Amazon Web Services vs. Microsoft Azure

Amazon Web Services

Microsoft Azure

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Amazon Web Services	Score8.6 out of 10	N/A	Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing services. With over 165 services offered, AWS services can provide users with a comprehensive suite of infrastructure and computing building blocks and tools.	$100 per month
Microsoft Azure	Score8.5 out of 10	N/A	Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.	$29 per month

Pricing

Amazon Web Services

Microsoft Azure

Free Tier: $0
per month
Basic Environment: $100 - $200
per month
Intermediate Environment: $250 - $600
per month
Advanced Environment: $600-$2500
per month

Developer: $29
per month
Standard: $100
per month
Professional Direct: $1000
per month
Basic: Free
per month

Pricing Offerings
Amazon Web Services	Microsoft Azure
Free Trial
Yes	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes	Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

No setup fee

AWS allows a “save when you commit” option that offers lower prices when you sign up for a 1- or 3- year term that includes an AWS service or category of services.

The free tier lets users have access to a variety of services free for 12 months with limited usage after making an Azure account.

Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	Amazon Web Services	Microsoft Azure
Considered Both Products	Amazon AWS Arvind Kumar Senior Software Engineering Lead in Engineering at Optum (Hospital & Health Care, 10,001+ employees) Chose Amazon Web Services Apart from Amazon Web Services, we use Microsoft Azure in some of our projects. I have some basic experience in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) as well. If given a choice, I would prefer using Amazon Web Services over Azure or GCP. I find provisioning of resources relatively faster … Incentivized Helpful? Gnanasekar Mani Project Engineer in Information Technology at Wipro Limited (Information Technology & Services, 10,001+ employees) Chose Amazon Web Services Both the services are in the field for quite sometime. And the biggest competitor of Amazon Web Services is Microsoft Azure. Though, Azure easily connects with Microsoft services like a jelly, even in AWS its so easy. And the best thing is due to its vast variety community … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Amazon Web Services AWS provides a vast array of services and, compared to Microsoft Azure licensing costs, is a cheaper alternative. Incentivized Helpful? Martha Batruny IT Manager in Information Technology at Perficient (Information Technology and Services, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Amazon Web Services If I talk about the product capabilities, I would say AWS is better than Microsoft Azure. It also provides excellent network and security services. Additionally, I would say the security and compliance of this product helps me to scale and innovate all my databases, into one … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Amazon Web Services The particular services I am using in AWS is easier to set up and manage than Microsoft Azure. IBM Bluemix/Cloud previously has too many product beta and preview released along with their products. Microsoft also releases too many products in preview or beta. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Amazon Web Services AWS stands out in its ability to adapt technology more quickly. All the new features, first adapted by AWS, make it the market leader. The key metrics, such as MTTR, are among the best among all other cloud service providers. The AWS dashboard and analytics features are very … Incentivized Helpful? Michael Nemeyer Senior Associate in Finance and Accounting at Rock Creek (Facilities Services, 51-200 employees) Chose Amazon Web Services Prefer Amazon Web Services over the competitors Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services is better among all of them due to its performance, stability, security and navigation. It effectively saves the cost and provides better facilities than the other competitors. It plays great role when it comes to user friendly interface. It also provided … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Amazon Web Services AWS has the largest market share and most established and over 200 services for diverse needs. AWS has a very power user interface and pay as you go work well that others. AWS has the by far largest network of data centers for low latency and high availability. The regular … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Amazon Web Services Better global availability and use across industries. AWS has a great ecosystem of experts, developers, solution architects and it helps to get to know them at various AWS events across the world Incentivized Helpful? Kenny McGarrity IT Infrastructure Manager in Information Technology at Pace Supply (Wholesale, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Amazon Web Services The decision was made to go with AWS because of name recognition and familiarity by contractors we hired. I checked out Google Compute Engine a few years ago, and it did have similar option set, however Google in general was behind Amazon's offerings. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Amazon Web Services We evaluated Azure, Goggle Cloud, and Amazon Web Services during our cloud computing solution decision. We needed the storage and a pre-installed version of a commercial product. As we were not highly demanding in performance, all candidates were sufficient. However, we found … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Amazon Web Services At a past company we used Azure; I feel like AWS is always mentioned favorably in compare/contrast conversations regarding Azure specifically, and when I started this new company a couple of years ago, we decided to go with AWS as it seemed to have a near-pristine track record. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Amazon Web Services AWS is as good as any of the major cloud providers. I see a complete parity in this marketplace as innovations by one tend to be replicated by the others in short order. If you are looking to compare, or pilot, cloud hosting providers you must try AWS as they are a very … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Amazon Web Services OCI and Google Compute Engine are a bit cheaper than AWS but AWS has better chargeback and more granular monitoring of various KPIs. But at the same time, AWS has a learning curve while GCE especially is much easier to use. Microsoft Azur has a much better partner and developer … Incentivized Helpful? Ryan Hart, MBA Director of Product in Product Management at Verified First (Human Resources, 51-200 employees) Chose Amazon Web Services AWS is very widely adopted by our development team and the industry. AWS is investing in new products and services, as well as innovating on existing offerings. Incentivized Helpful? David Sandoval Cloud and Infrastructure Engineer in Information Technology at LifeMiles (Program Development, 201-500 employees) Chose Amazon Web Services AWS, in my opinion, is the most mature and popular cloud. It provides the biggest number of services available and the provider which innovates the most. Incentivized Helpful? Patrick Plaisance CTO (Chief Technical Officer) in Information Technology at Pachyderm Consulting (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees) Chose Amazon Web Services Since most of our clients are Office 365 users, Azure holds a lot of benefit in its integration possibilities. However, AWS is still less expensive and easier to manage in my experience. There will come a time though, that I'm sure we will move most clients to Azure. … Incentivized Helpful? Jeff Stockamp AWS Systems Engineer in Information Technology at Concur (Information Technology and Services, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Amazon Web Services AWS is the industry leader and is far ahead in terms of a feature rich product offering along with worldwide presence Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Amazon Web Services AWS is Good for startups or FMCG customer but for FSI customer, their relationship is weak, hard to convince our client move to AWS Incentivized Helpful? Glen West Chief Customer Officer in Product Management at Niche Video Media (Information Technology and Services, 11-50 employees) Chose Amazon Web Services We like the platform agnostic approach. At the time we selected it (some years back), the security standard was higher and the price point was lower, and the global reach was at least as strong. It was very easy to get started. For our business, we also looked at Akamai and … Incentivized Helpful?	Microsoft Verified User Chose Microsoft Azure Amazon Web Services dominate cloud service market as a de facto market leader in IaaS and PaaS industry. However, Microsoft, with its Azure solution, has proven to be a formidable challenger to Amazon in cloud service, and is slowly but surely closing in the gap. Legacy … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Azure I feel that Microsoft Azure typically outperforms Google Cloud Platform in hybrid cloud capabilities, integration aspects, and, primarily, security compliance features. Azure offered superior integration with Microsoft's enterprise software ecosystem, and it's second to none in … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Azure Mostly due to the ecosystem. I don't think there is anything in AWS that we would be missing out when using Microsoft Azure. We use Microsoft products on on-premise servers and also M365 / Office services that are well supported in Microsoft Azure. The pricing between AWS and … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Azure AWS is good for linux virtual machines and mac virtual machines, Microsoft Azure doesn't do mac VMs. However, in my opinion Microsoft Azure is better in every other aspect, easier to use and just as cost effective. Incentivized Helpful? Joe Anand Service Manager in Information Technology at Shell (Oil & Energy, 10,001+ employees) Chose Microsoft Azure Azure is more user friendly and provides much required scalability and flexibility. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Azure AWS is the most stable cloud options but Azure has done well in last few years and provides good options specifically for Microsoft customers and who are more familiar with Microsoft technologies like WINDOWS, MS SQL SERVER, GITHUB, VISUAL STUDIO etc. Google cloud is more … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Azure Ease of use. Multiple Data centers across the globe. Load management. Backup and recovery options. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Azure We actually utilized multiple cloud stacks, depending upon the customer environment and need. Those that heavily used MS products (Office on-prem or 365), Teams, etc, found it a better fit, with easier integration, for their needs. Incentivized Helpful? João Almeida Researcher in Engineering at Instituto de Telecomunicações (Telecommunications, 501-1000 employees) Chose Microsoft Azure Integration with other Microsoft products makes Azure stand out quite a bit. However, if you need to use open source software and to integrate with Linux systems then AWS or Google Cloud might be better alternatives. Google did not even come close to Azure in terms of … Incentivized Helpful? Matt Varney Intranet Administrator in Information Technology at KCTCS (Higher Education, 5001-10,000 employees) Chose Microsoft Azure AWS and [Microsoft] Azure are in a class by themselves, no matter how you look at them or what sub-area or service you focus on. No other cloud provide can match the breadth and ability of these two. Nobody else has the market share either (for a reason). That being said, … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Azure Instead of above mentioned alternative we opted for Microsoft Azure because it is more powerful, reliable and pretty much a responsive environment. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Azure Easy to use Easy to Manage Easy to Integrate Incentivized Helpful? Justin Bongard Senior IT Support Technician in Information Technology at Global Financial Credit, LLC (Financial Services, 51-200 employees) Chose Microsoft Azure We do everything Microsoft and wanted the thing that would most easily be compatible with everything out of the gate. Pricing was comparable. It made sense to us. Incentivized Helpful? Brandon Holbrook Information Systems Security Manager in Information Technology at Motorola Solutions (Public Safety, 10,001+ employees) Chose Microsoft Azure Integration with other Microsoft products makes Azure stand out quite a bit. But if your shop mostly runs open source and Linux then look at AWS or Google Cloud. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Azure To be honest despite UI the functionality is almost identical. It came to price and support package. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Azure There are lots of players in this space these days, but Microsoft and AWS are the two most visible and easiest to get connected with. We were using AWS first, and have been using both for some time, but have now converted entirely over to Azure just for the ease of management, … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Azure As we are working mostly on .net projects and Microsoft has very nice integration available for the latest versions, we can get all the latest version for hosting at the earliest time. We can use the same in .Net Core. This should be a very well known product for our any .net … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Azure Like I mentioned earlier, it is more user-friendly when compared to any of the other. It is more flexible with the system you are using that makes it easy to set up with the migration of data. If you can bear the extra price compared to AWS, Azure is more robust, works like a … Incentivized Helpful? Hans Davenport Senior Kofax Engineer in Information Technology at HMB (Computer Software, 51-200 employees) Chose Microsoft Azure Hosting providers are plentiful and all of them are very similar in functionality. Azure boasts a much more robust integration and management platform in my experience than AWS does and is years ahead of many of the smaller cloud providers. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Azure MS was chosen due to the strong partner relationship that already existed. Incentivized Helpful? Matthew Ambroziak Cloud Solutions Architect in Professional Services at CSC (Information Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees) Chose Microsoft Azure Windows Azure shines from a development perspective. Incentivized Helpful? Byron Mathews, MBA Program Manager, SaaS Operations in Information Technology at Hospira (Information Technology and Services, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Microsoft Azure Azure PaaS platform was better suited for us over AWS (we are a hard core Microsoft shop) Incentivized Helpful?
	Would buy again
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Delivers good value for the price
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Happy with the feature set
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Implementation went as expected
No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic

Features

Amazon Web Services

Microsoft Azure

Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure
Feature	Amazon Web Services 8.3 68 Ratings	Microsoft Azure 8.5 19 Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime	9.364 Ratings	9.018 Ratings
Dynamic scaling	9.065 Ratings	8.018 Ratings
Elastic load balancing	9.761 Ratings	9.017 Ratings
Pre-configured templates	7.457 Ratings	8.017 Ratings
Monitoring tools	7.065 Ratings	8.418 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images	6.658 Ratings	8.016 Ratings
Operating system support	8.363 Ratings	8.918 Ratings
Security controls	8.366 Ratings	9.018 Ratings
Automation	8.717 Ratings	8.016 Ratings

User Ratings
	Amazon Web Services	Microsoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend	9.0 (80 ratings)	8.9 (88 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	9.4 (10 ratings)	10.0 (16 ratings)
Usability	8.4 (11 ratings)	9.4 (28 ratings)
Availability	9.0 (1 ratings)	6.8 (2 ratings)
Support Rating	7.2 (24 ratings)	8.1 (28 ratings)
Online Training	7.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Implementation Rating	10.0 (3 ratings)	8.0 (2 ratings)

Amazon Web Services vs. Microsoft Azure

Amazon Web Services

Microsoft Azure

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