Deploy ASP.NET Core apps to Azure App Service with lesser cost

When we think of ASP.Net apps, we generally think to host on Azure web Apps on windows OS. Which is awesome and very easy to manage from Azure Portal. But this OS comes with extra cost due to licensing.

With ASP.Net Core Microsoft enabled us to run these apps on non-Windows OS platforms like Linux, MacOs. If we explore the Azure App Services Pricing and choose Linux OS, then they are almost 30-60% cheaper than the Windows OS pricing based on selected Tiers (Basic/Standard/Premium etc.).

For e.g. Azure App Service with Windows OS with Basic plan charges 55$ per month.

Whereas, if you choose Linux OS with Basic plan which charges 13$ (Promotional), Standard plan is slight lesser i.e. 4$ less, Premium Plan is almost 50% lesser than Windows OS.

Cost plays very crucial roles for any Organization, specially when it is startup where every single penny worth to save. I have worked with several startups and had first hand experience on how cost impacts with time. Specially when startups joins Microsoft BizSpark kind of programs where they get free unlimited credits for certain period, which gives us opportunity to focus on business/technology and not worry on infrastructure cost. But at the end of program they end up using over provisioned resources which lands them into huge monthly bills.

We should do proper capacity planning on costing by evaluating alternatives which will save money.

We may not get all the features of Windows OS hosting vs hosting on Linux OS, but there are always workarounds. From feature parity we can achieve everything regardless of what will be our host OS.

We should be always careful when we choose the resources even though they are free.

You can read more on Azure App Service on Linux.