Item: Azure App Service
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

During my time at the company, Azure App Service was used to deploy ASP NET Core applications. It was used throughout the whole organization and we had multiple applications deployed there. It was pretty useful since we could deploy our applications directly from Visual studio, never leaving our code editor environment. We could modify the settings from the Azure portal or with the Azure command-line interface.

Pros and Cons

Simple app deployment from Visual Studio.
Easy interfaces: Azure CLI and Azure Portal.
No server maintenance. We could scale easily by just modifying some settings in the portal.

Abstraction of computing resources like Heroku does with dynos.
Azure Portal overall is pretty bloated and that affects managing Azure App Service applications.

Return on Investment

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.

Alternatives Considered

Heroku Platform and Google App Engine

Azure App Service will give you a very solid and strong platform to deploy your applications. It gives you great interfaces to manage those applications either through a Web Portal or the Azure command-line interface. However, I consider Azure overall to be very complex and hard for newcomers to use it right away. I would consider Heroku first due to its extremely simple interface and abstraction of computing units.

Support Rating

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.

Key Insights

Do you think Azure App Service delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Azure App Service's feature set?

Yes

Did Azure App Service live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Azure App Service go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Azure App Service again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Heroku Platform, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)

Likelihood to Recommend

If your application is developed in Visual Studio IDE (usually .NET applications), it will be extremely easy to deploy your applications to Azure App Service. Visual Studio IDE already has the functionality to deploy there with very few clicks.

Due to the complexity and bloatedness of Azure Portal, I would recommend less complex platforms like Heroku for less-experienced developers.

Azure App Service, a great platform - yet a bit complex interface

Overall Satisfaction with Azure App Service