Azure App Service vs. Azure Functions

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure App Service
Score 8.3 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
Azure Functions
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Azure Functions enables users to execute event-driven serverless code functions with an end-to-end development experience.
$18
per month approximately
Pricing
Azure App ServiceAzure Functions
Editions & Modules
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
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure App ServiceAzure Functions
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsFree 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.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure App ServiceAzure Functions
Considered Both Products
Azure App Service

No answer on this topic

Azure Functions
Chose Azure Functions
This is the most straightforward and easy-to-implement server less solution.
App Service is great, but it's designed for websites, and it cannot scale automatically as easily as Azure Functions. Container Apps is a robust and scalable choice, but they need much more planning, …
Features
Azure App ServiceAzure Functions
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Azure App Service
6.5
7 Ratings
18% below category average
Azure Functions
-
Ratings
Ease of building user interfaces7.57 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability7.27 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform management overhead7.17 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow engine capability6.35 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform access control7.76 Ratings00 Ratings
Services-enabled integration6.46 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment creation6.67 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment replication6.26 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification6.47 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue recovery4.66 Ratings00 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes5.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Azure App Service
-
Ratings
Azure Functions
10.0
1 Ratings
13% above category average
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Azure App Service
-
Ratings
Azure Functions
7.0
1 Ratings
17% above category average
Dashboards00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Standard reports00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Custom reports00 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Function as a Service (FaaS)
Comparison of Function as a Service (FaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Azure App Service
-
Ratings
Azure Functions
8.8
1 Ratings
7% above category average
Programming Language Diversity00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Runtime API Authoring00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Function/Database Integration00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
DevOps Stack Integration00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure App ServiceAzure Functions
Small Businesses
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.3 out of 10
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure App ServiceAzure Functions
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(9 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure App ServiceAzure Functions
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
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.
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Microsoft
They're great to embed logic and code in a medium-small, cloud-native application, but they can become quite limiting for complex, enterprise applications.
Read full review
Pros
Microsoft
  • Extremely easy to deploy and update from Visual Studio
  • It integrates seamlessly with other Azure PaaS resources
  • It has an in-depth integration with AppInsights, so you can understand errors and their root cause easily.
  • Easy to create and delete, what is not the same case in a IaaS resource
  • It escalates based on CPU workload and some other resource variables.
  • Configuration changes are almost immediate
  • Offers an excellent abstraction from hardware backend of the platform
  • That's updated very often, saving time and the risk of a self-performed update over a IaaS
  • That's really easy to develop for Web Apps
  • It supports Function Apps and Web Apps into the same "cost black box"
Read full review
Microsoft
  • They natively integrate with many triggers from other Azure services, like Blob Storage or Event Grid, which is super handy when creating cloud-native applications on Azure (data wrangling pipelines, business process automation, data ingestion for IoT, ...)
  • They natively support many common languages and frameworks, which makes them easily approachable by teams with a diverse background
  • They are cheap solutions for low-usage or "seasonal" applications that exhibits a recurring usage/non-usage pattern (batch processing, montly reports, ...)
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Cons
Microsoft
  • Jumps between resource sizes can get expensive
  • You may wind up putting a lot of eggs in one basket--not necessarily a con but something to keep in mind (most of your data will likely be managed and processed through Microsoft products/services if you fully commit to Azure App Service).
  • Learning new technology. If you're moving from on-premises to Azure App Service (or any cloud solutions), you'll likely have to rethink how things are done to achieve the same end results (and/or resources may become expensive quickly).
Read full review
Microsoft
  • My biggest complaint is that they promote a development model that tightly couples the infrastructure with the app logic. This can be fine in many scenarios, but it can take some time to build the right abstractions if you want to decouple you application from this deployment model. This is true at least using .NET functions.
  • In some points, they "leak" their abstraction and - from what I understood - they're actually based on the App Service/Web App "WebJob SDK" infrastructure. This makes sense, since they also share some legacy behavior from their ancestor.
  • For larger projects, their mixing of logic, code and infrastructure can become difficult to manage. In these situations, good App Services or brand new Container Apps could be a better fit.
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Usability
Microsoft
I have given this rating because Azure App Service performs very well in terms of speed, reliability, and reducing overhead, and improves overall team productivity, with a little scope for improvement in complex testing scenarios and configurations, scalability concerns in a large setup, and similar tracking and audit needs.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Microsoft
Microsoft has always been known for providing a high standard in terms of customer support and Azure App Service (and as a matter of fact the whole Azure Platform) is no exception. Azure App Service never caused us any issues and we only contacted their customer support for questions regarding server locations and pricing. I feel pretty satisfied with how they treat their customers.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
When we chose it, we did so because of its integration with Microsoft applications; now we need to integrate with AI, and Azure doesn't offer a good integration. That is the main reason to change it. It is still great to develop Windows- and Microsoft-based applications, but if we need to integrate with AI, Google wins by far.
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Microsoft
This is the most straightforward and easy-to-implement server less solution. App Service is great, but it's designed for websites, and it cannot scale automatically as easily as Azure Functions. Container Apps is a robust and scalable choice, but they need much more planning, development and general work to implement. Container Instances are the same as Container Apps, but they are extremely more limited in termos of capacity. Kubernetes Service si the classic pod container on Azure, but it requires highly skilled professional, and there are not many scenario where it should be used, especially in smaller teams.
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Deployment of ASP.NET apps at the organization has been sped up.
  • An option to offer access to the version control system on a third platform so that we could easily deploy our apps.
  • Because of Azure App Service's scalability capabilities, the costs of running the services are kept to a minimum. As a result, we may save hundreds of dollars each month compared to the expenses of traditional servers by using fewer resources during slack periods.
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Microsoft
  • They allowed me to create solutions with low TCO for the customer, which loves the result and the low price, that helped me create solutions for more clients in less time.
  • You can save up to 100% of your compute bill, if you stay under a certain tenant conditions.
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ScreenShots