Azure App Service vs. Azure Virtual Machines

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
Azure Virtual Machines
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Virtual Machines (VMs) are available on Microsoft Azure, providing what is built as a low-cost, per-second compute service, available via Windows or Linux.
$0
Per Hour
Pricing
Azure App ServiceAzure Virtual Machines
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
3 Year Reserved - Burstable VMs - B1S
$0.0038
Per Hour
Spot - General Purpose - Av2
$0.005
Per Hour
1 Year Reserved - Burstable VMs - B1S
$0.0059
Per Hour
Pay as You Go - Burstable VMs - B1S
$0.0075
Per Hour
Spot - Compute Optimized - Fsv2
$0.0104
Per Hour
Spot - General Purpose - Dv3
$0.0125
Per Hour
Spot - Memory Optimized - Ev3
$0.016
Per Hour
3 Year Reserved - Compute Optimized - Fsv2
$0.0307
Per Hour
3 Year Reserved - General Purpose - Dv3
$0.0369
Per Hour
3 Year Reserved - Memory Optimized - Ev3
$0.0481
Per Hour
1 Year Reserved - Compute Optimized - Fsv2
$0.05
Per Hour
1 Year Reserved - General Purpose - Dv3
$0.0548
Per Hour
1 Year Reserved - Memory Optimized - Ev3
$0.0753
Per Hour
Pay as You Go - Compute Optimized - Fsv2
$0.0846
Per Hour
Pay as You Go - General Purpose - Dv3
$0.096
Per Hour
Pay as You Go - Memory Optimized - Ev3
$0.126
Per Hour
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure App ServiceAzure Virtual Machines
Free Trial
YesNo
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 Virtual Machines
Considered Both Products
Azure App Service

No answer on this topic

Azure Virtual Machines
Chose Azure Virtual Machines
Amazon EC2 provides a cost-friendly server hosting platform but the underlying infrastructure of Azure Virtual Machines is way more speedy and responsive than AWS. We have a 40:60 ratio of our servers deployed on Azure and Amazon and I can tell you how responsive and …
Chose Azure Virtual Machines
Azure Virtual Machines is much easier to manage and is a user-friendly management console. Billing is much easier and more predictable to calculate and expect, the configuration is much easier to access and change, the cost is cheaper for Azure Virtual Machines than other …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Azure App ServiceAzure Virtual Machines
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Azure App Service
8.1
4 Ratings
1% above category average
Azure Virtual Machines
-
Ratings
Ease of building user interfaces9.74 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability9.94 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform management overhead4.74 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow engine capability5.43 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform access control9.94 Ratings00 Ratings
Services-enabled integration9.94 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment creation9.94 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment replication10.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue recovery6.34 Ratings00 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes5.64 Ratings00 Ratings
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
Azure App Service
-
Ratings
Azure Virtual Machines
8.8
23 Ratings
6% above category average
Virtual machine automated provisioning00 Ratings9.323 Ratings
Management console00 Ratings8.021 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup00 Ratings9.319 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration00 Ratings8.616 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security00 Ratings8.616 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure App ServiceAzure Virtual Machines
Small Businesses
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.8 out of 10
Oracle VM VirtualBox
Oracle VM VirtualBox
Score 9.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure App ServiceAzure Virtual Machines
Likelihood to Recommend
7.6
(8 ratings)
7.6
(23 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(2 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure App ServiceAzure Virtual Machines
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
If you want to host a dedicated Windows server on the cloud, and especially if you want to integrate it with your on premises Active Directory, Azure Virtual Machines should be your first choice. Obviously running Linux on Azure works very well too, but given Azure's pricing is not the cheapest, there are other providers out there that have a better cost-benefit ratio for Linux. That said, hosting Windows on Azure can be affordable (especially when compared to other providers) if you plan your licensing, topology, and application architecture correctly.
Read full review
Pros
Microsoft
  • It has options to deploy using CI/CD.
  • It has great integration with Azure Devops
  • It has all the common runtimes, so we don't need to install softwares.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • When demand is high, we scale the service out, eg During a Football Match.
  • When a football match is over and the throughput of data from OPTA drops we save by the service scaling back in.
  • Our App Service Plans along with the Clean C# code are lightening fast giving a good customer experience.
  • When producing the TV Guide information and a program overruns its scheduled time, a client can instantly be updated to the new programming schedule as our change is instant and its in the right place for all the clients to download and adjust their television guides appropriately to send out to the public giving a 24x7 uptime service that is precise and accurate and resilient to outages due to failover zones around the world.
Read full review
Cons
Microsoft
  • the learning curve can be tough (just like other azure services)
  • the UX/UI could be more intuitive (just like other azure services as well)
  • monitoring can be hard to understand
  • Microsoft's learning resources are hard to understand
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Pricing can be a concern if you are truly agnostic to which cloud you are building your particular solution in.
  • The UI, as is the case with any cloud provider, is crowded.
  • As with any cloud provider, it can be difficult to tune in exactly the right amount of servers for your needs...you might find yourself under/overprovisioning.
Read full review
Support Rating
Microsoft
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
I give the overall support for Azure Virtual Machines a 7 because I think while the overall support do a great job there are still areas that it could improve on such as efficiency and speed. So while I only give it a 7 and it has some issues it is still better than the overall support at Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
Azure Virtual Machines offer unparalleled flexibility in provisioning, managing and upgrading the VM instances, both manually and programmatically. AVM offer very granular billing options and enables high costs optimisations (while still being costly). The other competitors I mentioned are very good at offering dead-cheap VMs. But if you need anything beyond that, especially for big computing, you need Azure Virtual Machines.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Reduced the deployment time of ASP .NET applications in the company.
  • Gave us an alternative to quickly deploy our applications without granting access to the version control system to a third platform.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • It's so easy to spin up new instances, that it becomes also to easy to have to many of them to manage. Many teams end up with a couple of hundreds of VMs after a short while, making the whole thing very hard to maneuver
  • Azure VMs are the next step for us to rely on Onprem servers, and leaving the management of the infrastructure to the professionals
  • The ease of use, is also important when our main focus is to deliver new applications and integrations fast, and not having to worry about infrastructure. We sell bottles, not CPUs
Read full review
ScreenShots