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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Azure Functions

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/AAzure Functions enables users to execute event-driven serverless code functions with an end-to-end development experience.

    $18

    per month approximately

    Azure Virtual Machines

    Score8.1 out of 10
    N/AVirtual 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 FunctionsAzure Virtual Machines
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    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 FunctionsAzure Virtual Machines
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Azure FunctionsAzure Virtual Machines
    Considered Both Products
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    96%
    Would buy again
    25 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    92%
    Delivers good value for the price
    22 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    25 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    21 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    25 Answers
    Features
    Azure FunctionsAzure Virtual Machines
    Access Control and Security
    Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Azure Functions and Azure Virtual Machines
    Feature
    Azure Functions
    10.0
    2 Ratings
    17% above category average
    Azure Virtual Machines
    -
    Ratings
    Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)10.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Single Sign-On (SSO)10.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Reporting & Analytics
    Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Azure Functions and Azure Virtual Machines
    Feature
    Azure Functions
    8.3
    2 Ratings
    23% above category average
    Azure Virtual Machines
    -
    Ratings
    Dashboards9.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Standard reports8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Custom reports8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Function as a Service (FaaS)
    Comparison of Function as a Service (FaaS) features of Azure Functions and Azure Virtual Machines
    Feature
    Azure Functions
    10.0
    2 Ratings
    18% above category average
    Azure Virtual Machines
    -
    Ratings
    Programming Language Diversity10.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Runtime API Authoring10.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Function/Database Integration10.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    DevOps Stack Integration10.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Server Virtualization
    Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Azure Functions and Azure Virtual Machines
    Feature
    Azure Functions
    -
    Ratings
    Azure Virtual Machines
    7.6
    25 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Virtual machine automated provisioning00 Ratings9.025 Ratings
    Management console00 Ratings4.523 Ratings
    Live virtual machine backup00 Ratings6.521 Ratings
    Live virtual machine migration00 Ratings9.017 Ratings
    Hypervisor-level security00 Ratings9.017 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Azure FunctionsAzure Virtual Machines
    Small Businesses
    IBM Cloud Functions
    Score6.5 out of 10
    Proxmox VE
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    AWS Lambda
    Score8.3 out of 10
    VMware vSOM (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    Enterprises
    AWS Lambda
    Score8.3 out of 10
    IBM PowerVM
    Score9.7 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Azure FunctionsAzure Virtual Machines
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.4
    (25 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.0
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Azure FunctionsAzure Virtual Machines
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Microsoft
    It is well suited for REST APIs that need scalable functionality and for hosting microservices with a short life cycle. It is not well suited for Applications that need real-time features or heavy processing, such as image processing or model training, that need to stay up for longer periods and require compute.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    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, ...)
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Microsoft
    • Timing for creating new instances.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    definitely it will be renewed. considering the ROI and uptime.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Microsoft
    Sometimes the Azure dashboard can feel confusing at first, and it can be hard to understand where things are. But overall, it has good integrations, is trustworthy for running there without disruptions, is well-documented and easy to implement, especially for newbies on the team, and has nice automated deployment features.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No VM console, weak management interface, changing CPU/memory is not straightforward. On the positive side, basic RDP functionality is good to have. As long as things are working, the ability to host Windows VMs is appreciated.
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    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.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    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.
    Incentivized
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots