Well, if you’ve heard about cloud computing, you’re probably familiar with the three main cloud service models: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). In this article, we’ll look at Azure App Service, a popular PaaS offering that helps developers build, deploy, and scale web applications (a web application is software that can be accessed on a web browser over the internet). We’ll also discuss Azure Web Apps, a fully managed service that simplifies hosting by handling infrastructure, security, and scaling.
What is Azure App Services?
Azure App Service is a fully managed platform for hosting web applications, REST APIs, and mobile backends. It supports .NET, Java, Node.js, Python, and PHP on both Windows and Linux. It offers built-in security, load balancing, autoscaling, and automated management, along with DevOps integration for continuous deployment from Azure DevOps, GitHub, and Docker Hub. Additional features include staging environments, package management, custom domains, and TLS/SSL certificates.
What is Azure Web Apps?
You might be wondering—what’s the difference? Is Azure Web Apps the same as App Service? Azure Web Apps is actually a service within Azure App Service, specifically designed for hosting web applications. While App Service is a broader platform that includes Web Apps, API Apps, Mobile Apps, and Azure Functions, Web Apps focuses solely on running and managing web applications with features like autoscaling, security, and continuous deployment. So yes, you can call it Azure App Service Web App.
Benefits of Azure App services
Managed environment: Azure handles OS and framework updates, so you can focus on development.
Serverless execution: Run on-demand serverless code without managing infrastructure, using Azure Functions.
DevOps integration: EnableCI/CD with Azure DevOps, GitHub, Bitbucket, or Docker Hub
API & mobile support: Built-in Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) support, authentication, offline sync, and push notifications for mobile apps.
Authentication: Support for Microsoft Entra ID, Google, Facebook, and X for user authentication.
Understanding App Service Plans
Think of Azure App Service as a restaurant and the App Service Plan as the kitchen setup that powers it. The App Service is like the restaurant where customers (users) come to enjoy meals (web applications, APIs, and mobile backends). The App Service Plan is the kitchen’s infrastructure—its size, number of chefs, and available equipment—which determines how fast meals can be prepared and how many customers can be served at once. If the kitchen is too small (low-tier plan), the restaurant might struggle to keep up with demand. But if it’s well-equipped (higher-tier plan), it can serve more customers efficiently. Similarly, the App Service Plan defines the compute resources (CPU, memory, and scaling options) available to run apps in Azure App Service. An App Service Plan specifies the operating system (Windows or Linux), region, number and size of virtual machines (VMs), and pricing tier.
App Service Plan Pricing Tiers and Features
The pricing tier specified in the app service plan determines available features and costs:
Shared Compute (Free, Shared): Apps run on the same VMs as other customers’ apps with limited resources and no scaling, suitable for development and testing.
Dedicated Compute (Basic, Standard, Premium, PremiumV2, PremiumV3): Apps run on dedicated VMs, with higher tiers offering more scalability and resources.
Isolated (Isolated, IsolatedV2): Apps run on dedicated VMs within private Azure Virtual Networks, ensuring full isolation and maximum scalability.
Azure App Service makes it easy to build, deploy, and scale web applications without worrying about infrastructure management. To learn more, go to Azure App Service and start building today.