When comparing Amazon Web Services vs Microsoft Azure, the Slant community recommends Amazon Web Services for most people. In the question“What are the best cloud platforms as a service providers?” Amazon Web Services is ranked 2nd while Microsoft Azure is ranked 8th.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Breadth of Services
Pro Excellent Documentation and Support
Pro Most Mature Service Options
No other Cloud provide offers such a wide variety of Compute, Database and other options.
Pro Supports running Windows Server
Most, if not all, of the major cloud PaaS providers offer a Linux variant to host your applications. Windows Azure, being a Microsoft product obviously, supports Windows in addition to Linux.
Pro Linux Instances
The Azure platform has been supporting Linux VMs for a while now and has Linux distributions readily available in the catalogue.
Pro Free Tier
Microsoft Azure offers a Free Tier option that allows you to spawn a BST-1 instance that has 750 free hours.
Cons
Con Expensive
Even though in the context of Pay-as-you-go services, it's cost effective, but monthly pricing for these services are quite higher than competitors.