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Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs SUSE Rancher comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.5
Qualys TotalCloud boosts efficiency, reduces manual effort, decreases risk, and offers significant cost savings with a notable ROI.
Sentiment score
7.0
Deploying more services on AKS reduces costs, offers OS-related savings, and improves ROI despite varying results across use cases.
Sentiment score
6.5
SUSE Rancher boosts ROI by reducing provisioning time, manpower, and costs, outperforming alternatives like OpenShift in efficiency and expense.
It has saved about 90% of our time.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
TotalCloud has generated overall savings of 30 to 40 percent across various departments.
Security Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
CallStream helps us integrate and automate tasks.
Senior Security Consultant at CyberNxt Solutions LLP
We see a return on investment with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), as we no longer manage the control plane ourselves, which saves us a lot of time and employee effort.
Senior DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
For cost reduction, we save a lot on manpower; instead of hiring a 24/7 team to do the provisioning, we could just hire a couple of teams to monitor SUSE Rancher Management to do the provisioning.
GM Technical Management at PT. DATACOMM DIANGRAHA
It definitely saved time and manpower.
Technical Solutions Engineer at a leisure / travel company with 501-1,000 employees
Rather than dealing with three employees, after implementing SUSE Rancher Manager, we are able to do it with a single employee, which ultimately saves the cost.
Chief Executive Officer at a training & coaching company with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.4
Qualys TotalCloud support is praised for efficiency and staff knowledge but criticized for delays and inconsistent quality.
Sentiment score
7.5
Azure Kubernetes Service support is often praised, but some users experience delays and mixed outcomes, with variable response times.
Sentiment score
7.2
SUSE Rancher's support is friendly and effective, with strong Middle East assistance and minimal issues due to comprehensive resources.
They are helpful, respond to my queries, and can answer any question.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys's tech support is highly responsive, providing multiple ways to interact with them.
Service Manager, Security Operations at CDA IT SOLUTIONS
Qualys' customer service provides quality answers, but the response time is long, even though it is within the SLA.
Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
They are very fast to respond and begin analysis to resolve problems.
IT Specialist | SRE | Cloud Public and Private at Parana Banco
Customer support for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is typically good, but in some instances where technical expertise is required, I sometimes feel I know more than the support personnel.
Senior DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The customer support is very friendly, and they are very fast in addressing the issues.
Technical Solutions Engineer at a leisure / travel company with 501-1,000 employees
Since we were the partner for deployment, customer support was especially robust from the presales team at SUSE.
Presales Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
SUSE Rancher's customer support is performing well.
DavOps at a university with 51-200 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Qualys TotalCloud excels in scalability, efficiently supporting diverse environments and business sizes, though it may require skilled management.
Sentiment score
7.2
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) offers robust scalability, efficient auto-scaling, and cost management, handling enterprise needs with few cost concerns.
Sentiment score
7.2
SUSE Rancher excels in scalability with features like autoscaling, effectively expanding infrastructure for diverse needs including telco projects.
We started our organization about nine months back. We started with about 30 users, and we now have more than 100 users.
CIO at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees
Our organization currently uses it to manage over 1200 web applications.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
It is absolutely scalable, and I would rate its scalability as nine out of ten.
retired at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
AKS offers excellent scalability due to its adaptation from Kubernetes.
Senior Software Developer at Simpson Strong-Tie
The scalability of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is one of the best I have experienced in the market.
Senior DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
SUSE Rancher's scalability is working with high performance, and it can handle growth and additional clusters easily based on my experience.
DavOps at a university with 51-200 employees
It uses HPA in the backend, so horizontal pod autoscaling is by default inherited in SUSE Rancher.
Chief Executive Officer at a training & coaching company with 10,001+ employees
It could scale significantly.
GM Technical Management at PT. DATACOMM DIANGRAHA
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Qualys TotalCloud is highly stable with reliable support, 99.9% uptime, minimal bugs, and effective maintenance communication.
Sentiment score
6.9
Azure Kubernetes Service is stable and highly rated, with minimal issues, occasional glitches, and praised self-healing capabilities.
Sentiment score
8.3
SUSE Rancher is reliable for managing Kubernetes clusters, despite occasional errors; users typically report efficient and dependable performance.
Overall, the support provided has been excellent.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
It is a stable solution, which is why we chose it.
CIO at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees
Continuous monitoring is crucial to ensure system stability and avoid vulnerabilities or threats.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
From my usage, I would rate its stability as eight to nine out of ten.
Senior Software Developer at Simpson Strong-Tie
It's very stable, and the support is satisfactory.
IT Specialist | SRE | Cloud Public and Private at Parana Banco
The tool is working fine with SUSE without any downtimes, technical issues, or critical errors.
Technical Architect at BORN Group
There are some areas where it can improve, such as on the stability and reliability side.
Technical Solutions Engineer at a leisure / travel company with 501-1,000 employees
SUSE Rancher is stable, and I have used it for monitoring my Kubernetes cluster.
DavOps at a university with 51-200 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Users suggest enhancing Qualys TotalCloud with clearer reports, better integration, intuitive UI, AI risk assessments, and improved documentation.
AKS requires enhanced technical support, better integration, simpler setup, improved UI, and cost management features to address user concerns.
SUSE Rancher needs enhancements in speed, simplicity, integration, UI performance, documentation centralization, support, and marketing for better user experience.
Ideally, the scanner should automatically detect and scan all subdomains, even if not explicitly defined, ensuring comprehensive vulnerability assessment.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
Ideally, updates should be more immediate, enabling quicker implementation of solutions.
Project Lead at Persistent Systems
Our goal is to integrate all these functions into Qualys, creating a single dashboard for comprehensive security monitoring and management.
Senior Information Security Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
The costs are rising rapidly, and we have not seen any cost reductions by moving to Azure.
Product Owner at ABN AMRO Bank N.V.
It is costly compared to other solutions such as Canonical.
Senior System Specialist at General Directorate of Residence and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA)
I do not see any specific areas for improvement in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), except for the kind of support they provide.
Senior DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The most pressing issue that I found in SUSE Rancher is that it is a bit slow. Compared with Komodor, it is very slow.
Technical Solutions Engineer at a leisure / travel company with 501-1,000 employees
I wish the container could be more lightweight so that anyone can test and verify SUSE Rancher Prime.
Chief Executive Officer at a training & coaching company with 10,001+ employees
One of the major challenges I faced with SUSE Rancher was during a POC for one customer who was using VMware. There was a significant challenge between VMware CSI and SUSE integrations.
Presales Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
 

Setup Cost

Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is high yet justified by comprehensive features and flexibility, benefiting larger enterprises seeking robust security.
Azure Kubernetes Service costs can be high due to nodes, networking, and storage, with discounts for longer commitments.
SUSE Rancher offers straightforward, competitive pricing with open-source benefits, making it favorable among enterprises compared to Tanzu and OpenShift.
Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Pricing is managed by our finance team; however, Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility.
IT Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches.
Vice President at Inspira Enterprise
Transitioning to Azure did not bring cost reductions; in fact, costs are rising rapidly.
Product Owner at ABN AMRO Bank N.V.
The solution is very expensive in my opinion.
IT Specialist | SRE | Cloud Public and Private at Parana Banco
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) involves booking quotas for commitments of three to five years to receive significant discounts.
Senior DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Rancher is free of cost for us as it is open source.
Technical Architect at BORN Group
It is a very good tool to use, and it has a very good costing structure.
Technical Solutions Engineer at a leisure / travel company with 501-1,000 employees
Licensing, which is per unit based, was straightforward.
Presales Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
 

Valuable Features

Qualys TotalCloud offers comprehensive vulnerability detection, cloud security management, and automation with insightful dashboards for efficient threat management.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) provides secure, scalable container orchestration with seamless Azure integration, enhancing application management and CI/CD.
SUSE Rancher improves productivity with its open-source design, flexibility, multi-cloud support, automation, and effective governance in application management.
This view of risk helps reduce the work we would have to do to combine multiple sources to prioritize risk.
Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
It will help cybersecurity professionals monitor the cloud and find vulnerabilities.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We are enjoying the new feature, FlexScan, which is valuable for Internet-facing VMs.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
The most valuable features of Azure Kubernetes Service are its integration with Kubernetes, offering similar features for a seamless experience.
Senior Software Developer at Simpson Strong-Tie
Since pricing is not a major concern, we chose the best fit for our application, which was specifically designed for this particular platform.
Senior System Specialist at General Directorate of Residence and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA)
The integration with Azure Active Directory helped with the security of our applications.
IT Specialist | SRE | Cloud Public and Private at Parana Banco
We use Rancher Desktop for local development, testing APIs locally, and it helps to seamlessly publish to the cloud.
Technical Architect at BORN Group
SUSE Rancher has impacted my organization positively by enabling us to identify issues before they happen through monitoring utilizations and node pressure.
DavOps at a university with 51-200 employees
The openness helped in integrating the existing tools with SUSE Rancher itself, which was the biggest use case.
Presales Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Ranking in Container Security
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (11th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (8th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (8th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (1st), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Ranking in Container Security
18th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SUSE Rancher
Ranking in Container Security
23rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Container Security category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.4%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SUSE Rancher is 0.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qualys TotalCloud1.4%
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)0.9%
SUSE Rancher0.6%
Other97.1%
Container Security
 

Featured Reviews

RO
IT Security Expert at Alior Bank S.A.
Unified risk scoring has improved our cloud visibility and simplifies remediation priorities
Qualys TotalCloud provides unified vulnerability and threat assessment across both IAS and SaaS. This solution provides a single prioritized view of risk, which helps reduce the work I would have to do. We are no longer based on CVSS; we are based on Qualys risk scoring, which is based on CVSS plus internal findings made by Qualys, and then assigns its own score. The TruRisk insight feature has found a small number of assets with high vulnerability scores, though I am cautious since some information is classified. Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our bank's performance, and we have definitely seen benefits after implementing this solution.
Daniel Wichinescki - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Specialist | SRE | Cloud Public and Private at Parana Banco
Has supported production deployments and simplified permission management though could reduce monitoring costs
For Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), we only used it to orchestrate the Kubernetes pods. We didn't use the other features. We only used the environment to start our application. I utilized the automatic scaling capabilities. The integration with Azure Active Directory helped with the security of our applications. I think Amazon EKS is better. EKS is the best because there are many features to use for scaling and to control the environments.
VG
Presales Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Modernization of microservices and edge workloads has accelerated while integration still needs improvement
One of the major challenges I faced with SUSE Rancher was during a POC for one customer who was using VMware. There was a significant challenge between VMware CSI and SUSE integrations. We had to move that deployment from VMware, which the customer wanted, to a bare metal solution. Flexibility also means better integrations with major industry solution providers like VMware, which many enterprise organizations use. The integrations with SUSE Rancher are fine, as long as you have open APIs, anyone can connect. For me, there were no challenges because we had standard products already certified. However, the integration between VMware and SUSE could definitely be improved. I chose 7 out of 10 because I faced VMware-related challenges as I explained. A lot of customers are still on VMware, while many also use Red Hat solutions, especially with the IBM push now. The marketing and outreach need to increase to penetrate more accounts, which are the two improvements I suggest.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
Computer Software Company
25%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise23
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
Areas that need improvement in every solution include the remediation part. The remediation steps should be simple en...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
Our use case involves the assets that we have under cloud, the assets exposed to the internet, and the internal appli...
What needs improvement with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?
I do not see any specific areas for improvement in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), except for the kind of support the...
What is your primary use case for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?
My main use case for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is hosting a Comark website on it. In addition to hosting a Comar...
What advice do you have for others considering Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?
I would rate Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) at a nine out of ten. I deduct one point for customer support, as seventy...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SUSE Rancher?
Currently, I am using the community version, so there is no licensing cost. We are currently considering using the su...
What needs improvement with SUSE Rancher?
It would be beneficial to have more support for the product.
What is your primary use case for SUSE Rancher?
Our main use case for SUSE Rancher is for Kubernetes as a Service for our cloud product. We have also used SUSE Ranch...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs. SUSE Rancher and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.