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.
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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.
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.
Microsoft Azure