Alternative cloud providers are gaining traction as enterprises adopt multiple non-hyperscaler clouds. Nearly 75% of organizations use two or more alternative cloud providers. These providers narrow functionality gaps while offering high availability and lower pricing. Many emphasize niche strengths such as edge computing and developer-focused application hosting. Enterprises are diversifying away from an all-in strategy with the largest cloud vendors toward specialized, best-of-breed options. Rising costs at major hyperscalers are driving organizations to seek more cost-effective alternatives that better support AI workloads, edge computing, private clouds, and other workloads.
Alternative clouds are having a moment. Nearly 75% of organizations are using two or more alternative cloud providers, according to a HostingAdvice.com survey of 500 IT leaders from May 2025. These alternative clouds refer to cloud providers outside the major hyperscalers, like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Oracle Cloud, or IBM Cloud.
Why are more organizations turning to alternative cloud providers? Several factors are driving this shift, but cost remains the leading motivator. 'The big three cloud providers turned out to be way more expensive, about two-and-a-half to three times more, than organizations originally expected,' says David Linthicum, founder and lead researcher at Linthicum Research and author of InfoWorld's Cloud Insider blog.
'You're able to get enterprise-grade hosting from alternative cloud providers,' says Joe Warnimont, senior analyst at HostingAdvice.com. While hyperscalers still dominate in market share, alternative clouds are closing the functionality gap while delivering high availability and lower pricing.
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