How To Choose An Azure App Service Plan – Demystifying App Service Plans
Azure App Service is one of the most common and most used services. When we deploy apps, jobs etc., to the app server, one thing that confuses us and that makes decision making hard is the multitude of the tiers (options of plans) available. I will be comparing the different tiers that Azure App Service has and how each one differs and which one to choose considering your requirement.
First and foremost, every tier supports deploying multiple apps to the same tier at no extra cost but there is a limit on the number of applications based on the tier. So all your apps will share the resources allotted as part of the tier you choose. Let’s compare each of these tiers to see where they differ.
Free Tier
As the name says, this comes free of cost but with conditions
Configuration
Shared Core, 60 mins of CPU per day, 1 GB RAM, 1 GB storage
What you get
Deploy max of 10 apps, 10 Logic App Definitions, 200 Logic App Actions per day, 500 Active mobile devices per day
What you don’t get
Instances, SLA (support), Auto Scale, Backups, SSL certificates, Staging Environment, custom domain
When to use
Use this plan for PoC & development purposes. Production scenarios are to be avoided for sure as you have neither SSL nor a custom domain support
Shared Tier
This tier is charged based on per hour usage
Configuration
Shared Core, 0.5 GB RAM, 1 GB storage
What you get
Deploy max of 100 apps, 10 Logic App Definitions, 200 Logic App Actions per day, 500 Active mobile devices per day, custom domain
What you don’t get
Instances, SLA (support), Auto Scale, Backups, SSL certificates, Staging Environment
When to use
Though this tier is one level ahead of free tier, it’s suggested only for hosting basic apps where you don’t have any security or recovery options as this tier also doesn’t support SSL and also backups.
Basic Tier
This tier is charged based on per hour usage and the number of instances used
Configuration
Starts from 1 Core, 1.75 GB RAM, 10 GB storage
What you get
Deploy unlimited apps, 10 Logic App Definitions, 200 Logic App Actions per day, Unlimited Active mobile devices per day, custom domain, Up to 3 Instances, Unlimited SNI SSL certs, 99.95% SLA
What you don’t get
Auto Scale, Backups, Staging Environment
This is the starting level tier for your production workloads. You get a dedicated instance & with 99.95% SLA, SSL support to put your apps to really work. With multiple instances you also get your app load balanced.
Standard Tier
This tier is charged based on per hour usage and the number of instances used.
Configuration
Starts from 1 Core, 1.75 GB RAM, 50 GB storage
What you get
Deploy unlimited apps, 25 Logic App Definitions, 10,000 Logic App Actions per day, Unlimited Active mobile devices per day, custom domain, Up to 10 Instances, Unlimited SNI SSL certs & one IP SSL included, 99.95% SLA, Auto Scale, 2 Automated Backups per day, 5 staging environments
What you don’t get
Five staging environment means 5 slots per deployed web app. But note that each slot shares the same pool of resources as your live app. So load test is not suggested here.
When to use
This is a pure fit for your serious production apps with an IP based SSL support.
Premium Tier
This tier is charged based on per hour usage and the number of instances used
Configuration
Starts from 1 Core, 1.75 GB RAM, 250 GB storage
What you get
Deploy unlimited apps, 100 Logic App Definitions, 50,000 Logic App Actions per day, Unlimited Active mobile devices per day, custom domain, Up to 50 Instances, Unlimited SNI SSL certs & one IP SSL included, 99.95% SLA, Auto Scale, 50 Automated Backups per day, 20 staging environments,
This tier offers the best features & also provides you with access to dedicated App Service Environments (ASEs) that carve out private network space in Azure for just your Apps.
When to use
As the name suggests, use this for your premium/high intensive apps
Considerations
As with any Azure service, app service comes with some considerations that you need to be aware of.
1. Azure Logic Apps are available only to EA customers
2. 165 MB outbound network traffic included, additional outbound network bandwidth charged separately.
Premium service plan allows up to 50 computes instances (subject to availability) and 500 GB of disk space when 3. using App Service Environments (ASE) and 20 compute instances and 250 GB storage when not using ASE.
The features and plans get updated regularly & hence this document can be referred to for basic understanding but for any specific feature details/capacity do refer to Azure plan documentation @https://azure.microsoft.com
Reference:
Jayabalan, C (2018) . Available at: https://blog.hubfly.com/azure/how-to-choose-an-azure-app-service-plan-demystifying-app-service-plans (Accessed 20 June 2018)
