Microsoft Azure vs Rackspace Cloud [EOL] comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Microsoft and Rackspace Technology are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. Additionally, 95% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Rackspace Technology users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Azure

Read 324 Microsoft Azure reviews

47,107 Views
24,967 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Rackspace Cloud [EOL]

Read 11 Rackspace Cloud [EOL] reviews

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure

Rackspace Cloud [EOL]

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Azure and Rackspace Cloud [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Red Hat and others in PaaS Clouds.

To learn more, read our detailed PaaS Clouds Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

PaaS Clouds

September 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 913,806 peers since 2012

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

Microsoft Azure

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

324

Ranking in other categories

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (1st), PaaS Clouds (1st)

Rackspace Cloud [EOL]

Average Rating

8.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Q&A Highlights

Avigail Sugarman

Community Manager at PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station)

Aug 21, 2014

Rackspace, Dimension Data, and others that were in last year's Challenger quadrant became Niche Players: Agree/ Disagree

Agree. All those are not true cloud player but somewhere in between hosted cloud and true cloud computing.

See all answers

Featured Reviews

reviewer2832981

Cloud Administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Cloud migration has reduced hardware dependency and supports secure global access to apps

The best features Microsoft Azure offers are cloud scalability, virtual machines, storage, networking, security, monitoring, and identity management. Scalability is the most valuable to our organization because Microsoft Azure allows businesses to scale resources up or down based on workload demand. This helps manage traffic spikes without buying permanent hardware. Virtual machines are also valuable as Microsoft Azure provides cloud-based Windows and Linux virtual machines to run applications, servers, and workloads. Identity and Access Management is important, as the integration with Microsoft Entra ID helps manage user authentication, role-based access, and MFA. For example, employees access business apps securely using single sign-on. Backup and disaster recovery are also important because they provide automated backups and failover options to ensure business continuity. Microsoft Azure positively impacts my organization by reducing infrastructure dependency, improving availability, and enabling remote access. Teams can access applications globally without on-premises server dependency, and in terms of cost, it is very low-cost.

Read full review

Rajbir Singh

Director - DevOps and Infrastructure at INTIGRAL

There is easy integration with multiple providers and third-party services

It is very stable. It works 99.9 percent of the time. We are quite happy with it. This product is used to help broadcast football games' live streams, video matches and fantasy games, and it is used extensively. We have almost two million plus downloads, and during peak seasons, we could have 100,000 concurrent users watching 11 different matches.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Azure is pretty good and in fact, we have about 100 customers who are using Azure on our technology."

"As a software data center, we can put some pretty cool applications running there."

"We are seeing probably about 75% of the regular data center cost in Azure, so there were 25% savings, but we could see that go down as testing was being eliminated over different platforms."

"Microsoft Azure has all of the latest cloud services with all high availability and scalability."

"Azure allows us to bring applications to life quickly."

"The product provides a host of security tools."

"Azure is very flexible."

"The ability to kick start a new web application or website and having them up and running in matter of minutes still amazes me."

More Microsoft Azure pros

"There is easy integration with multiple providers and third-party services."

"Ability to quickly create reliable virtual servers."

"The tourism business is seasonally based, therefore our infrastructure needs are variable, and this service works perfectly for us."

"It is very stable; it works 99.9 percent of the time, and we are quite happy with it."

"The new generation of Rackspace Cloud servers are a strong improvement over the first generation."

"The most valuable feature for us is the support, which is really efficient."

"Image backup is a valuable feature, and even though this is a common feature, it is very helpful for us."

Cons

"When we check with Microsoft, they tell us it is working as per design, and we have to work through various PowerShell scripts to get those details."

"Dashboards and reporting could be improved."

"It can be improved in terms of ease of billing or monitoring of the billing. That gets to be a little difficult."

"A problem with Azure is that the architecture that they have is not really compliant — not really connecting with the endpoint Cloud."

"The cost management and billing section features could be improved."

"Customer Service: Poor, you can't get to people who know the products when you are ramping up. Technical Support: poor"

"For some use cases, Microsoft Azure is okay and working, but it is lacking features and we cannot implement it fully."

"I find that in many cases it's more expensive than AWS, and for no good reason."

More Microsoft Azure cons

"It would be nice to have more built-in suites compared to others. It would enable easier integration."

"Vertical scalability is very limited compared with Amazon EC2, which offers many sorts of instances."

"I had a few instances where techs on off hours made extremely bad decisions, resulting in extended site outages lasting hours."

"It's often difficult to get timely support with a ticket, they seem to live by phone calls there."

"It doesn't offer Elastic IP like AWS. And also we can't configure our server based on region."

"Comparatively, this solution is a bit expensive."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The long-term cost is higher than if you set up the servers on-premises, which is something that could be improved through more competitive pricing."

"There is a monthly fee you need to pay for the use of Microsoft Azure."

"We pay a monthly licensing fee for the solution, which could be cheaper."

"The price of the solution could be reduced. There should be a loyalty cost reduction model. If customers have been using the service year after year they should receive a discount."

"The license is on a monthly basis."

"The cost structure is like most cloud-based services. The solution could be cheaper, it is always better to be cheaper."

"The cost is a little high and can be more competitive."

"It is competitive with other public cloud providers, and its price is very close to different cloud providers. There is not a noticeable difference between different cloud providers. Otherwise, it would be a risk for them to have services that were much more expensive than their competition. They're pretty much neck to neck on pricing."

More Microsoft Azure pricing and cost advice

"Comparatively, this solution is a bit expensive."

"The service includes licenses (for operating systems, databases, etc.). Asset management is easier with services like that."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which PaaS Clouds solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user8586

Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

Aug 14, 2013

Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison

Amazon Web Services, Rackspace OpenStack, Microsoft Windows Azure and Google are the major cloud hosting and storage service providers. Athough Amazon is top of them and is oldest in cloud market, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google are giving tough competition to each other and to Amazon also for…

Read full review

Answers from the Community

Avigail Sugarman

Community Manager at PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station)

Aug 21, 2014

Rackspace, Dimension Data, and others that were in last year's Challenger quadrant became Niche Players: Agree/ Disagree

Agree. All those are not true cloud player but somewhere in between hosted cloud and true cloud computing.

2 out of 4 answers

it_user105252

CTO at a healthcare company with 51-200 employees

Aug 20, 2014

I completely agree. Cloud Computing vending is a scale business. And unless you have the $$ Billions to invest in DCs, interconnects, CDN capacity, as well as in continually investing in the OS and Management software infrastructure, you cannot be anything but a vendor that caters to a particular narrow segment. Its a bit like telephony. You aren't going to do very well going up against GE/Sprint, ATT or Southwest Telecom. BUT if you are an EarthLink, you can play in then niche space of those who want a "socially responsible" Telco. About a year ago, both Rackspace and Centurylink were looking for "capital partners" for future growth investment precisely because of these issues. I don't think they ever raised enough $$. I have been saying for about 5 years now that there is room for 4-5 major cloud vendors and they were going to be: Amazon, Google, Microsoft. and then fighting for the last 1-2 slots were IBM, salesFORCE.com, EMC and perhaps Oracle. Oracle seems to have opted not to keep fighting, and EMC is now more focused on delivering services. So you basically have IBM leveraging its corporate DC and mainframe hardware consolidation capabilities and Salesforce is leverging its lead in CRM to get apps built on Force.com But pretty much everyone else is a niche player. The Future is Platform As A Service. NOT "vms" and Rackspace and Dimension Data all were hoping to move from VMs to PaaS but that's a hard move to make.

Read full answer

it_user8685

Infrastructure Expert at Cloud Counselage Inc. (www.cloudcounselage.com)

Aug 20, 2014

DISAGREE. VMware is the present and the Future. Be it VMware vCloud and vSphere suites, tough competition for Amazon etc. or be it vCHS. Also, VMware's very own Public IaaS Cloud; vCHS (VMware vCloud Hybrid Service) which will change everything in days to come vis-a-vis Rackspace, IBM's Softlayer etc. Microsoft is not in a competition at all, because it lacks quality compared to the names mentioned above. __Tushar Topale

Read full answer

See all 4 answers

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Outsourcing Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

17%

Outsourcing Company

15%

Healthcare Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	141
Midsize Enterprise	54
Large Enterprise	153

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	2

Questions from the Community

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Comparisons

Google Firebase vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 5% of the time

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 5% of the time

Alibaba Cloud vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Competitors

Amazon AWS vs Rackspace Cloud [EOL]

Compared 17% of the time

Xigo Dimension Data vs Rackspace Cloud [EOL]

Compared 15% of the time

Oracle Visual Builder Cloud Service vs Rackspace Cloud [EOL]

Compared 14% of the time

Lumen Symphony vs Rackspace Cloud [EOL]

Compared 12% of the time

Google Firebase vs Rackspace Cloud [EOL]

Compared 12% of the time

More Rackspace Cloud [EOL] Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure

September 2026

Download Microsoft Azure product report

Buyer's Guide

Rackspace Cloud [EOL]

September 2026

Download Rackspace Cloud [EOL] product report

Also Known As

Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure

No data available

Overview

Microsoft Azure is a versatile cloud platform known for its scalability, flexibility, and ease of use, offering comprehensive solutions like virtual machines, identity management, and data storage with robust security measures and global data centers.

Azure provides a straightforward setup with dynamic scaling and seamless integration with existing tools. Its robust security, compliance with privacy laws, and global data center presence make it a trusted choice for enterprises. With features supporting DevOps, IoT, AI/ML, and hybrid cloud environments, Azure facilitates efficient cloud migration and modernization, enhancing operational efficiency.

What are some of the key features of Microsoft Azure?

Scalability: Adjust resources automatically to meet demand.
Flexibility: Support for hybrid cloud setup and smooth integration with existing tools.
Virtual Machines: Extensive support for VMs to run various workloads.
Active Directory: Robust identity and access management services.
Data Storage: Diverse storage options for different data management needs.
Security Measures: Comprehensive security protocols and compliance support.

What benefits and ROI should users consider when evaluating Microsoft Azure?

Cost Efficiency: Managed services that reduce operational costs.
Reliability: High availability with global data center coverage.
Ease of Migration: Facilitates transition from on-premises solutions to the cloud.
Operational Efficiency: User-friendly interface and extensive training resources.

Organizations primarily use Azure for infrastructure services, application hosting, and data management across industries such as finance, healthcare, and retail. Resellers deploy cloud services for clients in private, public, and hybrid clouds, supporting enterprise applications and digital transformation projects.

Microsoft

Rackspace is a listed company that specializes in hybrid cloud environments to support your applications and sites. The environments are based on its open-source operating system OpenStack.Rackspace Cloud caters for the private cloud, public cloud, dedicated servers, or a hybrid of platforms.

Your Rackspace Cloud environment is customizable according to your cloud requirements, and all products work together seamlessly from one portal.

Rackspace Technology

Sample Customers

BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.

3D Capacity, Acquity Group, Axios Systems, Behance, Blastro, Dominos Pizza, and Sage.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Red Hat and others in PaaS Clouds. Updated: September 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our list of best PaaS Clouds vendors.

We monitor all PaaS Clouds reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.