Azure App Service vs. NGINX

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure App Service
Score 8.4 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
NGINX
Score 9.1 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
NGINX, a business unit of F5 Networks, powers over 65% of the world's busiest websites and web applications. NGINX started out as an open source web server and reverse proxy, built to be faster and more efficient than Apache. Over the years, NGINX has built a suite of infrastructure software products o tackle some of the biggest challenges in managing high-transaction applications. NGINX offers a suite of products to form the core of what organizations need to create…N/A
Pricing
Azure App ServiceNGINX
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 ServiceNGINX
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
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 ServiceNGINX
Considered Both Products
Azure App Service

No answer on this topic

NGINX
Chose NGINX
MS IIS and Apache HTTP Server both provide many similar services. However the configuration simplicity, and performance characteristics helped us choose NGINX above the other 2 products.
Features
Azure App ServiceNGINX
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Azure App Service
6.4
7 Ratings
19% below category average
NGINX
-
Ratings
Ease of building user interfaces7.47 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability7.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform management overhead7.27 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow engine capability6.45 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform access control7.66 Ratings00 Ratings
Services-enabled integration6.16 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment creation6.47 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment replication6.16 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification6.37 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue recovery4.56 Ratings00 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes4.96 Ratings00 Ratings
Application Servers
Comparison of Application Servers features of Product A and Product B
Azure App Service
-
Ratings
NGINX
8.7
32 Ratings
9% above category average
IDE support00 Ratings7.617 Ratings
Security management00 Ratings8.627 Ratings
Administration and management00 Ratings8.827 Ratings
Application server performance00 Ratings9.327 Ratings
Installation00 Ratings8.929 Ratings
Open-source standards compliance00 Ratings9.025 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure App ServiceNGINX
Small Businesses
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.3 out of 10
Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure App ServiceNGINX
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(9 ratings)
8.9
(50 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.3
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(2 ratings)
8.1
(4 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure App ServiceNGINX
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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F5
Nginx is well-suited for any web server scenarios, such as web applications, backend or reverse proxy for both application and HTTP requests, and distribution. It is less appropriate for Windows-based applications that run directly on a Windows Server host. In any case, it is very easy to manage, through separate conf files for each application or site you want to host with it.
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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"
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F5
  • Very low memory usage. Can handle many more connections than alternatives (like Apache HTTPD) due to low overhead. (event-based architecture).
  • Great at serving static content.
  • Scales very well. Easy to host multiple Nginx servers to promote high availability.
  • Open-Source (no cost)!
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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).
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F5
  • Customer support can be strangely condescending, perhaps it's a language issue?
  • I find it a little weird how the release versions used for Nginx+ aren't the same as for open source version. It can be very confusing to determine the cross-compatibility of modules, etc., because of this.
  • It seems like some (most?) modules on their own site are ancient and no longer supported, so their documentation in this area needs work.
  • It's difficult to navigate between nginx.com commercial site and customer support. They need to be integrated together.
  • I'd love to see more work done on nginx+ monitoring without requiring logging every request. I understand that many statistics can only be derived from logs, but plenty should work without that. Logging is not an option in many environments.
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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
F5
Great value for the product
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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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F5
This tool is really easy to use and configure. Consumes very less system resources. It is highly modular and configurable. You can easily use it with other tools like certbot for SSLs. You can configure basic security with configuration and headers
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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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F5
Community support is great, and they've also had a presence at conferences. Overall, there is no shortage of documentation and community support. We're currently using it to serve up some WordPress sites, and configuring NGINX for this purpose is well documented.
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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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F5
I have found that [NGINX] seems to perform better throughout the years with less issues although I've used Apache more. I would definitely recommend [NGINX] for any high volume site and I've seen this to usually be the case from most provided web hosts who will pick [NGINX] over alternatives
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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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F5
  • By using Nginx, we can host multiple web services on a single server, keeping our infrastructure costs lower.
  • Nginx maintains our HTTPS connections, allowing us to keep our promise to our customers that their data is safe in transit.
  • Due to Nginx's extremely low failure rate, our web addresses always return something meaningful, even when individual services go down. In sense, this means we are "always online" and allows us to maintain brand and support our customers even in the face of catastrophe.
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ScreenShots

NGINX Screenshots

Screenshot of Overview of the NGINX Application PlatformScreenshot of NGINX Controller - MonitoringScreenshot of NGINX Controller - Configuration