Amazon AWS vs Microsoft Azure comparison

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51,967 views|44,204 comparisons
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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Oct 30, 2022

We performed a comparison between Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: Amazon AWS users feel its initial setup is mostly straightforward and easy. Microsoft Azure users mostly note the complexity of its initial setup.
  • Features: Users of both products are generally happy with their stability and scalability.

    Amazon AWS users note being particularly satisfied with its availability, machine learning, and ability to support different operating systems. Some note that its data analytics could be better.

    Microsoft Azure users say they’re impressed with the solution's ease of use, flexibility, and level of automation. Some users mention that the product’s integration with other platforms could be improved.
  • Pricing: Amazon AWS users say the price is expensive (and more expensive than Microsoft Azure). Some Microsoft Azure users note that the price is high, but reasonably so.
  • ROI: Users of both solutions mention significant ROI.
  • Service and Support: Amazon AWS users report very good to excellent support. Microsoft Azure users report their support as good to excellent, with a few noting that support and documentation could be improved.

Comparison Results: Because Microsoft Azure has a more difficult initial setup and weaker support, Amazon AWS ultimately wins out in this comparison.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft Azure Report (Updated: May 2023).
708,830 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The features with Amazon AWS that I have found most valuable are its flexibility and high availability. These are the most important and attractive points for me.""The installation process is very simple.""Technical support has been great.""It has a lot of new features that make our lives easier in terms of what we want it to do in the house.""User friendly solution.""This solution is a good option if you are looking for cloud-based storage. Using a cloud-based solution, it is not required to accommodate a full workload. You can start with a basic version and scale up as needed.""AWS is constantly growing in features with every new version. It's a good cloud provider with excellent availability. The integration is good, and their security products are interesting. Amazon is always innovating and delivering new products to customers.""The installation is quite straightforward."

More Amazon AWS Pros →

"To me, the most valuable Azure features are AKS, Cloud SQL, security, and account management.""The main benefit of Microsoft Azure is that it is cloud-based. We are using Microsoft Visual Studio for our code and it is tightly integrated with Microsoft Azure. Additionally, the solution is user-friendly.""The user interface is very good for administrators.""It's set up to handle any cloud requirement.""We have not had any issues with the performance, or the stability.""Great features at a good price.""Offers many data security features including securing network access.""It has multiple features that can be used from the start."

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Cons
"It is difficult to hand over legacy applications when migrating them to the cloud.""I think Amazon could improve some of the security or fine-grained access for metadata and many other things.""The technical support should be better than what is on offer right now.""The solution could be more user-friendly.""There is a feature called Kinesis, which has to do with image processing. There are a few artificial intelligence tools that Amazon AWS should improve on.""There is no control of downtime.""I want to use AWS as a full solution for my website - for domain and website hosting, and everything in between - however, I was not able to find everything together.""The pricing is reasonable but there is always room to be better."

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"The integration pipeline could be a bit more broad in terms of applications.""Customer services and support should be improved. If a user faces challenges in accessing Microsoft Azure, the support team takes time—it could be 24 to 48 hours—to resolve them. We need solutions in four to five hours. And there are business-critical issues where we need an immediate resolution.""The solution could improve the stability. However, this could be a configuration issue that we are not been trained.""Potential improvements to the price calculator tool""Microsoft should have one package for all their solutions in one place to be found.""There are multiple DevOps solutions and tools available in Microsoft Azure, but most of the time they are either in the build mode, meaning you don't get complete support for them because they are either making changes, or changing the names of the particular services. Sometimes, services vanish from the portal. We are not able to see that. I think they actually change the names of the services.""The solution is less mature than AWS.""The solution could improve by simplifying network management."

More Microsoft Azure Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "We are currently paying for the solution on an annual basis."
  • "The pricing of Amazon is higher than that of SalesForce."
  • "The price is quite good; it is a pay-as-you-go option."
  • "The price of the solution is reasonable."
  • "The pricing is one of the best in the segment."
  • "Its pricing can be simplified a little bit more. Even though they have been reducing it, I still believe they can do better as compared to GCP, Google Cloud."
  • "With Amazon AWS, you pay as you go."
  • "There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
  • More Amazon AWS Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I am currently on a pay-as-you-go subscription and my customers are going to be on a three-year contract. For what is offered in the three-year package it is quite reasonably priced."
  • "We pay for the license on a monthly basis."
  • "We have a subscription and the price is reasonable."
  • "The license is on a monthly basis."
  • "It is paid on a per-use basis."
  • "With adequate knowledge, I think you can come up with a good model where the pricing won't be a constraint."
  • "It's a pay-as-you-go subscription."
  • "The price of the solution can be expensive."
  • More Microsoft Azure Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderful dashboard mechanism to alert us in case the application is over-committing or is… more »
    Top Answer:How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS? Amazon AWS offers options both in terms of upgrading and expanding capabilities as well as acquiring greater storage space. These upgrades can… more »
    Top Answer:We like Google Firebase hosting and authentication and also the excellent cloud functionality. Our team found the flexibility of handling and dealing with the database through EDL to be very useful… 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
    51,967
    Comparisons
    44,204
    Reviews
    108
    Average Words per Review
    416
    Rating
    8.4
    Views
    59,161
    Comparisons
    49,995
    Reviews
    109
    Average Words per Review
    434
    Rating
    8.4
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Amazon Web Services, AWS
    Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
    Learn More
    Overview

    Amazon Web Services (AWS) is an adopted cloud platform that offers more than 200 fully featured services from data centers located across the globe. This is a scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that is utilized by thousands of businesses of different sizes around the world. The product offers a wide variety of solutions for its customers, which allows them to launch applications regardless of their industry.

    The most common use cases for AWS are:

    • Application hosting: Clients can take advantage of on-demand infrastructure to power their applications. The product supports multiple types of apps, varying from hosted internal applications to software as a service (SaaS) offerings.

    • Websites: With AWS, clients can satisfy their web hosting needs through a scalable platform for their websites.

    • Backup and storage: AWS offers reliable data storage services, which allow clients to store their data and build dependable backups for all of their valuable information.

    • Enterprise IT: The product allows companies to host internal- or external-facing IT applications in a highly secure environment.

    • Content delivery: Users who want to distribute content to end users worldwide can do so quickly and easily through the high data transfer speeds of this solution.

    • Databases: AWS offers a variety of database solutions, which include hosted enterprise database software as well as non-relational database solutions.

    Amazon AWS supports a global cloud infrastructure with AWS Region and Availability Zone models, which contribute to the high availability of enterprise applications running on the solution. Amazon AWS has an extensive array of products that serve different purposes, including:

    • Analytics
    • Application integration
    • Blockchain
    • Business applications
    • Cloud financial management
    • Compute
    • Contact center
    • Containers
    • Database
    • Developer tools
    • End-user computing
    • Front-end web and mobile
    • Games
    • Internet of Things (IoT)
    • Machine learning
    • Management and governance
    • Quantum technologies
    • Robotics
    • Satellite
    • Security, identity and compliance, and others

    The products and services that Amazon AWS delivers to these sectors provide a large computing capacity which is quicker and cheaper compared to building a physical server farm. Among the most popular services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, also known as "EC2," and Amazon Simple Storage Service, also known as "S3."

    Amazon AWS Features

    The wide array of products that Amazon AWS offers consist of different functions that utilize cloud computing across different sectors. The features of this solution can be categorized in the following ways:

    • Data and relationship management: With Amazon AWS, companies can manage multiple hierarchies of directory data, they can define attributes for objects and relationships, set custom inheritance rules for directories, and create multiple schemas.

    • Schema management: This group of features allows users to extend their directory schema according to their needs. They can extend it through multiple applications that share a single directory while avoiding duplication of data.

    • Fully managed infrastructure: This feature decreases time and costs for administrative tasks for companies regarding scaling infrastructure and managing servers.

    • Searching feature: The Cloud Directory feature of AWS offers built-in search capabilities which can cover sets of highly connected data and eliminate the need of creating nested queries.

    • Built-in data encryption: Users can benefit from high levels of protection of their data with AWS's products. The data in the cloud is automatically encrypted at rest and in transit through 256-bit encryption keys, managed by AWS Key Management Service (KMS).

    • Object policies: This feature allows Amazon AWS users to organize objects in different hierarchies by providing a framework for applications to evaluate policy assignments.

    Amazon AWS Benefits

    This product delivers various benefits across all industries that utilize its services. The greatest advantages of using Amazon AWS include:

    • High product functionality is supported by machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), IoT, data lakes, and analytics.

    • The solution has a high level of security, which is backed by a deep set ofmore than 100 cloud security tools.

    • Amazon AWS has an easy-to-use interface that makes it possible for clients to host applications.

    • The product is very flexible in terms of which operating system, programming language, web app platform, and database clients can use.

    • AWS is a scalable and highly secure global computing infrastructure, supported by the reliability of Amazon.com.

    • Clients can utilize the Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing tools to personally scale up or down applications, depending on their demand.

    • Users can choose from an array of payment options, including paying for only the services they need, as well as a free trial to select the ones most useful for them.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Greg G., a chief executive officer at a tech services company, ranks Amazon AWS highly, as he states that the solution is flexible, scales well, and offers good stability.

    A technology manager technology at a computer software company values Amazon AWS because it is extremely cost-efficient, easy to upgrade and expand storage with greatly improved interfaces.

    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.



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    Sample Customers
    Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
    BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company31%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization20%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company25%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization18%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business45%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise26%
    Large Enterprise59%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business39%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise44%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business15%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise59%
    Buyer's Guide
    Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft Azure
    May 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft Azure and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
    708,830 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Amazon AWS is ranked 2nd in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) with 109 reviews while Microsoft Azure is ranked 1st in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) with 110 reviews. Amazon AWS is rated 8.4, while Microsoft Azure is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Amazon AWS writes "Flexible, scales well, and offers good stability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Azure writes "Optimized cloud solution with reliable recovery and fail services". Amazon AWS is most compared with Linode, SAP Cloud Platform, OpenShift, Oracle Cloud Platform and Oracle Cloud, whereas Microsoft Azure is most compared with Oracle Cloud Platform, Google Firebase, SAP Cloud Platform, Pivotal Cloud Foundry and IBM Public Cloud. See our Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft Azure report.

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