Microsoft recently announced the general availability (GA) of Azure Static Web Apps, a serverless web app hosting service for static web apps. The service provides developers with one package that works for static web apps – which Azure manages for them.
Last year at the Build conference, the company introduced Static Web Apps as a public preview, including integration with GitHub and features such as authentication and authorization capabilities, routes, preview in pre-production environments, and custom domains. Later in September, support for Blazor WebAssembly and .NET Functions was added by Microsoft. And now, the service is GA and includes a free- and standard plan for advanced capabilities supported by an enterprise Service Level Agreement (SLA).
Next to new hosting plans, the GA release includes a few other new features like:
- Full support for root domains through ALIAS records, allowing developers to bring their own domain
- Support for bringing your own authentication provider to enable developers to integrate it with their static web app
- A new Azure Static Web Apps CLI providing a local replica of the cloud production environment with mocked hosting platform features for authentication, custom routing, and authorization rules to support local development
Furthermore, since Azure Static Web Apps integrates with Azure Functions, developers can opt to extend their app with serverless API endpoints. In an Azure blog post on the GA release, Daria Grigoriu, principal PM manager, Azure Static Web Apps, stated:
Starting with this release, you can even bring an existing Azure Functions project and use that as your API. This allows you to take advantage of the full set of triggers, bindings, and extensions that Azure Functions offers. Azure Functions scale dynamically so your app is always ready to meet market demand.
With a tailor-made VS Code extension, developers can create static web apps and leverage libraries and frameworks like Angular, React, Svelte, Vue, or Blazor. Moreover, Rafael Rivera, a senior software engineer at Telos Corporation, said in a tweet:
Don't skip over Azure Static Web Apps. It's like GitHub Pages on steroids. You push your content to GitHub, and it'll handle SSL, wiring up web APIs (az functions!), serve up static content, and even handle auth (AAD, FB, G, TWIT, etc.) for you. Crazy!
Other static web app services similar to Azure Static Web Apps are Netifly, Vercel, and Cloudflare Pages. The latter became GA in April, while Netifly and Vercel have been available for some time. In a blog post by office development MVP Elio Struyf comparing Netifly, Vercel, and Azure Static Web Apps, his conclusion was:
In the end, all three of the services provide the same things. It will be your choice to see the best fit to your site you want to host. If I have to choose, I would consider these questions:
Want quick and easy hosting? Go for Vercel.
Want extra features like Forms and Identity management? Go for Netlify.
Already using Azure? Want full control over the deployments? Go for Azure Static Web Apps.
Lastly, the pricing details of Azure Static Web Apps are available on the pricing page, including the service availability - which is global. Developers can find more information in the available quickstarts, guides and tutorials.
