azure-web-hosting

Architecting Your Web App on Azure

This interactive guide helps you navigate Microsoft Azure's web hosting options. Understand the trade-offs between control and convenience to select the perfect service for your project's needs.

The Spectrum of Control

Your choice of hosting model is a strategic trade-off. More control means more responsibility; more management by Azure means more focus on your code.

IaaS

(Virtual Machines)

PaaS

(App Service)

Serverless

(Static Web Apps, Container Apps)

→ More Control & Responsibility

More Managed & Simplified →

Compare Hosting Solutions

Select a criterion to compare the four primary Azure hosting services side-by-side.

Find Your Solution

Answer a few questions, and we'll recommend the best hosting service for your scenario.

1. What type of application are you building?

2. What is your team's primary skillset?

Service Deep Dive

Explore the details of each hosting model and their associated costs.

Azure App Service: The Premier PaaS Solution

A fully managed Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for building, deploying, and scaling web apps and APIs. It abstracts away infrastructure, allowing you to focus on code. It's the versatile "Swiss Army Knife" for a wide range of common web hosting scenarios.

Key Feature: Deployment Slots for zero-downtime deployments.
Languages: First-class support for .NET, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, and Ruby.
Billing: Based on a provisioned App Service Plan (compute resources), billed per hour.

Azure Static Web Apps: Modern JAMstack Platform

A specialized service for modern JAMstack apps. It decouples the static frontend (HTML/CSS/JS), which is globally distributed for performance, from a serverless API backend powered by Azure Functions. It offers the most streamlined, Git-centric developer experience.

Key Feature: Automatic preview environments for every pull request.
Frameworks: Ideal for React, Angular, Vue, Svelte, Blazor, and static site generators.
Billing: Tiered consumption model with a very generous free tier.

Azure Virtual Machines: Ultimate Control (IaaS)

The foundation of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), providing on-demand virtual servers. This model gives you complete control over the operating system and all installed software but comes with the full responsibility of managing, patching, and securing the machine.

Key Feature: Full OS-level control for legacy apps or custom software.
Responsibility: You manage everything: OS patches, security, web server configuration.
Billing: Provisioned capacity, billed per second for the VM instance, plus storage and bandwidth.

Azure Container Apps: Serverless Microservices

A fully managed, serverless platform for running containerized applications and microservices. It provides the power of Kubernetes without the operational overhead, making it ideal for building cloud-native, event-driven architectures.

Key Feature: Event-driven scaling powered by KEDA, including scaling to zero.
Technology: Language-agnostic; runs any Linux-based container image.
Billing: Serverless consumption, billed for vCPU-seconds and memory usage.

Comparing Cost Models: Provisioned vs. Consumption

Provisioned models (App Service, VMs) are ideal for predictable traffic, while consumption models (Static & Container Apps) excel with bursty or low-traffic workloads by scaling to zero.