Learn how to choose the best cloud service provider based on factors like cost, compatibility, performance, and reliability.
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In 2023, Danish cloud service providers CloudNordic and AzeroCloud suffered a catastrophic ransomware attack that resulted in irretrievable data loss for most of their customers. For organizations fully dependent on these cloud providers, it must have felt like falling into a black hole with no way out.
While this may be an extreme scenario, choosing a cloud service provider (CSP) is a complicated and critical decision—one that can have business-altering consequences. For IT decision-makers—CIOs, CTOs, IT Managers—our guide provides 7 key criteria and a clear, actionable framework for evaluating CSPs and making the best choice for your organization's unique needs.
The cloud can undeniably be more cost-effective, scalable, and agile than on-prem infrastructure. However, only the right CSP can turn cloud promises into business realities. Choosing a cloud provider isn’t just about selecting the cheapest option—striking a fine balance between flexibility, cost-effectiveness, innovation, and seamless integration is what makes the process so challenging. Pick the wrong CSP, and you could face:
Organizations that neglect due diligence and simply pick the lowest-cost provider or the one with the highest market share often face expensive migrations and repatriation efforts down the road. Therefore, careful planning now can save you from major headaches later!
Before you even start comparing and evaluating cloud providers, you must clearly and completely understand your own needs as an organization. Your cloud needs can vary significantly depending on your organization’s size, industry, region, budget, and more. For example:
Similarly, the type of workloads you run also plays a significant role:
Here are some critical questions to ask yourself before evaluating potential CSPs:
Choosing the right deployment model, in particular, requires careful evaluation. The model you choose today might not remain the optimal choice several years from now. You need the flexibility and agility to adapt your cloud strategy as needs change, innovations emerge, and demands grow.
A vendor-agnostic cloud management platform like emma gives you this flexibility, allowing you to transition between single, multi, or hybrid cloud environments at any point in your cloud journey. With emma, you can pick and choose cloud environments as needed and without worrying about underlying differences, integrations, cross-cloud visibility, or management complexity.
Market share can give you an idea of a provider’s business standing and viability, but don’t let it cloud your judgment. Niche providers with a focused customer base can sometimes be more capable of meeting your unique infrastructure needs. For instance, despite its smaller market share, Gcore’s low-cost, high-performance cloud infrastructure can be an excellent choice for specific use cases like edge computing, content delivery, and gaming.
Use analyst profiles, online reviews, and market research to understand a provider’s true market position. The provider should have a healthy financial standing and demonstrate business viability to ensure they can withstand market conditions and challenges to serve you over the long term. Also consider the provider’s partner network—MSPs, software vendors, and system integrators—to ensure you get added best-of-breed and industry-specific solutions.
One grave mistake organizations make when comparing costs is considering upfront costs only. Cloud providers’ pricing models can be complex due to various pricing tiers and variable usage costs. Additionally, you should use and factor in various discounts, like commitment-based or spot instance pricing, which can get you up to 90% cost savings compared to on-demand instances.
You can check out our detailed cloud pricing comparison, which shows how hyperscalers can look like they’re cheaper upfront, but unpredictable costs are often involved. All factors considered, smaller providers can be 20% to 50% cheaper than major players.
Make sure your chosen cloud provider offers the services you need, whether it’s IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS. Also have a look at the provider’s long-term roadmap and assess if it aligns with your future business needs and growth projections.
Although major providers with a broad service portfolio offer end-to-end solutions, niche players can bring specialized expertise in certain areas. You don’t necessarily have to commit solely to a single provider just because you need certain innovative services or solutions. You can just as easily tap into the strengths of various providers with a multi-cloud strategy and choose the most suitable tools and services from each.
Another important factor to consider is global infrastructure footprint. A global footprint is important for a number of factors, including performance, latency management, and data residency needs, especially if you need to support a global user base or mission-critical applications. For mission-critical workloads, particularly in specialized industries, niche or industry-specific cloud providers that offer tailored solutions for specific performance or reliability requirements may be a better fit.
You can also choose multiple CSPs and strategically distribute your workloads across them to enjoy better performance and business continuity. Compare CSPs’ SLAs (Service Level Agreements) for uptime and disaster recovery and see if they meet your user/business needs. Make sure your chosen provider has redundant networking and power and a documented disaster recovery and business continuity plan.
When choosing a cloud provider, keep in mind the applicable data regulations and assess if your chosen providers comply with them. Most cloud providers allow you to manually choose where you store and process your data to meet data residency requirements. CSPs like Azure and AWS even have sophisticated tools and controls to help you in this regard. For greater control, you can explore sovereign cloud options from providers like Oracle and IBM.
Providers with strong local presence, like Alibaba Cloud in the APAC regions and OVHcloud in Europe, are more adept at complying with certain local regulations. In any case, choose providers that are compliant with major industry regulations and certifications, such as GDPR, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and SOC 2. These standards and certifications also serve as a foundation for compliance with many other regional and industry-specific regulations.
Make sure that your cloud provider’s infrastructure and tech stack integrate seamlessly with your existing technologies and infrastructure, including legacy and in-house systems. Providers like Azure and Oracle Cloud are known for their robust support of legacy and hybrid environments. In contrast, GCP and IBM stand out for their cloud-agnostic approach, enabling smooth on-prem and cloud interoperability. The provider’s platform and technology stack should be able to support your workloads without requiring extensive re-coding or customization.
Providers like AWS, Azure, and Oracle often create vendor lock-ins due to deep integrations within their ecosystems and proprietary services that customers can become dependent on. This can make it challenging to switch or scale across providers without incurring high costs and disruptions.
If vendor lock-in is a significant concern for your organizations, avoid becoming overly reliant on proprietary services by following open standards and leveraging open-source technologies whenever possible. Smaller vendors, like DigitalOcean and Gcore, are often better positioned to support interoperability, open standards, and migration, reducing barriers to switching or scaling across multiple platforms, which is often a crucial requirement for businesses.
Assess your in-house team’s skills and resources to determine the level of support you’ll need during migration, adoption, and ongoing operations. Smaller providers, such as Scaleway or Leaseweb, offer personalized and dedicated support, which can be ideal for startups and SMBs requiring close guidance. Hyperscalers like AWS, Azure, and GCP typically provide advanced support options for enterprise customers at a premium. Your chosen provider should be able to offer SLAs for the level of support that you need.
After initial market research, you may find several cloud service providers meet your basic requirements, making it difficult to find the perfect fit. To narrow down to the right cloud service providers, consider creating a scoring system or a decision framework.
Here’s an example of a basic decision framework:
Once you’ve finalized your cloud service provider (or providers), there’s no need to commit fully right away. Here are some steps to help you test the waters before taking the final plunge:
To learn more about top cloud providers in 2025 and their offerings, see Top 10 Cloud Computing Service Providers in 2025: A Comprehensive Review.