Microsoft recently rolled out several new updates to Microsoft Azure. Not to be outdone, Microsoft has also rolled out a Basic price tier for Azure Web Sites. This basic package offers Azure Web Sites abilities, allowing you to run production sites at a lower cost. You can also have up to three instances of dedicated Virtual Machine, SSL support, Scheduled Jobs, Endpoint Monitoring and more.
“With the April updates to Microsoft Azure, Azure Web Sites offers a new pricing tier called Basic. The Basic pricing tier is designated for production sites, supporting smaller sites, as well as development and testing scenarios,” Microsoft stated in an official blog post.
There are four different pricing tiers, which include Free, Shared, Basic, and Standard. Each of these tiers offer their own capabilities and capacity. Here is a breakdown of all the packages, including the new Basic option:
- Free web sites: These are primarily for evaluation purposes, enabling a free playground for anyone who wishes to experience Azure Web Sites at no cost. Free web sites have no SLA.
- Shared web sites: These reduce some of the restrictive quotas associated with Free, allowing you to run your web sites 24×7. However, shared web sites are still very much limited in capacity and feature set. Shared site have no SLA either.
- Basic web sites: These are designed for production of small to medium web sites. Basic web sites have all Azure Web Sites core abilities at a reduced priced.
- Standard web sites: These are designed to be used in production for medium to very large web sites. Standard web sites leverage the full range of Azure Web Sites capabilities, enabling advance scenarios such as high-availability and improved development operations.
You can change a web site’s pricing tier by heading over to the Azure Portal and select the Scale tab. This new pricing tier is intended to offer some of the high-end features at a reasonable cost.
