Azure Blob Storage vs. Azure Cosmos DB

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure Blob Storage
Score 9.7 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's Blob Storage system on Azure is designed to make unstructured data available to customers anywhere through REST-based object storage.
$0.01
per GB/per month
Azure Cosmos DB
Score 6.8 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is Microsoft's Big Data analysis platform. It is a NoSQL database service and is a replacement for the earlier DocumentDB NoSQL database.N/A
Pricing
Azure Blob StorageAzure Cosmos DB
Editions & Modules
Block Blobs
$0.0081
per GB/per month
Azure Data Lake Storage
$0.0081
per GB/per month
Files
$0.058
per GB/per month
Managed Discs
$1.54
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure Blob StorageAzure Cosmos DB
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure Blob StorageAzure Cosmos DB
Features
Azure Blob StorageAzure Cosmos DB
NoSQL Databases
Comparison of NoSQL Databases features of Product A and Product B
Azure Blob Storage
-
Ratings
Azure Cosmos DB
9.9
Ratings
11% above category average
Performance00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Availability00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Concurrency00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Security00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Scalability00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Data model flexibility00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Deployment model flexibility00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure Blob StorageAzure Cosmos DB
Small Businesses
Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
Score 9.6 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Google Cloud Storage
Google Cloud Storage
Score 8.5 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
Enterprises
Google Cloud Storage
Google Cloud Storage
Score 8.5 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure Blob StorageAzure Cosmos DB
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.6
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.2
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure Blob StorageAzure Cosmos DB
Likelihood to Recommend
Azure Blob Storage is well suited for cases where you are working with different data formats and looking for cost-effective storage solutions based on access frequency. Another area of strength is the encryption of data at rest, and encryption can be managed on your own. However, it may not be appropriate for transferring large data very fast.
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NoSQL platforms are very useful when it comes to security, speed, accuracy, high accessibility with high read and write power. Everything is managed under the cloud and we have the various capabilities of Azure and support for Microsoft products with us. Flexibility in price and variety of features, as well as real-time results, are some of the popular [features] of this platform.
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Pros
  • Reduced cost. We were able to reduce our storage infrastructure by several hundred terabytes by consolidating redundant copies and dedupe/compression on files.
  • Extremely high level of redundancy. We can replicate data in a variety of ways that we would never have been capable of on our own hardware.
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  • Turn-key geo-redundancy with multi-master writes is unprecedented and unparalleled in the industry!
  • Guaranteed low latency makes Cosmos DB an excellent fit for most of our performance-intensive situations.
  • The tunable consistency model simplifies so many challenges in distributed systems engineering that otherwise require advanced knowledge of computer science topics. I continue to be impressed at how Cosmos DB has abstracted away so much complexity.
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Cons
  • If we are transferring huge amount of data (outbound), it can get quite expensive.
  • With new features being added constantly, although a good thing, at times it becomes difficult to keep up with the changes. Documentation needs to keep UpToDate and should include best practices.
  • Performance can be improved especially when it comes to cold storage.
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  • When searching by default, it is case sensitive, which must be changed by default
  • In many ways, the price should be more flexible according to the requested facilities, because the price is very expensive for startup companies.
  • It is not fully compatible with most common Streaming Analytics tools applications and developers should be worked on it
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
It's efficient, easy to scale, and works. We do have to do a bit of administration, but less now than when we started with this a couple of years ago. Microsoft continues to improve its self-management capability.
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Usability
Blob storage is fairly simple, with several different options/settings that can be configured. The file explorer has enhanced its usability. Some areas could be improved, such as providing more details or stats on how many times a file has been accessed. It is an obvious choice if you're already using Azure/Entra.
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Like I said, Cosmos is the way to go. From all of the services that Azure has, Cosmos is very robust in terms of usability. It's ever-evolving and integrates with other applications seamlessly. The interface is pretty easy to understand. I implemented various solutions for my company and Cosmos was one of them.
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Support Rating
Documentation sometimes appears to be out of date or not fully documented properly with new releases. It is like documentation comes out for a specific version and is quickly out of date. Another issue is documentation is scarce on new releases and only seems to get properly updated (and sometimes is still wrong) once enough people hit the forums to complain.
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The support team is very responsive and we are generally satisfied with Microsoft support, in my opinion support team of a product and service is just as valuable as its quality and performance. Telephone answering, 24-hour hotline, email support and ticketing are excellent.
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Alternatives Considered
Blob storage lets us control the file source/hosting and retain everything within our Microsoft ecosystem. Blob is less feature-rich than some of the other products. Still, we consider it as a value-added product included within our environment, and alternative products are not needed for our requirements. Keeping the hosting within our tenant locale is vital to us.
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Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB is more affordable than many other solutions and works incredibly well if you're within the Azure ecosystem.
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Return on Investment
  • Made it easy for organization to move to cloud from on-premise based solution.
  • We were able to centralize all our documents.
  • Cost savings compared to on-premise based solutions.
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  • Expensive but works if your infra is on Azure data center.
  • No latency and nearly no downtime.
  • Takes time for end users to adapt.
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ScreenShots