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Microsoft Azure SQL Database pros and cons

Vendor: Microsoft

4.3 out of 5

118 reviews
96% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Microsoft Azure SQL Database offers high availability, business continuity, and cost efficiency with a pay-as-you-go model. It integrates well with Microsoft products, enhances data extraction, and supports auto-scaling. However, it faces challenges like complex initial setup, high pricing, scalability limitations, and lackluster integration with third-party tools. Some users report inadequate support and documentation, impacting deployment and management. Despite drawbacks, its performance and technical support are valuable.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Microsoft Azure SQL Database offers high availability and business continuity, providing reliable and stable performance.

Cost savings are significant, with benefits from a pay-as-you-go model and reduced infrastructure costs.

It is easily scalable, allowing flexibility in adjusting resources to meet demand.

Integration with other Microsoft services is seamless, enhancing usability and operational efficiency.

The initial setup is quick and user-friendly, often taking less than a day for deployment.

CONS

Microsoft Azure SQL Database has been criticized for its high cost, which users feel should be reduced to make it more accessible.

Integration with open-source technologies and third-party applications needs to be improved, as current compatibility issues limit users' options.

The scalability options of Microsoft Azure SQL Database are seen as inadequate, especially for handling larger database sizes than the current offering.

The initial setup and configuration are considered complex, posing challenges to users unfamiliar with the platform's language and environment.

There is a demand for enhanced automation and self-service tools to simplify processes like replication of tools used on-premises to Azure's cloud environment.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database Pros review quotes

Solution architect at Rackspace

Mar 21, 2024

The product's initial setup phase is very easy.

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reviewer1615530

Project Manager at a educational organization with 11-50 employees

Jul 1, 2021

We have come from hosting on-premise for customers, or they've done it themselves with SQL. We've now taken a cloud offering for the equivalent services of standard database management and the inbuilt backup and restore offerings. The scalability is probably the biggest feature that we are benefiting from by being in the cloud.

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reviewer2596431

Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

Nov 21, 2024

The ease of scaling the server up and down by simply pressing a few buttons in a dropdown menu has made our lives significantly more comfortable, especially as we aim to process more data this year by utilizing the cloud.

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Microsoft Azure SQL Database

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FW

Fredrick Weinshenk

Cloud Engineer at Med Tech Solutions

Nov 20, 2024

Overall, Azure SQL has been great. The ease of deployment and scalability are significant reasons we push our larger clients to Azure. We could throw the kitchen sink at the thing if we wanted.

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Samuel Lambrecht

Principal Industry Consultant at Intelligent Operations Solutions

Aug 5, 2022

The most valuable aspect of SQL Azure is the SQL language itself. It's open and everybody can use it at my company. Also, we thought in the beginning that the response time would be inadequate, but it's actually decent. It's much better than expected. Then again, I'm not a programmer, but that's what I hear from our development team.

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Charley Hanania

Data Platform Specialist at QS2 AG - Quality Software Solutions

Nov 20, 2024

Microsoft Azure SQL Database is integrated into other Azure capabilities and has a great foundation being on SQL Server with a long history of security, performance, and usability from a DBA perspective.

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TG

CTO at 2W Technologies, INC

Dec 11, 2024

Azure SQL Database is very quick and easy to use. It certainly makes my infrastructure and development teams more efficient.

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Digital Consulting Coe Lead & Delivery Engineer at Lunavi-wa

Nov 20, 2024

I like that Microsoft Azure SQL Database is almost identical to an on-premise SQL Server except for a few things, like how you edit rows and some jobs that you can't run.

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Raed Gharzeddine

Technical advisor and software architect at Technical advisor and software architect

Dec 8, 2022

I prefer using Microsoft SQL Server because I like the experience and the way Microsoft handles the query tuning and security.

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SZ

Slawomir Zablocki

Data Platform Architect at APN Promise

Jul 16, 2019

What is really helpful about the Azure SQL is that when we have a problem with our sound queries, we can trade information about what indexes we should create on tables. It's really helpful for me and also for developers.

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Microsoft Azure SQL Database Cons review quotes

Solution architect at Rackspace

Mar 21, 2024

There are certain shortcomings when it comes to the stability of the product, especially if I consider the fact that there can always be some bug-related issues in the tool.

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reviewer1615530

Project Manager at a educational organization with 11-50 employees

Jul 1, 2021

We haven't had any major issues that have prevented us from doing stuff fundamentally. For its implementation, sometimes, it is complicated to understand what your needs are. It would be good to have a few use cases that provide different cloud variations that match on-premise installations and show how they can be moved to the cloud a bit better.

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Managing Partner at Dynamis Informatica

Jul 17, 2025

It's very slow and too expensive. I really don't think it's a good solution for most cases, except when you specifically need to put your data on the cloud.

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Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Free Report: Microsoft Azure SQL Database Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Azure SQL Database. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: July 2025.

864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.

reviewer2596431

Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

Nov 21, 2024

We've noticed an unexpected increase in the cost of running the server over the past few months.

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FW

Fredrick Weinshenk

Cloud Engineer at Med Tech Solutions

Nov 20, 2024

Improvement could be made in the performance tools, offering a better overview of core issues like process activity and latency, as we currently rely on third-party tools and SQL jobs for monitoring and alerts. A comprehensive built-in solution for performance analysis would be beneficial.

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Samuel Lambrecht

Principal Industry Consultant at Intelligent Operations Solutions

Aug 5, 2022

They should also simplify the security in Azure. We are using the cloud as a platform, so there is no physical infrastructure. We're using Azure components like databases and servers to create an application. Integrating those components in terms of permissions and security is challenging for us. Maybe there is a lack of knowledge on our side, but it's not straightforward.

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Charley Hanania

Data Platform Specialist at QS2 AG - Quality Software Solutions

Nov 20, 2024

Microsoft Azure SQL Database could improve by having better tooling in terms of connecting to other database platforms and better capabilities around programmable interfaces. There should be more fine-tuning on the storage layer. I would like to see T-SQL improvements to automatically translate features from other database platforms for easier migration, as well as some improvements around column store and native capabilities like those in Iceberg and PowerK built into the SQL Server product.

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TG

CTO at 2W Technologies, INC

Dec 11, 2024

There are compatibility issues that prevent Azure SQL Database from being a direct replacement for SQL Server running on a virtual machine. For instance, handling application-initiated DBCC commands is a challenge.

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Digital Consulting Coe Lead & Delivery Engineer at Lunavi-wa

Nov 20, 2024

They could improve Azure SQL by adding some of the features available on-prem, such as cross-database queries and the ability to run particular jobs. We need to migrate those to something else, like a function or logic app.

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Raed Gharzeddine

Technical advisor and software architect at Technical advisor and software architect

Dec 8, 2022

One of the nice features in Microsoft SQL Server is the SQL Server CLR, which we sometimes need to use to protect our procedures using C# or CLR. This is not available in the SQL Azure database.

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Amazon RDS vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

MongoDB Atlas vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Google Cloud SQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

SingleStore vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Oracle Database as a Service vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Google Cloud Spanner vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Azure Database for PostgreSQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

vCloud Air vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Yugabyte Platform vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Couchbase Capella vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

IBM Db2 on Cloud vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

See all alternatives

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