Microsoft Azure vs Liquid Web

Microsoft Azure is strongest for enterprises. Liquid Web is strongest for agencies. Here's how they stack up on price, uptime, and support.

Feature	Microsoft Azure	Liquid Web
Starting price	$0.01/mo	$5/mo
Best for	Enterprises Windows/.NET workloads Hybrid cloud Regulated industries	Agencies E-commerce/WooCommerce High-traffic WordPress Businesses wanting fully-managed support
Stated uptime SLA	99.99%	100% (Liquid Web's published network/power/infrastructure uptime guarantee)
Storage	SSD	SSD
Regions	60	3
Managed Kubernetes	Yes	No
Support channels	Ticket, Phone (paid plans), Docs, Community forum	24/7/365 phone, Live chat, Ticket, Docs/Knowledge Base
Compliance	SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP, GDPR, PCI DSS	PCI DSS, HIPAA (available), SOC 2
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	Advertised prices are frequently promotional (e.g. 50% off for the first 2 months, or 10-15% off for 1-2 year prepay terms); renewal pricing is meaningfully higher than the teaser rate Bandwidth overages and additional storage are billed as add-ons beyond plan allowances Managed WordPress/Nexcess plans are billed upfront annually to get the advertised per-month rate ("2 months free" annual billing) in many cases Windows OS licensing adds a surcharge over equivalent Linux dedicated/cloud dedicated configurations
Last reviewed	2026-07-18	2026-07-18