Azure AI Search (formerly Azure Cognitive Search) is enterprise search as a service, from Microsoft.
$0.10
Per Hour
Azure App Service
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
The Microsoft Azure App Service is a PaaS that enables users to build, deploy, and scale web apps and APIs, a fully managed service with built-in infrastructure maintenance, security patching, and scaling. Includes Azure Web Apps, Azure Mobile Apps, Azure API Apps, allowing developers to use popular frameworks including .NET, .NET Core, Java, Node.js, Python, PHP, and Ruby.
$9.49
per month
Pricing
Azure AI Search
Azure App Service
Editions & Modules
Basic
$0.101
Per Hour
Standard S1
$0.336
Per Hour
Standard S2
$1.344
Per Hour
Standard S3
$2.688
Per Hour
Shared Environment for dev/test
$9.49
per month
Basic Dedicated environment for dev/test
$54.75
per month
Standard Run production workloads
$73
per month
Premium Enhanced performance and scale
$146
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure AI Search
Azure App Service
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
Free and Shared (preview) plans are ideal for testing applications in a managed Azure environment. Basic, Standard and Premium plans are for production workloads and run on dedicated Virtual Machine instances. Each instance can support multiple applications and domains.
Incredibly robust software for an enterprise organization to plug into their application. If you have a full development resource team at your disposal, this is great software and I highly recommend it. Largely, however, you won't be able to use this prior to the enterprise level. It's just too complicated and cumbersome of a product.
You may easily deploy your apps to Azure App Service if they were written in Visual Studio IDE (typically.NET applications). With a few clicks of the mouse, you may already deploy your application to a remote server using the Visual Studio IDE. As a result of the portal's bulk and complexity, I propose Heroku for less-experienced developers.
Azure Search provides a fully-managed service for loading, indexing, and querying content.
Azure Search has an easy C# SDK that allows you to implement loading and retrieving data from the service very easy. Any developer with some Microsoft experience should feel immediate familiarity.
Azure Search has a robust set of abilities around slicing and presenting the data during a search, such as narrowing by geospatial data and providing an auto-complete capabilities via "Suggesters".
Azure Search has one-of-a-kind "Cognitive Search" capabilities that enable running AI algorithms over data to enrich it before it is stored into the service. For example, one could automatically do a sentiment analysis when ingesting the data and store that as one of the searchable fields on the content.
We had an issue where we deployed too large of a resource and didn't notice until the bill came through. They were very understanding and saw we weren't utilizing the resources so they issued a generous refund in about 4 hours. Very fast, friendly, and understanding support reps from my experience.
Azure Search is a competitor against Google's own AI autosuggest a feature. We went with Azure because our network security folks found it to be more robust from a security standpoint, which is incredibly important when you have proprietary manufacturing information. Additionally, we're a Microsoft shop so it plugged into our cloud hosting package and client facing OS.
Azure has many data center, their services are more reliable. Azure has way more features than both Linode and DigitalOcean. If someone wants a complete reliable service, he/she must go to Azure instead of Linode and DigitalOcean because even though azure charges more, it is worth the money you pay there.
Azure Search enabled us to stand up a robust search capability with very few developer hours.
The fully-managed service of Azure Search means we get low cost of management (EG, DevOps) going into the future, even though the cost of the service itself definitely reflects the time saved.
Azure Search counts as a "Cognitive Service" for Microsoft Azure consumption and aligns our products with Microsoft's interests of driving an AI-first approach in the enterprise. Microsoft Partners, service and product companies alike, should be looking to align with this AI vision as it means favorable treatment from the Microsoft sales teams.