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Azure Key Vault vs Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Key Vault
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
20th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Password Managers (1st), Certificate Management Software (1st), Secrets Management Tools (2nd)
Microsoft Purview Data Life...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
27th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (9th), Document Management Software (6th), Data Governance (26th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Azure Key Vault is 2.6%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is 1.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Azure Key Vault2.6%
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management1.8%
Other95.6%
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

Rajthilak BS - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President (Data Security & Protection - Confidential AI) at Standard Chartered Bank
Have addressed compliance challenges but still struggle with seamless integration of certificate issuance between environments
In terms of Azure Key Vault improvements, we have to compare the competitor. If we consider AWS, our bank has Microsoft PKI, which is a Microsoft product, for the entire digital certificate infrastructure. Even in the cloud, when it is AWS, the internal certificates are MS PKI. When we had a problem, users had to come to on-premise to get a certificate and import it to AWS Certificate Manager and assign it. We wondered why we could not issue the certificate directly from the cloud for cloud users. There was a simple way in AWS. They have a Private Certificate Authority (PCA) and Amazon Certificate Manager. Private Certificate Authority issues certificates to Amazon services. They also provide Amazon Certificate Manager to store and deploy certificates. These are two neat components - one is an issuer and another is storage and deployment solutions for certificates. With PCA, I can directly enable it and get certificates from AWS itself. AWS can issue SSL/TLS certificates if you enable it directly. If you consider Azure, it is not very clear. Even the naming convention, Key Vault, might not suggest that this is a PKI or certificate manager. You cannot issue certificates directly. They have app certificates and did not have a clear-cut certificate management solution in the cloud when I worked at that time. I am not sure whether they have updated Azure Key Vault as a full-fledged PKI solution now. From what I saw, it was not a full-fledged PKI solution. We are not majorly using Azure Key Vault because it is only for storing secrets. If some solutions can provide guidance on how we can maximize leverage, we can immediately look forward to doing that. We already have some business problems we want to solve. While our primary focus is AWS, many of the services such as ADO are running on Azure, and the secondary services are growing bigger.
ST
Ict Systems Manager at Lltnpa
Automated retention has transformed compliance workflows and now simplifies audit responses
The deep native integration with Microsoft 365 is what ultimately made me decide on Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management over Enterprise Vault and OpenText Content Manager. Auto-apply retention labels using machine learning is the specific integration with Microsoft 365 that made it the deciding factor for me over Enterprise Vault or OpenText. Manually labeling content at our data volumes is not realistic. The automated classification based on sensitive information types and trainable classifiers is what makes the program actually scale. That feature gets used constantly. We went from inconsistent ad-hoc retention practices to a consistent, automated, documented program across the whole organization with Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management. That shift from a compliance audit perspective is enormous.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would rate Azure Key Vault 10 out of 10."
"Overall, it's a great product."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to store secrets securely and encrypt them, and it is pretty easy and straightforward to use."
"The GUI was quite easy for me to use."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the search for secrets feature that we use to store our passwords and connection strings."
"The product’s advantageous feature is integration."
"Azure Key Vault is very affordable, with charges of less than a dollar for over ten thousand keys."
"Technical support is helpful."
"The impact of Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management on my unified data catalog has improved a lot; the improvements I see are in the lineage, the discovery, and the labeling."
"We went from inconsistent ad-hoc retention practices to a consistent, automated, documented program across the whole organization with Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management."
"The UI is the most valuable feature."
"The system is stable; I haven't encountered any worldwide stability issues unlike other office products."
 

Cons

"While it's very reliable in terms of stability, there's always room for improvement."
"It needs to offer dynamic secrets management."
"The whole problem of password rotation could be improved. My security area wants to rotate passwords every day, every week, or every month, depending on the services."
"Sometimes, we face issues that the support team is not aware of, necessitating investigation from their end."
"From what I saw, it was not a full-fledged PKI solution."
"The solution needs to improve reliability and protection."
"The initial setup could be less complex for first-time users."
"The solution's usage can be a little better from the user interface point of view."
"The initial setup took longer than we expected. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is not a turn-it-on-and-go product."
"The time it takes to scan is one issue; when we raise high-volume issues and tickets related to scanning failures, it relates to permission errors, which are technical challenges."
"I think labeling could use a lot more AI assistance. AI implementation into labeling would be beneficial."
"Microsoft's Purview Data Lifecycle Management preview features can be unreliable, hindering their usefulness."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is less expensive compared to other competitors."
"Azure Key Vault is expensive."
"The pricing is decent. It has a pretty low price. It is a straightforward cost based on usage."
"The product costs much less compared to other vendors."
"The price of the solution is reasonable for what we are using it for."
"I find the pricing of Azure Key Vault to be reasonable."
"The cost of the Azure Key Vault is very high and the pricing model is based on the number of keys that you store and retrieve."
"Key Vault, like every Azure service, has a cost associated with it, but you don't have to spend thousands of dollars to spin up an environment to build a key management system. It's already there."
"The service operates on a pay-as-you-go basis, charging an extra one cent per field of metadata scanned in our data."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise27
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Azure Key Vault or AWS Secrets Manager?
Azure Key Vault is a SaaS solution. You can easily store passwords and secrets securely and encrypt them. Azure Key Vault is a great solution to ensure you are compliant with security and governanc...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Key Vault?
Based on my three years of experience, I believe there have been no updates to Azure Key Vault. I think the product needs upgrades in terms of access control and certification improvements. While A...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
Better coverage outside Microsoft 365 is a feature I wish Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management had that it does not offer today. If I could change one thing about Microsoft Purview Data Life...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
Automating retention and deletion across our Microsoft 365 environment is my main use case for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management. At Microsoft scale, Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and T...
What advice do you have for others considering Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management implementation is very much a team-wide effort. The policies apply organization-wide across all Microsoft 365 users. The management side, configuring pol...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Azure Key Vault, MS Azure Key Vault
Microsoft Information Governance, Microsoft Purview Records Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Adobe, DriveTime, Johnson Controls, HP, InterContinental Hotels Group, ASOS
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Key Vault vs. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.