Microsoft Azure vs. Salesforce Lightning Platform

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Microsoft Azure
Score 8.5 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
Salesforce Lightning Platform
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
Salesforce Platform is designed for building and deploying scalable cloud applications with managed hardware provisioning and app stacks. It provides out-of-the-box tools and services to automate business processes, integrate with external apps, and provide responsive layouts and more.
$25
Per User Per Month
Pricing
Microsoft AzureSalesforce Lightning Platform
Editions & Modules
Developer
$29
per month
Standard
$100
per month
Professional Direct
$1000
per month
Basic
Free
per month
Starter
$25.00
Per User Per Month
Plus
$100.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft AzureSalesforce Lightning Platform
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThe free tier lets users have access to a variety of services free for 12 months with limited usage after making an Azure account.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Microsoft AzureSalesforce Lightning Platform
Considered Both Products
Microsoft Azure
Chose Microsoft Azure
Obviously this is just based on the virtualisation part of the product, but VM's in Microsoft Azure are well managable and no need to invest in hardware, which gives it an edge in a time where the need for VM's is getting less and less.
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 …
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 …
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.
Chose Microsoft Azure
AWS takes the cake here just due to how simple it is to configure IAM roles, users, and policies. Microsoft Azure is nearly neck-and-neck and could probably overtake them in the near future. Splunk for logging isn't that great and Microsoft Azure does a solid job but they could …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure is a comprehensive platform that offers almost all functionalities and can provide even more. Due to ongoing extensive developments, additional functionalities are continuously being added and improved. Many new functionalities are also being added that are …
Chose Microsoft Azure
While Azure is a solid and robust platform, VMWare is a much better product with greater usability and features.
Chose Microsoft Azure
Azure works well with the items selected above - ex. Barracuda for backups. Integration is simple and functions.
Chose Microsoft Azure
Azure is more user friendly and provides much required scalability and flexibility.
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 …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Azure is an ideal platform for disaster recovery and backup. It is very flexible because of its site regeneration capabilities and other features. All of our data can be backup, regardless of the language or operating system. Azure’s inherent flexibility comes from its status …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Remote accessibility for the mass people from the different places where both free and premium service is available that's why people choose Microsoft Azure. The main reason of switching from that to Microsoft Azure is the cost of operation and operating flexibility. The …
Chose Microsoft Azure
AWS and Azure are distinct classes, regardless of how we view them or which sub-areas. Their capabilities are the most comprehensive and sophisticated. Azure will benefit existing Microsoft customers, but AWS has a slight market share advantage. Microsoft Azure offers many …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Veeam Backup for Google Cloud Platform
Chose Microsoft Azure
Ease of use. Multiple Data centers across the globe. Load management. Backup and recovery options.
Chose Microsoft Azure
Because Microsoft Azure has more integrations and possibilities. Also most of the biggest companies are using it, so it gives the security and the back up to trust and work with confidence.
Chose Microsoft Azure
As I continue to evaluate the "big three" cloud providers for our clients, I make the following distinctions, though this gap continues to close. AWS is more granular, and inherently powerful in the configuration options compared to [Microsoft] Azure. It is a "developer" …
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.
Chose Microsoft Azure
I would say that Azure stacks up pretty good and sometimes better in comparison to what Google Cloud Platform has to offer. I don't like GCP for its absurd licensing fees and it's expensive for just Using EC2 Instances. However, DigitalOcean and AWS can offer far better …
Chose Microsoft Azure
The most common alternatives are Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. AWS is known for its non-existent customer support and abysmal documentation - Azure is clearly better on both fronts. Google Cloud Platform is a solid product, but in my experience Azure Functions …
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 …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Evaluated both AWS and GCP for a similar set of use cases to realize that AWS required additional third-party add ons to be purchased for load balancing vs. Azure's out-of-the-box capabilities offered for free. GCP on the surface was lower cost but the cost of running …
Salesforce Lightning Platform
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
Salesforce Lightning Platform provides a more sales-focused CRM. It allows the sales force of an organization to be able to stay organized and can pull necessary reports to get a better understanding on how the business is performing regarding sales and customer activity. …
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
I have only used Salesforce Lightning Platform for crm purposes
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
Salesforce stands out purely for its enterprise pedigree. No other competitor out there knows Enterprise business as well as Salesforce does. It is levels about the rest of the competition in terms of managing heavy processing requirements of a large enterprise. I did not have …
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
Compared to Sage CRM, Salesforce Lightning Platform is leaps and bounds ahead. Sage CRM feels outdated and very slow compared to Salesforce Lightning Platform. There is a lot more ability to integrate Salesforce Lightning Platform with other APIs and systems. There is more of …
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
I have been using Salesforce for two years now. Ans I have not used any other platform before similar on this. I find Salesforce very easy to use and this really makes your job much easier and faster. Its features are easy to understand and use and I am glad I have learned …
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
We have always been a Salesforce shop, but have grown with the App Cloud platform as it's evolved. We eventually moved to lightning based on the streamlined interface and increased ease of use for our employees. So far we are happy with the results. Would definitely recommend …
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
Salesforce, while more expensive, provides faster support, higher scalability options, and an increased opportunity to change any details whether it's about user permissions management, custom field or object creation, or an integration of another application. What really sets …
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
Salesforce has more functionality as a CRM platform. The major disadvantage is the ability to integrate with Microsoft products. Ability to integrate with Microsoft is the best part about 356 given that it is a Microsoft product. Even though the price is more expensive, it …
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
We were previously using an older version prior to it becoming Salesforce Lightning Platform so we were well adverse on the advantages of using a CRM, to begin with. It made sense to convert to Salesforce Lightning Platform after we were given a free trial of the platform. …
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
It offers way more functionalities and the interface/design can be fully customized to best support your companies needs.
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
NA - I've only used [Salesforce Lightning Platform (formerly Salesforce App Cloud)] in my tenure as a CSM
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
I think Salesforce has the most powerful developer engine - I have yet to need a module that I couldn't create (maybe with help). I probably could have made the others work but Salesforce, in my opinion, made it the easiest. Salesforce is reliable and established as well so …
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
I would love to switch back to Service Cloud as it was much, much more intuitive and fast. I would even take Salesforce Classic over Lightning. It at least wasn't this slow.
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
I used a program formerly known as "CP." I considered it somewhat outdated, and it does not have any of the modern features that the Salesforce Lightning Platform (formerly Salesforce App Cloud) has. I consider the Salesforce Lightning Platform (formerly Salesforce App Cloud) …
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
I use both. SF is the constant through the organization and I receive leads into SF and pass on opportunities through SF.
SL is better for internal processes within business dev.
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
Salesforce is the premeire product. Period. The others are cheaper and less capable, they may fulfill your organisation's needs but you will always be looking at Salesforce with wishful eyes. If you are a company that needs to bootstrap then spend the time to evaluate your …
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
Microsoft is pretty limited in functionality compared to Salesforce. Most folks coming into your organization are going to have some level of Salesforce experience but will most likely not have experience with Dynamics. Dynamics doesn't connect as well to other platforms.
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
I believe the only reason we didn't choose Monday.com is because we're just a bit bigger (company size- 75 people) than what Monday.com handles. We also are in San Francisco, and Salesforce pretty much owns this entire city. I was also not part of the selection process of the …
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
There is a reason why the Salesforce Lightning Platform is the market leader for all things related to customer relationship management. While Close is somewhat user-friendly, it pales in comparison to all the features, bells, and whistles that the Salesforce Lightning Platform …
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
We originally used spreadsheets when we first started. That worked fine until we started growing by over 100% year over year. We were able to upload all of our previous accounts in Salesforce Classic once it was called for. However, Salesforce Classic soon became redundant and …
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
We needed a product that would allow for easy and dynamic reports for potential and new clients. Account Managers use other products as well to monitor the client's success and Salesforce allows for seamless integration to other platforms. This serves as a one-stop-shop for all …
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
We currently use the two together, along with Hubspot sales. Salesforce is our primary CRM and where we track and manage account and contact information.
Salesforce is much more flexible and intuitive - everything is where you would expect it to be.
Hubspot reporting is …
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
I think that the Lightning platform is not as clean and doesn't integrate that well. Whenever I was logged out, it was such a treck to have to log back in and I never actually knew if my activity was being saved or actually being tracked. Personally, Lightning is not my …
Chose Salesforce Lightning Platform
Close and Salesforce are two very different beasts. Close is much more user friendly but lacks the ability to serve complex infrastructures and hierarchies provided by Salesforce. Close is much simpler and faster--great for high volume but will not provide you with rich, …
Features
Microsoft AzureSalesforce Lightning Platform
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Azure
8.5
Ratings
6% above category average
Salesforce Lightning Platform
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Salesforce Lightning Platform
7.5
Ratings
6% below category average
Ease of building user interfaces00 Ratings5.90 Ratings
Scalability00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Platform management overhead00 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Workflow engine capability00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Platform access control00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Services-enabled integration00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Development environment creation00 Ratings7.30 Ratings
Development environment replication00 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification00 Ratings7.30 Ratings
Issue recovery00 Ratings6.30 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Microsoft AzureSalesforce Lightning Platform
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 8.7 out of 10
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
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Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Microsoft AzureSalesforce Lightning Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(0 ratings)
6.7
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.4
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Availability
6.8
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.1
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Microsoft AzureSalesforce Lightning Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
Actually, migrating to Microsoft Azure is a good solution for almost any situation, especially when all components of your network are ready to become cloud-based. The only drawback I personally encounter frequently is that older software packages cannot always be easily picked up and moved to Microsoft Azure in an optimal manner.
Read full review
We use Salesforce Lightning Platform in everyday business as sales coordinators. By using this tool, we are able to send new requests to clients and communicate regarding pending proposals in real-time. This also tool holds many of our client accounts where we are able to monitor their sales and revenue.
Read full review
Pros
  • Azure simply provides end to end life cycle. Starting from the development to automated deployment, you will find [a] bunch of options. Custom hook-points allow [integration] on-premise resources as well.
  • Excellent documentation around all the services make it really easy for any novice. Overall support by [the] community and Azure Technical team is exceptional.
  • BOT Services, Computer Vision services, ML frameworks provide excellent results as compare to similar services provided by other giants in the same space.
  • Azure data services provide excellent support to ingest data from different sources, ETL, and consumption of data for BI purpose.
Read full review
  • Reporting and Dashboards are thorough and can show a wealth of important data to inform and scale processes. It's helpful in a high volume sales cycle to be able to quickly identify weak points in performance and productivity so that adjustments can be made.
  • Highly customizable. We are able to customize just about everything which allows us to track very specific things and in theory create better efficiency.
  • Parent/Child account hierarchy exists which is helpful.
  • Contact records can be associated with multiple accounts and opportunities. This, in theory, should minimize duplicates and mismanagement of contacts.
  • Console helps a lot with data nesting. Having a fairly comprehensive look at an account without searching through various tabs and sections speeds up an otherwise cumbersome platform.
Read full review
Cons
  • In our experience, Azure Kubernetes Survice was difficult to set up, which is why we used Kubernetes on top of VMs.
  • Azure REST API is a bit difficult to use, which made it difficult for us to automate our interactions with Azure.
  • Azure's Web UI does a good job of showing metrics on individual VMs, but it would be great if there was a way to show certain metrics from multiple VMs on one dashboard. For example, hard drive usage on our database VMs.
Read full review
  • Can be cumbersome: takes multiple clicks to get where you need to go
  • Lightning is slower than original Salesforce, and it is very noticeable
  • The UI change means sometimes I can't find what I need, so I have to switch back to the Classic version to find it
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
We have been very satisfied with Windows Azure and now a lot of our business depends on it as more teams are now deploying their applications into Azure. Our next step is to have our Infrastructure team move their resources to Azure. It will take awhile for that to happen but we are positive that it will.
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No answers on this topic
Usability
Microsoft Azure's overall usability has been better than expected. Often times vendors promise the world, only to leave you with a run-down town. Not the case with our experience. From an implementation perspective, all went perfect, and from the user-facing experience we have had no technical issues, just some learning curve issues that are more about "why" than "how"
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UI can be quite complex, but the more that is required will bring more complexity. Can handle complexity and variety very well, but makes ground-level views harder when not knowing full extent of functionality. Finding new functionalities can be difficult to pinpoint on some pages
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Support is easy with all the knowledge base articles available for free on the web. Plus, if you have a preferred status you can leverage their concierge support to get rapid response. Sometimes they’ll bounce you around a lot to get you to the right person, but they are quite responsive (especially when you are paying for the service). Many of the older Microsoft skills are also transferable from old-school on-prem to Azure-based virtual interfaces.
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Salesforce's support is top-notch. They have subject-matter experts that are accessible at all times to address needs as they come up. They let you know in advance when there are system updates and enhancements so that you are prepared for upcoming changes. I've never had an issue that wasn't addressed immediately when reaching out for support.
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Implementation Rating
As I have mentioned before the issue with my Oracle Mismatch Version issues that have put a delay on moving one of my platforms will justify my 7 rating.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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 my opinion. This made it the natural choice for most, especially if heavily invested in Windows, Office 365, or Active Directory deployments. We chose Azure over GCP because we simply needed Windows workload support as a strong driver, more access to global regions, and let's not forget that most tech teams in an organization are Microsoft Certified, which makes skillset transfer from on-prem to cloud a minimal learning curve over shifting to a different provider.
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We were previously using an older version prior to it becoming Salesforce Lightning Platform so we were well adverse on the advantages of using a CRM, to begin with. It made sense to convert to Salesforce Lightning Platform after we were given a free trial of the platform. Certain reps were chosen to experiment with it and from there a decision was made to move forward. We've been customers ever since.
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • Times and growth went into it. By balancing on-premises maintenance with continuous cloud improvements, we’ve budgeted and planned endlessly increased capacity.
  • In today’s world of cyber-crime, clients can put even more faith in what they’ve heard. We built an innovative single-sign-on hub for all users. Also, other business platforms use Azure application gateways, reducing worker switching time and increasing productivity.
  • Its step can automate to improve the investment. In addition, we can integrate our organization’s credentials into an authorization for other systems.
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  • Better visibility of Accounts and Contacts interactions makes it easier to maintain during employee transitions.
  • Tracking of current jobs and relating them to past jobs is very useful.
  • More efficient use of Sales Reps time.
  • Sales Managers have good visibility into how their people are working.
Read full review
ScreenShots