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Microsoft Azure vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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

Microsoft Azure
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
316
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (1st)
Pivotal Cloud Foundry
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 19.2%, down from 19.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 10.0%, up from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

SubodhThakar - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrates various functionalities and have good documentation but have high pricing
Cosmos DB offered better scalability. In Azure SQL, we had to carefully manage the storage tier, switching back and forth based on needs. But when we first implemented Cosmos DB, we had a good understanding of the required data volume over the past three months. This helped us select the appropriate tier because we had those figures. If we had done it the other way around, it would have been much harder to estimate the data accurately. While you can get a rough idea, whether it works out in practice is more of a hit-and-miss approach, which we have already experienced with Cosmos DB. We applied the knowledge gained from that exercise to build a similar solution over Azure SQL. On the DevOps side, our team consisted of five members, ranging from senior to junior roles. We would raise requests for specific services needed in the development environment. The process typically takes three to five business days, including all necessary approvals, from submitting the request to receiving the resources and verifying access.
Stephen  Hack - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use, simple to sign-in, but lacking graphical interface
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is used as a cloud platform Pivotal Cloud Foundry has helped our organization by the way we've set it up, it's easy to sign in, bind services, push services, and create YAML files. The most valuable features of Pivotal Cloud Foundry are its ease of use and the command line…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I know there have been a lot of improvements and a lot of new services lately. I'm really not aware of all of them."
"I like the functionalities and the price. I'm very satisfied with Microsoft Azure."
"Feature-wise, I like its stability. Also, it is easy to access the solution and its options."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure is its ease of use."
"The technical support has been excellent."
"Microsoft Azure provides many critical features, such as business continuity and disaster recovery, which come embedded out of the box. From my point of view, managing the whole infrastructure, these features have been very beneficial. The support is also amazing, with someone allocated to assist within a few minutes."
"Much more intuitive and more visual than AWS. More obvious where things are and how to change their configurations, etc."
"Installation is easy as it's cloud-based. Performance is good. It's stable and scalable."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring and the deployment is easier."
"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."
"The solution is stable and resilient. In our company, we do not even see any challenges with the solution."
"Stability is not a concern with this product."
"It is a scalable product...We are not facing any particular issues since most of the applications in our company are written in Java and .NET."
"The most valuable features of Pivotal Cloud Foundry are its ease of use and the command line interface has the ability to push instances to the cloud easily."
"It provides a set of developer-friendly tools that simplify application deployment."
 

Cons

"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."
"The solution could improve by providing better tutorials and documentation."
"The local support is fair but it is sometimes limited, the service could be better."
"Compared with other cloud solution providers, Microsoft is not good at local support."
"Technical support could be better. They need to be more responsive."
"We need more customization and support for doing so."
"As compared to AWS, Azure can improve its functionality. In terms of the feature list, it is still lacking a bit as compared to AWS. AWS supports lots of types of operating systems, which Azure is still catching up with. Azure is mainly focused on the Windows system, and it is not yet there in terms of integration with other operating systems like Linux, Unix. Azure is slowly catching up."
"Support could be improved. If you pay for a higher plan, it's okay, however, the lower plans don't offer as good of a service experience."
"Regarding the setup phase, every step is a hurdle. With Pivotal Cloud Foundry, I won't get any proper resources for that. Even if I Google it, there is no proper solution for Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"There are no synthetic application monitoring and real-time monitoring features."
"Something that can be done better is canary deployment. So, right now, we're using blue-green deployment. The support for canary deployment would be nice."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology it is a bit complex."
"In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry doesn't have certain advanced features."
"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it t can take time for users to learn it."
"It is not straightforward to setup."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I believe that we have a three-year license, and I'm happy with the pricing."
"Microsoft Azure comes with a long-term license and trial licenses as well."
"It has the pay-as-you-go model. Its pricing should be better."
"The cost structure is like most cloud-based services. The solution could be cheaper, it is always better to be cheaper."
"The pricing of the solution could be reduced. We are not able to create a free account in my country."
"I rate the tool's pricing a six out of ten."
"There is a license for the solution."
"Its costing can be improved. Its licensing is monthly. In addition to the standard license fee, there is a transactional cost."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."
"We do pay for the licensing cost because we have opted for a private cloud setup. So, it is a cloud setup, and we have to make payments based on the cloud size. I do not consider it very costly when comparing it to the market."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
29%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
37%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 ...
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...
Which would you recommend - Pivotal Cloud Foundry or OpenShift?
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a cloud-native application platform to simplify app delivery. It is efficient and effective. The best feature is how easy it is to handle external services such as database...
What do you like most about Pivotal Cloud Foundry?
I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pivotal Cloud Foundry?
I would say it is around a nine out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. Just short of Oracle. It's sort of Oracle cloud.
 

Also Known As

Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Humana, Citibank, Mercedes Benz, Liberty Mutual, The Home Depot, GE, West Corp, Merrill Corporation, CoreLogic, Orange, Dish Network, Comcast, Bloomberg, Internal Revenue Service, Ford Motor Company, Garmin, Volkswagen, Solera, Allstate, US Air Force, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ScotiaBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.