Azure Websites Vs Cloud Service Vs Virtual Machines

What is the best way to host Web Apps in Azure?

Azure provides us several platforms to host websites: Azure Websites, Cloud Services and Virtual Machines are the options you might be looking for. But all these could be pretty confusing. You might get stuck on making the right decision asking “Which option to rely on?” to yourself. So here is a breakdown for you.

Azure Websites

Azure Websites has very little responsibility to complete, and relatively less control. It is the best choice for most web apps. Deployment and management are integrated directly into the platform we get. It is scalable, can handle high traffic loads. It can provide you high availability. If you have an existing site, you can easily migrate to Azure using online migration tool. You can use gallery in Azure to create your web apps from scratch, or create new site using the framework you want.

Azure Cloud Services

If you want more, web server like environment you might want to go with Azure Cloud Services. You can remote into your cloud services and configure startup tasks. Cloud Services provide you more Ease of Management and Agility than Azure Websites, but less control than it. Cloud Service provides you multiple deployment environments same as of Azure Websites but this is not available in Virtual Machines. Apart from the websites you can install any packages you want which provides you more flexibility.

Azure Virtual Machines

Azure Virtual Machines could be your choice if you want frequent modifications and changes in your web server environment. It provides you rich set of features; however, correctly configuring, securing and maintaining VMs require much more time and more IT expertise compared to Azure Cloud Services and Azure Websites. You will need to make more effort on frequent maintenance and update patches to manage the VM environment.

The following figure explains you more about choosing the right option;