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IBM Public Cloud vs Microsoft Azure comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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

IBM Public Cloud
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
18th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
IoT Platforms (3rd)
Microsoft Azure
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
324
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of IBM Public Cloud is 3.5%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 12.9%, down from 19.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure12.9%
IBM Public Cloud3.5%
Other83.6%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Premnath Jaganathan - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at Uop Ipl
Affordability and security improve our cloud experience while learning new systems
I'm not working with any AI features in IBM Public Cloud, but they are in the process of building it.I am very satisfied with the security that IBM Public Cloud provides. I would rate IBM Public Cloud eight out of ten, where one is worst and ten is the best.
Syed Abid  - PeerSpot reviewer
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
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

"On the production side, we are seeing a 200% ROI."
"Regarding advice, I would recommend others choose IBM Public Cloud because it's straightforward, has a good environment, and is cost-effective."
"IBM Public Cloud is a stable solution; it gives you SLA notifications all the time of what could be done, what is going to happen in the next hour regarding downtime, or anything that affects you, and so far I never noticed any issue, so I'm very happy with the solution."
"An advantage of IBM Public Cloud is the bare metal server. We can take the bare metal server. It's not shared with anyone. We can deploy our applications without sharing them with anyone. That is an advantage of IBM Public Cloud."
"The stability is excellent; it's 200% stable with no bugs or glitches, it doesn't crash or freeze, and it's extremely reliable with great performance."
"In terms of performance, resiliency, and availability, it is second to none."
"This product is very good because it is accessible in remote locations, and anyone can deploy from any place."
"For non-complex applications, the IBM Cloud works fine and the price is much lower than the competitors."
"If you're interested in going with Microsoft, my advice would be to do it. Everybody's using Microsoft."
"I come from the DBA side so for me it's the easy maintenance; backups are very easy as well."
"The main beneficial features the product provides are security, scalability, and elasticity."
"It has made my applications easier to use and has improved the development process."
"We've mostly been quite happy with the capability of the solution."
"Microsoft Azure can be used for everything, including development, hosting and storage."
"The technical support is really good."
"Microsoft Azure has a lot of useful features. They have databases, application services, PaaS solutions, such as platform and infrastructure services. The virtual machines' functions and services are good."
 

Cons

"It will be challenging to implement if you do not have any experience."
"There is not a lot of support for this solution, which is something that needs to be improved."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"The product should offer more computing, similar to Amazon."
"The solution needs to be more autonomous. It should let the DL go to allow for more jobs on the cloud. It could have a better interface as well."
"It could be more secure."
"While they have about 99% of what we need, the only exception, perhaps, was the push notification feature that was discontinued. They delayed the replacement product."
"Support needs some improvement. Basically, you are doing it all on your own, and it's not easy."
"The solution should improve the shared cache."
"There is a need to be better on-premise solutions that are more helpful. However, I don't think that is the goal of Microsoft Azure. They want the solution to be secure cloud solutions with cloud applications. This is their main goal at the moment."
"The integration pipeline could be a bit more broad in terms of applications."
"They are far behind compared to AWS."
"Difficult to understand how it works and it's an expensive solution."
"It can be improved in terms of ease of billing or monitoring of the billing. That gets to be a little difficult."
"There were some stability issues."
"Overall, the solution is good but there are some minor technical issues that can be resolved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM Public Cloud is pretty cheap. They have an ongoing free tier that basically won't expire, so as long as your solution is small enough, you can have a test set that you can use for demos, which will cost you almost nothing."
"We are using the trial version of this solution, so we have not paid anything."
"The price of IBM Cloud is very cheap compared to competitors AWS and Azure."
"In order to be competitive, you have to commit to a contract for at least one year, but you pay a fixed monthly fee."
"It pretty much has a standard price. There is no hidden price with IBM Public Cloud."
"IBM has a lesser price compared to other cloud service providers like Azure and AWS."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a nine out of ten."
"Pricing is not as fair as Amazon or Azure."
"The cost structure is like most cloud-based services. The solution could be cheaper, it is always better to be cheaper."
"We pay our bill in a monthly or 6 monthly billing cycle. The cost depends on how much you use during the period."
"The pricing is very competitive."
"The price needs to be lower because they're competing with AWS."
"We're paying in dollars, and it's very expensive for us because of the exchange rates."
"Its price should be optimized so that we can use more features."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"Customers need to purchase additional services because of the complexity of it."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
University
10%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
6%
University
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business141
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise153
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Public Cloud?
The prices are relatively lower compared to others. It is a good option for medium-sized businesses. However, businesses should also consider other vendors to ensure they meet their specific securi...
What needs improvement with IBM Public Cloud?
The connectivity and speed of IBM Public Cloud are much lower compared to the competition.
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...
How does Salesforce Platform compare with Azure?
Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform is not easy or intuitive to deploy. The difficulty will be impacted by the type of application that you are trying to use the platform to build. Organizations tha...
 

Also Known As

IBM Bluemix
Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uvionics Tech, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alpha Modus, Inventive, Web Business Consulting, FindBrok, SilverHook Powerboats, United Way of Allegheny County
BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Public Cloud vs. Microsoft Azure and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
896,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.