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Alibaba Cloud vs Microsoft Azure comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 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

Alibaba Cloud
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
8th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
316
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 13.0%, up from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 16.6%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Q&A Highlights

NN
Sep 19, 2023
 

Featured Reviews

Min HtetOo - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution is useful for application development, but the user interface and user experience must be improved
The product must be made easier to use. The design is a bit tricky. When we log in to the Alibaba Cloud Marketplace and browse products, they look very small. The user experience must be improved. Alibaba Cloud must increase its partner network and brand awareness in our country. It will give our customers more opportunities to scale and save in the long run.
Nicolas Chabrier - PeerSpot reviewer
Promotes clear, logical structures preventing impractical configurations and offers seamless integration
The only thing is regarding the management of multi-cloud environments. That's not really possible. So basically, it's wonderful if you manage Microsoft clearly and if you manage Microsoft Azure, but if you need to consume external services and have a global overview of all your consumption, it's not the case. Google, for instance, has tools that help you manage multiple environments, which makes sense because Google is really the cloud provider. So that's why they need to be compliant with the others. But for sure, Microsoft's approach is different, and it's wonderful when you're one hundred percent on Azure. But if you'd like to have something more of a multi-cloud strategy, that's a bit of a gap where they could improve.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The cost of hosting the solution is very reasonable. It's quite inexpensive."
"The installation is easy."
"Alibaba Cloud allows for easy setup of mirror sites and backup servers, ensuring data redundancy and high availability."
"ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution."
"I rate Alibaba Cloud's scalability an eight out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of Alibaba Cloud is the communication it allows between two servers."
"It is a scalable product. So, scaling up or scaling down is possible."
"Feature-wise, it provides many features. ECS, VM, SP, bucket object storage, and databases are the most valuable."
"The customer service and support are very good. When we raise a ticket, we quickly get feedback or someone assigned to help us identify the problem, which, 90% of the time, was on our end. I'm very happy with the support they provide."
"The most valuable features of the solution are ease of use and the enhancements are continually being updated."
"Compute (App service, and virtual machine scale sets): The ability to manage Windows and Linus virtual machines."
"Its ability to scale is most valuable. There are certain periods of the year when we are busier, and we're able to scale up and scale down with Azure depending upon our needs."
"In terms of computer resource management and reduced cost, it is very, very effective. In large environments, it gives you a lot of flexibility to provide different services, like disaster recovery and business continuity with simple and great options because you don't have to spend a lot of time for maintenance, upgrades, and security."
"The technical support has been excellent."
"It is so huge and so powerful. The best thing is the possibilities of things that you can actually do with it. If you do it right, you can work or host your stuff a lot cheaper than traditionally. Its security is good, and it also reduces the strain on internal IT."
"The most important thing is we don't have to maintain any physical infrastructure. With typical conventional on-premise solutions, we have to maintain many things like the hardware, clusters, etc. With this cloud platform, you don't have to worry about all those things. We have the service always available, and this is the main advantage. I like that we use everything on our standard Active Directory on on-premises on Azure. The key advantage is that you can have the sole indication based on the cloud. This isn't possible with an on-premise Active Directory. This enables work from home and at the office because it's on the cloud."
 

Cons

"The solution needs to improve its graphical user interface."
"A big area for improvement in Alibaba Cloud is its support. Another area for improvement in Alibaba Cloud is SDK-based service because sometimes, the SDKs don't work correctly. Support for API-based services also needs improvement in Alibaba Cloud because, at the moment, it's not that stable."
"The support offered by the tool is ridiculous."
"Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand, Google Cloud is more convenient for new users."
"The majority of the tools and processes, in general, have a lot of room for improvement."
"Alibaba Cloud has some problems related to latency and connection issues. If you go for a cloud solution provider, you will need to access the Internet, which may result in latency and bandwidth issues, leading to slowness in operations."
"The solution name is not favorable in some markets and could cause us some problems gaining customers."
"I think that sometimes the customer service for Alibaba Cloud is inefficient.... Sometimes it's hard to reach out to them."
"I believe that some of the services need to be available on the on-premises version and not only based on the cloud."
"The management portal can be confusing sometimes. We have difficulty navigating the menus because the terminology is unclear, especially when referring to the content or actionable items."
"Potential improvements to the price calculator tool"
"Microsoft Azure could improve by having more virtual machine operating systems available."
"One area where Microsoft Azure could improve is in offering a broader range of pre-built plugins and tools compared to AWS."
"I would prefer to see improvements such as more advanced AI features, lower pricing, and better technical support."
"I would like to see improved migration tools. It is improving week by week. They just need to make sure that they keep up with the new functionality provided in other clouds."
"I think better accelerators and better tools that can be used to migrate and leverage the existing models and data schemas are needed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is not that expensive."
"The solution's pricing is the same as AWS'."
"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."
"We cut our costs significantly by migrating our infrastructure to the cloud. Alibaba Cloud employs a pay-as-you-go model, so that minimizes many costs for us."
"I noticed on the pricing that it's quite expensive. It is the price you pay for making a practical choice for enterprise-level companies since it has so many features and it fits an enterprise-level company just like our company right now."
"I don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."
"I'm not sure about the exact pricing, but let's just say if it cost a dollar for Amazon AWS, it was closer to 70 to 80 cents for Alibaba Cloud."
"The cost is better than similar solutions."
"It is important to consider ROI when looking at the cost of a subscription."
"Azure costing can be multi-layered."
"Azure's pricing could be more competitive. Some clients mentioned that they are considering switching to AWS because of the price."
"It’s necessary to use third party products or to use good self-management economic tools"
"We are on an annual subscription. However, there are other options available."
"The pricing is relatively high."
"The price is good, but it can always be cheaper."
"Microsoft Azure's pricing is reasonable. We pay around 5000 dollars per annum."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 14, 2013
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Answers from the Community

NN
Sep 19, 2023
Sep 19, 2023
I believe that with Microsoft Azure you will have a bigger advantage due to the amount of partners that there are in the market. If you need support from Partner one and you don't get it, it's easy to switch to another partner to get help. Further to this Microsoft Azure now has datacentres worldwide which makes it easier to deploy anywhere.
2 out of 3 answers
DJIBRINE AGADJI - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 1, 2023
Microsoft Azure
Sathish-Holla - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 4, 2023
I believe Microsoft Azure is good as many companies are going by Azure, and moreover, Azure is best because many services that Microsoft corporates are used in the market.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alibaba Cloud?
ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alibaba Cloud?
On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten.
What needs improvement with Alibaba Cloud?
Alibaba Cloud needs to improve emails. Its pricing can also be lower. Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand,...
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint
BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Find out what your peers are saying about Alibaba Cloud vs. Microsoft Azure and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.