Alibaba Cloud vs Microsoft Azure comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
Alibaba Logo
7,406 views|5,115 comparisons
Microsoft Logo
30,394 views|24,344 comparisons
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Mar 6, 2024

We compared Microsoft Azure and Alibaba Cloud based on our user's reviews in several parameters.

Microsoft Azure is praised for its scalability, reliability, and extensive range of services, while users appreciate its customer service and support. On the other hand, Alibaba Cloud stands out for its security measures, efficient data management, and competitive pricing options. Both platforms offer positive returns on investment, but Alibaba Cloud users mention the need for improvements in customer support and service reliability.

Features: Microsoft Azure is praised for its scalability, versatility, reliability, and extensive range of services. In contrast, Alibaba Cloud is valued for its excellent scalability, robust security measures, reliable performance, extensive resource options, efficient data management, and friendly customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Azure's setup cost has been praised for its ease and simplicity, with users appreciating the reasonable and competitive pricing. In contrast, Alibaba Cloud offers manageable setup costs, allowing customers to choose a suitable plan. The licensing process is smooth and straightforward., Microsoft Azure has been praised for its cost savings, increased efficiency, and improved scalability. Its wide range of services and tools streamlines operations and reduces infrastructure costs. Alibaba Cloud is highly regarded for its cost-effective cloud services, offering excellent value for money. It enhances efficiency, scalability, and reliability and provides extensive features and functionalities for overall business performance.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Azure has received feedback regarding areas that need improvement, while Alibaba Cloud could benefit from enhancements in several aspects, including its interface, stability, reliability, customer support, and response times.

Deployment and customer support: Based on user feedback, there are differences in the duration required to establish a new tech solution between Microsoft Azure and Alibaba Cloud. Some Azure users mention a three-month deployment period with an additional week for setup, while Alibaba Cloud users mention both deployment and setup taking just one week. Context and usage of these terms must be considered in evaluating the overall duration., Microsoft Azure's customer service and support receive positive remarks for their responsiveness and expertise, offering prompt and helpful assistance. Users appreciate comprehensive documentation. In comparison, Alibaba Cloud's customer service is also praised for being attentive and helpful, with extensive documentation, but some users have expressed dissatisfaction with response time and expertise.

The summary above is based on 32 interviews we conducted recently with Microsoft Azure and Alibaba Cloud users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.

To learn more, read our detailed Alibaba Cloud vs. Microsoft Azure Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: Which solution do you prefer: Alibaba Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
Answer: 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.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It is easy to set up.""The cost of hosting the solution is very reasonable. It's quite inexpensive.""What's good about Alibaba Cloud is its database service. It's also good in the virtual machine area.""Feature-wise, it provides many features. ECS, VM, SP, bucket object storage, and databases are the most valuable.""It is a scalable product. So, scaling up or scaling down is possible.""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.""Alibaba support is responsive. When we create tickets in the Alibaba portal, they usually respond online or call me in five minutes."

More Alibaba Cloud Pros →

"It is a reliable solution that is easy to set up.""The customer service and support are very good. When we raise a ticket, we quickly get feedback or someone assigned to help us identify the problem, which, 90% of the time, was on our end. I'm very happy with the support they provide.""Technical support has been good over the years.""The solution is very flexible, it is not limited to Microsoft solutions. It integrates well with other solutions, such as Oracle. There are a lot of templates we are able to use allowing us to reduce the time for configuration.""Installation is easy as it's cloud-based. Performance is good. It's stable and scalable.""The support is responsive and dedicated to SMEs.""Azure is very flexible.""I come from the DBA side so for me it's the easy maintenance; backups are very easy as well."

More Microsoft Azure Pros →

Cons
"The majority of the tools and processes, in general, have a lot of room for improvement.""From a performance point of view, Huawei and Azure are faster. Alibaba isn't as good.""It is not robust.""Alibaba Cloud's initial setup is somewhat complex.""The solution should have more integration.""The solution name is not favorable in some markets and could cause us some problems gaining customers.""Alibaba Cloud has some problems related to latency and connection issues. If you go for a cloud solution provider, you will need to access the Internet, which may result in latency and bandwidth issues, leading to slowness in operations.""Alibaba Cloud needs to increase availability in Thailand."

More Alibaba Cloud Cons →

"The alerts management should be improved. Alerts management is very complicated to configure. You have to go through a lot of tests and config action groups to set up those things. It is very complicated, and it can be simplified.""The interface is not easy to use. I'd like to see them develop a better interface, more graphical information about the resource and the consumer.""The solution should be more intuitive and provide better support. We often do not receive frequent updates or comprehensive support, even as partners.""I would like to see more databases on the cloud, what they call today Big Data should be there.""Azure ARM​ console can be a bit overwhelming at the beginning.""In my opinion, what could be improved is making the actual costs more predictable. It is very difficult to estimate the cost or the budget you are going to need to run your environment in Azure Cloud. You have to be a specialist to understand how you will be charged, which constantly changes.""I would like it if Microsoft communicated better about upcoming changes before they roll them out. Sometimes when Microsoft implements changes, they don't notify the users promptly enough. I would like to know about new features, especially Office 365.""We like that they have the new capabilities, but sometimes they're deprecating capabilities faster than we can handle. If we had to improve it, we would want to stay on some of these older capabilities a bit longer."

More Microsoft Azure Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "I don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."
  • "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."
  • "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 is better than similar solutions."
  • "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."
  • "The solution's pricing is the same as 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."
  • More Alibaba Cloud Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Related to pricing and licensing, you have to be careful how you operate with the concept."
  • "Be careful with Azure Cool storage accounts; if you are dealing with high object counts, then it can be more economical to use Hot storage because of the high storage access costs associated with Cool."
  • "Make use of Azure pricing calculator and you will find out that Azure Is still more reasonable that the competition and do your research, when unclear speak with your MS support."
  • "It’s necessary to use third party products or to use good self-management economic tools"
  • "Keep to PaaS to gain the optimal benefits from an OPEX finance and resource perspective."
  • "Several thousand dollars and counting, we haven't needed to upgrade on premises hardware (In fact we eliminated all of the old on-premises hardware and run 100% on Azure) or pay for it's maintenance, power etc."
  • "If you are not aware of costs, pricing, etc., you can end up with a hefty bill. However, I found that the Azure price calculator is a valuable tool to use before starting to deploy VMs in Azure. This tool will give you an overview of the costs you should expect on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis."
  • "Pricing is very difficult to guesstimate. With so many a la carte options and individual pricing it can be a hassle to understand."
  • More Microsoft Azure Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) solutions are best for your needs.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    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 alluring IT customers. This article give brief history of these cloud hosting service providers and compares the cloud services provided by them. -- Amazon Web Services -- It's hard to find someone who doesn't agree that Amazon Web Services is the market leader in IaaS cloud computing. The company has one of the widest breadths of cloud services - including compute, storage, networking, databases, load balancers, applications and application development platforms all delivered as a cloud service. Amazon has dropped its prices 21 times since it debuted its cloud six years ago and fairly consistently fills whatever gaps it has in the size of virtual machine instances on its platform - the company recently rolled out new high-memory instances, for example. There are some cautions for Amazon though. Namely, its cloud has experienced three major outages in two years. One analyst, Jillian Mirandi of Technology Business Researcher, has suggested that continued outages could eventually start hindering businesses' willingness to invest in Amazon infrastructure. That sentiment gets to a larger point about AWS though - the service seems to be popular in the startup community, providing the IT… Read more →
    Answers from the Community
    Nattaphat Narapimsakul
    Patrick Cutajar - PeerSpot reviewerPatrick Cutajar
    Real User

    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.







    DJIBRINE AGADJI - PeerSpot reviewerDJIBRINE AGADJI
    Real User

    Microsoft Azure

    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution.
    Top Answer:The product is not that expensive. It is more affordable than Google. However, customers are not that comfortable with the product’s price.
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: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 both… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    7,406
    Comparisons
    5,115
    Reviews
    9
    Average Words per Review
    409
    Rating
    7.7
    Views
    30,394
    Comparisons
    24,344
    Reviews
    27
    Average Words per Review
    547
    Rating
    8.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
    Learn More
    Overview

    Alibaba Cloud offers a comprehensive suite of cloud computing services to support growing enterprises worldwide, including data storage, relational databases, big-data processing, and content delivery networks.

    Windows Azure is Microsoft's cloud platform, where developers can create, deploy, and maintain their apps. This cloud application platform allows developers to concentrate on the actual applications, while it takes care of all the elements behind the apps.

    Windows Azure works across multiple frameworks and languages. It is fully scalable, localized in that it is hosted globally in many datacenters, and has widespread capabilities with elements of application development, deployment, and management.

    Azure is comprised of several different service modules, including Infrastructure; Web; Mobile; Dev & Test; Big Data; Media;Storage, Backup & Recovery; and Identity & Access Management.

    Microsoft Azure works as a:

    1. Platform as a service (PaaS)
    2. Software as a service (SaaS)
    3. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

    Microsoft Azure is available:

    • On-premises
    • Hybrid
    • Multi-cloud
    • At the edge

    Compared to its competitors, Microsoft Azure:

    • Has more affordable features
    • Has easier migration for organizations already using other Microsoft tools
    • Has several educational resources available
    • Provides robust support
    • Is ideal for small and large businesses

    Microsoft Azure Features:

    • Scalability
    • Stability
    • Flexibility
    • Azure Site Recovery
    • Active Directory
    • Monitoring features
    • Cloud-based
    • Automated tasks
    • Change capability cadence
    • Showback capabilities
    • Information protection
    • Azure Data Lake
    • Excellent portal
    • Intuitive user interface
    • Remote desktop
    • Fast provisioning
    • Data security
    • Data resiliency
    • Speed of service
    • Integrated delivery pipeline
    • Disaster recovery
    • Robust templates
    • Flexible coding languages
    • Virtual systems testing

    Benefits of Microsoft Azure:

    • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Because Microsoft Azure is an IaaS, organizations can deploy as well as manage applications easily and quickly. Azure also provides you with the ability to customize the cloud software to meet your specific business needs.
    • Seamless integration: Microsoft Azure is built to seamlessly integrate with existing IT departments via hybrid databases, secure private connections, and storage solutions.
    • Cost-effective: Because Azure can harmoniously exist in your business environment with your data center, it is a very cost-effective solution.
    • Analytics support: Azure is designed with built-in support that is used to analyze data and provide key insights. Azure offers Cortana Analytics, Stream Analytics, Machine Learning, and SQL services.
    • Unique storage system: Compared to other cloud services, Microsoft Azure has more data centers and delivery points, which helps create an optimal user experience and also helps deliver content faster. In addition, Microsoft Azure makes it possible for organizations to exchange content across several virtual machines.
    • Enhanced flexibility: Azure provides extreme flexibility by allowing you to choose any level of functionality you require. It also supports many of the same technologies IT teams and developers usually depend on, making it easier for them to manage.
    • Easy implementation: Microsoft Azure is easy and quick to deploy. If necessary, you can change web apps to Azure with almost zero downtime.

    Reviews from Real Users:

    "It is a flexible solution that is straightforward to use," says the principal consultant at a computer software company.

    OmarJ., future datacenter consultant: Microsoft Azure Cloud at a tech company, adds that "The user interface is very nice and makes everything easy to use."

    You can build an environment in minutes. It's very good in terms of being an infrastructure as a service, and I found that really fascinating,” says an information technology consultant at a computer software company.

    "I think Azure's level of automation to achieve efficiency or agility is valuable. I also like the change capability cadence, the showback capabilities, and understanding what our costs are," says an enterprise architect at an energy/utilities company.

    Marco C., Ing. at Wolters Kluwer, says "The valuable features of Microsoft Azure are that it is cloud-based and has good storage. The storage is completely managed by Azure. We do not need to do any patching of security because it is handled by Azure which is a benefit. The solution is fully compatible with the Microsoft technology stack and is very scalable."

    "The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure is it has everything together in one place. It is one large tool with lots of small tools that are updated often," says the owner of a media company.



    Sample Customers
    Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint
    BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company45%
    Comms Service Provider18%
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Energy/Utilities Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company12%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Educational Organization8%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company22%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization35%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business38%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise63%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business41%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise44%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise40%
    Large Enterprise46%
    Buyer's Guide
    Alibaba Cloud vs. Microsoft Azure
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Alibaba Cloud vs. Microsoft Azure and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Alibaba Cloud is ranked 9th in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) with 15 reviews while Microsoft Azure is ranked 1st in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) with 298 reviews. Alibaba Cloud is rated 7.2, while Microsoft Azure is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Alibaba Cloud writes "The solution is useful for application development, but the user interface and user experience must be improved". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Azure writes "Promotes clear, logical structures preventing impractical configurations and offers seamless integration ". Alibaba Cloud is most compared with Google Cloud, Amazon AWS, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Google Firebase and DigitalOcean, whereas Microsoft Azure is most compared with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, Pivotal Cloud Foundry and IBM Public Cloud. See our Alibaba Cloud vs. Microsoft Azure report.

    See our list of best Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) vendors.

    We monitor all Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.