."
 

Cons

"Customer support has a lot of room for improvement. There's just general documentation, general customer support, and general maturity of the processes are all lacking when compared to Amazon or Google."
"The flexibility of the solution could be improved."
"Alibaba Cloud needs to increase availability in Thailand."
"From the improvement point of view, there are lots of issues that we are facing. In all the areas, it seems like it is not mature."
"I would not recommend the solution to others."
"It is not robust."
"Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand, Google Cloud is more convenient for new users."
"The solution should have more integration."
"It just needs to be improved from the security perspective."
"A person with no AWS experience might find it overwhelming at first."
"Its interface could be better because there are so many services right now in the product that it is quite difficult to navigate around in this. Its interface could be a subject of improvement."
"The solution could always have better performance."
"Amazon still has room for improvement in terms of being more mature on the monitoring side and in terms of the native capabilities. Amazon should get their services portfolio stronger on OEM-based workloads such as Microsoft and Oracle. There are a lot of areas that still do not have offerings, so there is room to grow. I would be happy if they bring more maturity to the monitoring capabilities and SaaS offerings. They are strong on Infrastructure as a Service, but they are not mature on SaaS."
"Going through the chats has left me a little disappointed. It's taking far too long, and I have to come back with questions."
"We don't know whether to increase server capacity or alert notifications. We don't know which hard disc to purchase or what the next recommended CPU is. There should be an indicator. We would like to have more guidance."
"RDS doesn't have shell access, which could be especially beneficial for Oracle databases."
"The initial setup is quite complex because of the number of options that are available."
"One key area for improvement is the Azure load balancer. Currently, it only supports virtual machines (VMs) running in the same virtual network (vNet) on the backend. They should definitely support machines or IPs running on-premises (prem) or in other Azure VNets. GCP and AWS already support that. So, Azure Load Balancer should support that as well"
"Some of the capabilities available in an on-premise SQL Server aren't available in Azure. For instance, we found Azure Managed Instance to be lacking in certain aspects. One of our clients decided to stay on-premise rather than migrate to Azure because of this reason."
"The Azure Billing API could be so much better. It only provides billing metrics for a set duration."
"We need more security to be available on our smartphones and mobile devices."
"It took less than three years for the ROI to be zero. Over three years is better in-house for the ROI."
"It could be more flexible. If you look at all Mircosoft products, they are not up to the mark. For example, Azure Ready doesn't provide the same kind of access a domain administrator has and the kind of flexibility that they have when using Active Directory. Microsoft support could be better. Their service could also be better. For example, specific policies for templates suddenly become unavailable. When I checked, they said that certain things might be withdrawn based on customer feedback. This happened once or twice, and it wasn't available at all for five days, it just went down."
"It is more difficult for HR and finance to use Microsoft Azure, as they want to build AI agents without always contacting IT."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Alibaba Cloud is cheaper."
"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."
"The price of Alibaba Cloud is good. If I was to use Microsoft Azure I would have to pay 30 percent more."
"I noticed on the pricing that it's quite expensive. It is the price you pay for making a practical choice for enterprise-level companies since it has so many features and it fits an enterprise-level company just like our company right now."
"The solution's pricing is the same as AWS'."
"We cut our costs significantly by migrating our infrastructure to the cloud. Alibaba Cloud employs a pay-as-you-go model, so that minimizes many costs for us."
"The cost of Alibaba Cloud is lower than that of AWS, but I feel that its price is on the higher end of the spectrum. Alibaba Cloud charges its users a price in dollars"
"I'm not sure about the exact pricing, but let's just say if it cost a dollar for Amazon AWS, it was closer to 70 to 80 cents for Alibaba Cloud."
"When I first started using the solution I used a free trial, and then we upgraded to a pay-as-you-go subscription. We have an allocated budget of $50."
"Monthly licensing fee."
"When compared to GCP, Google, or Azure, the price could be lower."
"Some customers will provide their own license and others will purchase it directly from AWS."
"Billing for cloud services can be difficult at times."
"The pricing is expensive."
"This is not an expensive product but it would be an improvement if the price were cheaper."
"It is much more expensive than any other cloud provider."
"It’s necessary to use third party products or to use good self-management economic tools"
"I pay for a yearly subscription."
"The pricing for us is higher because we are using IaaS."
"The cost structure is like most cloud-based services. The solution could be cheaper, it is always better to be cheaper."
"It's not on a per-user basis; it's on a per subscription basis. It is dependent on how much you use."
"The monthly costs become very reasonable because of the discounts you get on longer reserved instances."
"Microsoft Azure is more expensive than other solutions, such as GCP. We have found that GCP offers more utilities at a very reasonable price."
"The license cost could be reduced."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Aug 14, 2013
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business131
Midsize Enterprise48
Large Enterprise120
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business141
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise153
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Alibaba Cloud?
Alibaba Cloud needs to improve emails. Its pricing can also be lower. Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is mor...
Which solution do you prefer: Alibaba Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
Thanks for sharing these insights! I completely agree that Microsoft Azure provides IT administrators with strong cen...
How does OpenShift compare with Amazon AWS?
Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderfu...
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS?
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS? Amazon AWS offers options both in terms of upgrading and expand...
Looking to compare Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure
We like Google Firebase hosting and authentication and also the excellent cloud functionality. Our team found the fle...
Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to ...
Which is better - SAP Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure?
One of the best features of SAP Cloud Platform is that it is web-based and you can log in from anywhere in the world....
How does Microsoft Azure compare to Google Firebase?
I would recommend Google Firebase instead of Microsoft Azure, simply for the array of features that it has to offer. ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Amazon Web Services, AWS
Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint
Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and others in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS). Updated: June 2026.
906,960 professionals have used our research since 2012.