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Alibaba Cloud vs Microsoft Azure comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Alibaba Cloud
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
8th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
321
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 11.9%, up from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 15.5%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure15.5%
Alibaba Cloud11.9%
Other72.6%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Q&A Highlights

NN
Sep 19, 2023
 

Featured Reviews

Min HtetOo - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Syed Abid  - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"We use the solution's AI features for data analysis."
"Flexibility and costs were probably the most important thing for us. The cost was one of the big factors for choosing Alibaba Cloud relative to other cloud solutions, especially in Asia"
"The installation is easy."
"It is a scalable product. So, scaling up or scaling down is possible."
"We use the product for storage and as a VPN."
"Alibaba Cloud allows for easy setup of mirror sites and backup servers, ensuring data redundancy and high availability."
"Alibaba support is responsive. When we create tickets in the Alibaba portal, they usually respond online or call me in five minutes."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy for me since I had a background in cloud products."
"We have implemented the ExpressRoute connection, which is an established circuit between the local provider and the Microsoft network edge."
"I like the ease of implementation."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Microsoft Azure is a very dynamic cloud service that allows you to migrate your workload, applications, and data."
"It very quickly provisions servers, infrastructure, and apps on the fly and complies with security requirements and data safety."
"I like the familiarity of this solution."
"The platform as a service for MySQL and PostgreSQL have significantly improved our operational efficiency."
"Microsoft Azure provides good performance and support."
 

Cons

"The flexibility of the solution could be improved."
"A big area for improvement in Alibaba Cloud is its support. Another area for improvement in Alibaba Cloud is SDK-based service because sometimes, the SDKs don't work correctly. Support for API-based services also needs improvement in Alibaba Cloud because, at the moment, it's not that stable."
"The solution needs to improve its graphical user interface."
"Users use websites as a tutorial. However, the Alibaba Cloud website has the content, and the scripts are copied from Amazon Web Services. We had received customer feedback where the customer asked us to get formulate original content instead of copying from Amazon Web Services. It’s very odd and awkward."
"The majority of the tools and processes, in general, have a lot of room for improvement."
"Alibaba Cloud needs to increase availability in Thailand."
"The user experience must be improved."
"It is not robust."
"I'd like to see better integration with S/4HANA integrated and other services, like monitoring, for example."
"At times, the support is terrible."
"We would like it to be cheaper. As a customer, we always want to pay less."
"Sometimes there is slowness observed in Microsoft Azure. We noticed a few critical servers went down due to a Microsoft Azure-end hardware issue."
"The response time and stability of Microsoft Azure need to be improved."
"The solution could use mutual segmentation for servers. It would be ideal if you could constitute something like five or 15 groups among the groups of different computers inside Azure."
"Compared with other cloud solution providers, Microsoft is not good at local support."
"We have faced some issues on the pricing side, but it has improved lately. We are trying to adjust to the new pricing methods that they are using now. It should be better from now on."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"The cost is better than similar solutions."
"The solution's pricing is the same as AWS'."
"The product is not that expensive."
"I don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."
"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."
"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."
"Its price should be optimized so that we can use more features."
"The price of the solution could be reduced. There should be a loyalty cost reduction model. If customers have been using the service year after year they should receive a discount."
"It is affordable, but its subscription price could be cheaper."
"Price is good and many free features available"
"The pricing is fair and it was actually just reduced. My organization is paying approximately $100,000 annually with close to one thousand users. There are no additional fees."
"Everything involves an annual commitment with a monthly charge."
"One piece of feedback from other users I have heard from is that Azure is somewhat expensive, so I would advise anyone thinking about this solution to be aware of the cost. You need to take into account the configuration you are going with or it could turn out to be a more expensive solution than you anticipated."
"There are added costs to the company or for scaling for most premium products."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
Amazon Web Services, Rackspace OpenStack, Microsoft Windows Azure and Google are the major cloud hosting and storage service providers. Athough Amazon is top of them and is oldest in cloud market, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google are giving tough competition to each other and to Amazon also for…
 

Answers from the Community

NN
Sep 19, 2023
Sep 19, 2023
I believe that with Microsoft Azure you will have a bigger advantage due to the amount of partners that there are in the market. If you need support from Partner one and you don't get it, it's easy to switch to another partner to get help. Further to this Microsoft Azure now has datacentres worldwide which makes it easier to deploy anywhere.
2 out of 3 answers
DJIBRINE AGADJI - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 1, 2023
Microsoft Azure
Sathish-Holla - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 4, 2023
I believe Microsoft Azure is good as many companies are going by Azure, and moreover, Azure is best because many services that Microsoft corporates are used in the market.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business139
Midsize Enterprise53
Large Enterprise148
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alibaba Cloud?
ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alibaba Cloud?
On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten.
What needs improvement with Alibaba Cloud?
Alibaba Cloud needs to improve emails. Its pricing can also be lower. Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand,...
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 manage data and applications. One of the features we like is the cloud activity ...
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. SAP Cloud Platform is suitable for companies of any size; it works well with bo...
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. In particular, the Firebase library grants you access to a shared data structure...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint
BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Find out what your peers are saying about Alibaba Cloud vs. Microsoft Azure and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.