Microsoft Azure vs Kamatera

Microsoft Azure is strongest for enterprises. Kamatera is strongest for custom VM sizing. Here's how they stack up on price, uptime, and support.

Feature	Microsoft Azure	Kamatera
Starting price	$0.01/mo	$0.05/mo
Best for	Enterprises Windows/.NET workloads Hybrid cloud Regulated industries	Custom VM sizing Global data center selection Windows Server hosting Dev/test environments
Stated uptime SLA	99.99%	99.95%
Storage	SSD	NVME
Regions	60	20
Managed Kubernetes	Yes	Yes
Support channels	Ticket, Phone (paid plans), Docs, Community forum	Ticket, Phone, Docs, Pro/Premium Managed Services (paid)
Compliance	SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP, GDPR, PCI DSS	GDPR
Hidden costs to watch for	Windows Server VMs carry a license surcharge on top of the Linux compute rate Outbound bandwidth billed above 100 GB/month pooled free tier, tiered by volume Premium SSD/Ultra Disk IOPS and throughput billed separately from disk capacity Blob Storage Cool/Cold/Archive tiers bill a minimum 128 KiB per object and impose early-deletion penalties (90/180 day minimums) Archive tier retrieval fees are notably high ($6.50/10,000 read ops) AKS Standard tier control plane fee ($0.10/hr per cluster) on top of node VM costs	Bandwidth overage billed at $0.01/GB past the pooled monthly allowance (5 TB US/Canada/Europe, 1 TB Asia-Pacific) Windows Server / SQL Server / Exchange / RDS licensing adds an undisclosed per-server surcharge only shown at calculator checkout Type T (Burstable) CPU incurs a $0.041/hour/CPU overage charge once average CPU usage exceeds 10% Powered-off (but not terminated) servers may continue to accrue charges Pro Managed Services add $50/server/month; Premium Managed Services add $150/server/month
Last reviewed	2026-07-18	2026-07-18