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AWS Savings Plans vs Azure Cost Management comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 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

IBM Turbonomic
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Cost Management
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
205
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (5th), Cloud Management (4th), Virtualization Management Tools (4th), IT Financial Management (1st), IT Operations Analytics (4th), Cloud Analytics (1st), AIOps (5th)
AWS Savings Plans
Ranking in Cloud Cost Management
7th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Azure Cost Management
Ranking in Cloud Cost Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cloud Cost Management category, the mindshare of IBM Turbonomic is 13.6%, down from 14.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Savings Plans is 1.3%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Cost Management is 7.6%, down from 13.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Cost Management
 

Featured Reviews

Keldric Emery - PeerSpot reviewer
Saves time and costs while reducing performance degradation
It's been a very good solution. The reporting has been very, very valuable as, with a very large environment, it's very hard to get your hands on the environment. Turbonomic does that work for you and really shows you where some of the cost savings can be done. It also helps you with the reporting side. Me being able to see that this machine hasn't been used for a very long time, or seeing that a machine is overused and that it might need more RAM or CPU, et cetera, helps me understand my infrastructure. The cost savings are drastic in the cloud feature in Azure and in AWS. In some of those other areas, I'm able to see what we're using, what we're not using, and how we can change to better fit what we have. It gives us the ability for applications and teams to see the hardware and how it's being used versus how they've been told it's being used. The reporting really helps with that. It shows which application is really using how many resources or the least amount of resources. Some of the gaps between an infrastructure person like myself and an application are filled. It allows us to come to terms by seeing the raw data. This aspect is very important. In the past, it was me saying "I don't think that this application is using that many resources" or "I think this needs more resources." I now have concrete evidence as well as reporting and some different analytics that I can show. It gives me the evidence that I would need to show my application owners proof of what I'm talking about. In terms of the downtime, meantime, and resolution that Turbonomic has been able to show in reports, it has given me an idea of things before things happen. That is important as I would really like to see a machine that needs resources, and get resources to it before we have a problem where we have contention and aspects of that nature. It's been helpful in that regard. Turbonomic has helped us understand where performance risks exist. Turbonomic looks at my environment and at the servers and even at the different hosts and how they're handling traffic and the number of machines that are on them. I can analyze it and it can show me which server or which host needs resources, CPU, or RAM. Even in Azure, in the cloud, I'm able to see which resources are not being used to full capacity and understand where I could scale down some in order to save cost. It is very, very helpful in assessing performance risk by navigating underlying causes and actions. The reason why it's helpful is because if there's a machine that's overrunning the CPU, I can run reports every week to get an idea of machines that would need CPU, RAM, or additional resources. Those resources could be added by Turbonomic - not so much by me - on a scheduled basis. I personally don't have to do it. It actually gives me a little bit of my life back. It helps me to get resources added without me physically having to touch each and every resource myself. Turbonomic has helped to reduce performance degradation in the same way as it's able to see the resources and see what it needs and add them before a problem occurs. It follows the trends. It sees the trends of what's happening and it's able to add or take away those resources. For example, we discuss when we need to do certain disaster recovery tests. Over the years, Turbo will be able to see, for example, around this time of year that certain people ramp up certain resources in an environment, and then it will add the resources as required. Another time of year, it will realize these resources are not being used as much, and it takes those resources away. In this way, it saves money and time while letting us know where we are. We've saved a great deal of time using this product when I consider how I'd have to multiply myself and people like me who would have to add resources to devices or take resources away. We've saved hundreds of hours. Most of the time those hours would have to be after hours as well, which are more valuable to me as that's my personal time. Those saved hours are across months, not years. I would consider the number of resources that Turbonomic is adding and taking away and the placement (if I had to do it all myself) would end up being hundreds of hours monthly that would be added without the help of Turbonomic. It helps us to meet SLAs mainly due to the fact that we're able to keep the servers going and to keep the servers in an environment, to keep them to where (if we need to add resources) we can add them at any given time. It will keep our SLAs where they need to be. If we were to have downtime due to the fact that we had to add resources or take resources away and it was an emergency, then that would prevent us from meeting our SLAs. We also use it to monitor Azure and to monitor our machines in terms of the resources that are out there and the cost involved. In a lot of cases, it does a better job of giving us cost information than Azure itself does. We're able to see the cost per machine. We're able to see the unattached volume and storage that we are paying for. It gives us a great level of insight. Turbonomic gives us the time to be able to focus on innovation and ongoing modernization. Some of the tasks that it does are tasks that I would not necessarily have to do. It's very helpful in that I know that the resources are there where they need to be and it gives me an idea of what changes need to be made or what suggestions it's making. Even if I don't take them, I'm able to get a good idea of some best practices through Turbonomic. One of the ways that Turbonomic does to help bring new resources to market is that we are now able to see the resources (or at least monitor the resources) before they get out to the general public within our environment. We saw immediate value from the product in the test environment. We set it up in a small test environment and we started with just placement and we could tell that the placement was being handled more efficiently than what VMware was doing. There was value for us in placement alone. Then, after we left the placement, we began to look at the resources and there were resources. We immediately began to see a change in the environment. It has made the application and performance better, mainly due to the fact that we are able to give resources and take resources away based on what the need is. Our expenses, definitely, have been in a better place based on the savings that we've been able to make in the cloud and on-prem. Turbonomic has been very helpful in that regard. We've been able to see the savings easily based on the reports in Turbonomic. That, and just seeing the machines that are not being used to capacity allows us to set everything up so it runs a bit more efficiently.
Raul G. Cortina - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible and a good solution for user with different environments
The setup was generally easy. The most complex aspect was configuring the VPN. While not overly difficult, it was more challenging compared to setting up other VPNs. However, once we resolved the initial VPN configuration issue, everything has been smooth sailing. It's a matter of familiarity. Initially, the technology is unfamiliar, but with experience, configuration becomes easier. Deployment time: We didn't have any problems. We determined the implementation date, considered the transition for ourselves and our users, and it went smoothly. Maintenance: There isn't much required. If the stability, resolution, and capacity planning are correct for our needs, or if we need to expand storage, then maintenance is mostly handled by our banking team.
Joy Maitra - PeerSpot reviewer
Continuous monitoring and predictive analytics help provide insights into utilization
Continuous monitoring helps me detect anomalies in the pipeline, preplan resource scalability, and assist with cost management by offering good visibility into resource utilization. It also offers predictive analytics and some existing features, including dashboards. The AI prediction feature helps forecast based on current utilization trends and suggests improvements like the GenAI feature for interactive inquiries.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The notifications saying, "This is a corrective action," even though some of them can be automated, are always welcome to see. They summarize your entire infrastructure and how you can better utilize it. That is the biggest feature."
"I have the ability to automate things similar to the Orchestrator stuff. I do have the ability to have it do some balancing, and if it sees some different performance metrics that I've set not being met, it'll actually move some of my virtual machines from, let's say, one host to another. It is sort of an automation tool that helps me. Basically, I specify the metric, and if I get a certain host or something being over-utilized, it'll automatically move the virtual machines around for me. It basically has to snap into my vCenter and then it can make adjustments and move my virtual machines around. It also has some very nice reporting tools built around virtual machines. It tells you how much storage, memory, or CPU is being used monthly, and then it gives you a very nice way to be able to send out billing structure to your end users who use servers within your environment."
"In our organization, optimizing application performance is a continuous process that is beyond human scale. We would not be able to do the number of actions that Turbonomic takes on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. It is humanly impossible with the little micro adjustments that it can make. That is a huge differentiator. If you just figure each action could take anywhere very conservatively from five to 10 minutes to act upon, then you multiply that out by thousands of actions every month, it is easily something where you could say, "I am saving a couple of FTEs.""
"It also brings up a list of machines and if something is under-provisioned and needs more compute power it will tell you, 'This server needs more compute power, and we suggest you raise it up to this level.' It will even automatically do it for you. In Azure, you don't have to actually go into the cloud provider to resize. You can just say, 'Apply these resizes,' and Turbonomic uses some back-end APIs to make the changes for you."
"On-premises, one advantage I find particularly appealing is the ability to create policies for automatic CPU and memory scaling based on demand."
"With Turbonomic, we were able to reduce our ESX cluster size and save money on our maintenance and license renewals. It saved us around $75,000 per year but it's a one-time reduction in VMware licensing. We don't renew the support. The ongoing savings is probably $50,000 to $75,000 a year, but there was a one-time of $200,000 plus."
"We can manage multiple environments using a single pane of glass, which is something that I really like."
"We have seen a 30% performance improvement overall."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Savings Plans is we can discuss budgets briefly during our confirmation process since we are aware of our usual consumption patterns. Creating budgets in this regard would be beneficial, as it would allow us to consume only what we need, without including reserve instances that do not serve our purpose."
"AWS is consistently innovating and releasing new products and features."
"The initial setup is very easy."
"I like the fact that you can set alerts on the predicted cost in Azure Cost Management."
"It has predictive analysis. It can forecast based on the costs associated with the particular architecture and how often they use it, estimating how much they'll spend."
"Gives visibility into the cost of cloud-based solutions."
"The product has helped save costs for the company."
"The advisor recommendations feature is the most valuable feature. It helps set your environment in a clean state."
"Cost management is the console's most valuable feature."
"Microsoft's technical support is good."
"Continuous monitoring helps me detect anomalies in the pipeline, preplan resource scalability, and assist with cost management by offering good visibility into resource utilization."
 

Cons

"Turbonomic doesn't do storage placement how I would prefer. We use multiple shared storage volumes on VMware, so I don't have one big disk. I have lots of disks that I can place VMs on, and that consumes IOPS from the disk subsystem. We were getting recommendations to provision a new volume."
"The way it handles updates needs to be improved."
"It can be more agnostic in terms of the solutions that it provides. It can include some other cost-saving methods for the public cloud and SaaS applications as well."
"We're still evaluating the solution, so I don't know enough about what I don't know. They've done a lot over the years. I used Turbonomics six or seven years ago before IBM bought them. They've matured a lot since then."
"I like the detail I get in the old user interface and will miss some of that in the new interface when we perform our planned upgrade soon."
"The reporting needs to be improved. It's important for us to know and be able to look back on what happened and why certain decisions were made, and we want to use a custom report for this."
"In Azure, it's not what you're using. You purchase the whole 8 TB disk and you pay for it. It doesn't matter how much you're using. So something that I've asked for from Turbonomic is recommendations based on disk utilization. In the example of the 8 TB disk where only 200 GBs are being used, based on the history, there should be a recommendation like, "You can safely use a 500 GB disk." That would create a lot of savings."
"The implementation could be enhanced."
"In the future, it would be interesting if there could be a combination of Savings Plans and some Reserved Servers."
"The visibility of AWS Savings Plans could improve."
"The most complex aspect was configuring the VPN."
"We have encountered delays in support."
"The solution could improve its APIs to access the customer application."
"The product's licensing cost could be improved."
"There are significant issues with Power BI integration at the moment, particularly with built-in applications for course management. Multiple features don't allow for efficient report generation. This is one primary concern. The second issue relates to reporting, even when using Power BI templates for course management. There are problems with data import that require manual entry. So, these are the two main challenges I'm currently facing. Another matter to consider is the removal of the markup option for partners. I'm not sure if it will be added back, but it used to allow marking up Azure usage for enterprise customers. I'm uncertain if there's an alternative way to achieve the same function. Partners need to mark up services when selling to customers, and it's currently unavailable for some products or services."
"It would be nice if they could introduce connections to other clouds. It would be good to connect to AWS and Oracle cloud."
"I would like to have added to Azure Cost Management, drill down features from within the cost analysis reporting."
"What would make Azure Cost Management better is a more flexible GUI that would allow users to provide more input. Another area for improvement in the solution is its reporting. The report it provides should be easy to understand."
"Azure Cost Management needs to improve scalability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is per socket, so load up on the cores rather than a lot of lower core CPUs."
"The pricing is in line with the other solutions that we have. It's not a bargain software, nor is it overly expensive."
"If you're a super-small business, it may be a little bit pricey for you... But in large, enterprise companies where money is, maybe, less of an issue, Turbonomic is not that expensive. I can't imagine why any big company would not buy it, for what it does."
"I know there have been some issues with the billing, when the numbers were first proposed, as to how much we would save. There was a huge miscommunication on our part. Turbonomic was led to believe that we could optimize our AWS footprint, because we didn't know we couldn't. So, we were promised savings of $750,000. Then, when we came to implement Turbonomic, the developers in AWS said, "Absolutely not. You're not putting that in our environment. We can't scale down anything because they coded it." Our AWS environment is a legacy environment. It has all these old applications, where all the developers who have made it are no longer with the company. Those applications generate a ton of money for us. So, if one breaks, we are really in trouble and they didn't want to have to deal with an environment that was changing and couldn't be supported. That number went from $750,000 to about $450,000. However, that wasn't Turbonomic's fault."
"The pricing and licensing are fair. We purchase based on benchmark pricing, which we have been able to get. There are no surprise charges nor hidden fees."
"I'm not involved in any of the billing, but my understanding is that is fairly expensive."
"Price is a big one. VMTurbo was very competitively priced."
"It was an annual buy-in. You basically purchase it based on your host type stuff. The buy-in was about 20K, and the annual maintenance is about $3,000 a year."
"Compared to Azure or Google, the solution is much cheaper."
"I rate the tool's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The tool's pricing is yearly."
"I rate the tool's pricing a six out of ten - the price could be lower."
"We are using pay-as-you-go licenses mostly for our customers."
"The tool's licensing costs are monthly."
"Azure Cost Management comes as a part of other solutions. You need to pay as per your requirement based on the pay-as-you-go model."
"It's free out of the box."
"I think the solution was free initially."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Real Estate/Law Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Turbonomic?
It offers different scenarios. It provides more capabilities than many other tools available. Typically, its price is...
What needs improvement with Turbonomic?
The implementation could be enhanced.
What is your primary use case for Turbonomic?
We use IBM Turbonomic to automate our cloud operations, including monitoring, consolidating dashboards, and reporting...
What do you like most about AWS Savings Plans?
The most valuable feature of AWS Savings Plans is we can discuss budgets briefly during our confirmation process sinc...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Savings Plans?
We have a fixed cost of five thousand, plus an additional six thousand per month. So, it is about seventy-two thousan...
What needs improvement with AWS Savings Plans?
AWS make it easier to configure the VPN,
What do you like most about Azure Cost Management?
Gives visibility into the cost of cloud-based solutions.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Cost Management?
The pricing is cost-effective, and I have not encountered any extra expenses attached after purchasing the service.
What needs improvement with Azure Cost Management?
Azure Cost Management is a little complicated, and the learning curve is somewhat steep. An enhancement recommendatio...
 

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager
No data available
Microsoft Azure Cost Management, Cloudyn
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.
bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Quixey, Infomedia, Panaya, Wix.com, Mirabeau, Mi9, GetTaxi, Outsmart Studios, Bownty, BlazeMeter: The Load Testing Cloud, Irdeto, Effective Measure, Totango, Nextdoor, BranchOut, The BioTeam, Evolven, Netotiate, ClickSoftware
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Savings Plans vs. Azure Cost Management and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.