Where Should It Live? Azure Hosting Options for a Static Site, Compared

Part 4 of 6 in the series “Hand-Code Your CV: From Empty Folder to Live on Azure”

In the first three parts we built a CV out of three plain files: index.html, style.css and script.js. It works on your machine. Now we need to put it somewhere the rest of the world can reach it.

Azure offers several ways to do this, and for a site this small the differences between them are mostly about three things: cost, performance, and how much you get for free (custom domains, HTTPS, automatic deployment). This post maps the options. In Part 5 we’ll deploy to the two most sensible ones, and in Part 6 we’ll look hard at the money and the milliseconds.

A note on prices: cloud pricing changes often. The figures below were checked against Microsoft’s documentation in September 2026, but treat them as a guide and confirm on the Azure pricing pages, or in the Azure pricing calculator, before you commit.

What “hosting a static site” actually means

A static site has no code running on a server. When someone visits, a web server just hands over the files, and the visitor’s browser does the rest: it reads the HTML, fetches the CSS and JavaScript, and builds the page, exactly as it did on your laptop.

So the job of a host is small: store the files, answer requests for them quickly, and serve them securely over HTTPS. Anything beyond that is a bonus you may or may not be paying for.

Option 1: Azure Storage static website

Azure Blob Storage, the service normally used to store files and backups, has a feature that turns a storage account into a basic web server for static files.

You enable “static website” on the account, Azure creates a special container called $web, and you upload your files into it. Your site gets an address like https://<account-name>.z22.web.core.windows.net. You tell it which file is your index page (index.html) and optionally a custom 404 page.

The good:

• Very cheap. There’s no charge to enable the feature, and you only pay normal blob storage costs: for the space your files occupy, the operations performed, and data going out. For a CV of a few hundred kilobytes, that’s typically pennies a month, or less.
• Simple, and closest to the “files on a disk” mental model.
• You choose the region, so you can place it near your audience (for example, UK South).

The catches:

• HTTPS on your own custom domain isn’t built in. Microsoft’s docs say you need to put Azure CDN or Azure Front Door in front of the storage account to get it. That’s the important trade-off: the storage is nearly free, but the HTTPS solution isn’t.
• No custom HTTP headers (for security or caching rules) without a CDN or Front Door.
• Your files live in one region, so a visitor on the other side of the world pays the latency penalty.
• File names are case-sensitive. Index.html is not index.html.

Option 2: Azure Static Web Apps

Static Web Apps is a service built specifically for the kind of site we’ve made. You give it your files (or point it at a GitHub repository) and it hosts them, serves them from a globally distributed network, and handles HTTPS for you.

The Free plan:

• $0 per month.
• Free, automatically renewing SSL certificates, including for custom domains.
• Up to 2 custom domains per app.
• 100 GB of bandwidth per month. On the Free plan there’s no way to buy more, so 100 GB is a hard limit rather than a billing threshold.
• Maximum app size of 250 MB, which is plenty for a CV.
• No service level agreement (SLA).
• Built-in deployment from GitHub: push a change and the site updates.

The Standard plan:

• A per-app monthly fee (it was around $9 per app per month when I last saw it, but check the pricing page).
• The same 100 GB included bandwidth, but you can go beyond it at $0.20 per GB.
• Up to 5 custom domains, larger app limits, and an SLA.

For a personal CV, the Free plan is genuinely hard to beat. It costs nothing, gives you HTTPS on your own domain, and puts your content on a distributed network without you configuring anything.

The catches: the 100 GB cap is generous for a personal site but is a real ceiling, and the lack of an SLA means it’s not what you’d choose for a business-critical page. It’s also a more opinionated service, with its own deployment flow and a configuration file for advanced routing, so there’s a little more to learn than the “drop files in a folder” simplicity of Storage.

Option 3: Azure App Service

App Service is Azure’s general-purpose web hosting platform. It runs your code on virtual machines that Azure manages for you, and it’s designed for applications with a back end, such as Node, .NET, Python or PHP.

You can put static files on it, but you’d be using a truck to deliver a postcard.

The Free (F1) tier:

• $0, and intended for trials and learning.
• 60 CPU minutes per day, 1 GB of memory and 1 GB of storage.
• No custom domains. You get an azurewebsites.net address only.
• A very small outbound bandwidth allowance (around 165 MB, according to the Azure limits documentation).
• The app can be idled when not in use, which means a visitor may wait for it to wake up.

The Basic tier and up (B1 and beyond):

• Paid by the hour whether or not anyone visits. B1 gives you 1 vCPU, 1.75 GB of RAM and 10 GB of storage.
• Supports custom domains, and you can add certificates.
• Sensible if your site grows a back end, but far more capacity than a static CV needs, and it costs a good deal more than Options 1 and 2.

For our purposes, App Service is the one to skip. It’s worth knowing about because it’s what you’d graduate to if your CV site became a real application.

The accelerator: putting a CDN or Front Door in front

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) keeps copies of your files on servers around the world and serves each visitor from the nearest one. That cuts latency, and it means your origin server sees less traffic.

Azure Front Door is Microsoft’s current answer. It combines a CDN with routing, security and HTTPS handling. It’s what you’d add to Storage if you want HTTPS on a custom domain, custom headers and worldwide caching.

The money matters here. According to the Front Door pricing page, the Standard tier has a base fee of $35 per month, billed hourly, plus charges for data going out to visitors (starting around $0.083 per GB in North America and Europe) and requests. The Premium tier is $330 per month. That base fee is many times what Storage itself would cost you for a small site, so for a personal CV it’s usually not worth it.

You may also see references to the older “Azure CDN Standard from Microsoft (classic)” product. Microsoft has been retiring the classic CDN products in favour of Front Door, so check its status before building anything new on it.

Comparing them side by side

Here’s how the options stack up for a small personal site:

Azure Storage static website

• Cost: pennies per month.
• HTTPS on a custom domain: needs Front Door or a CDN (extra cost).
• Global performance: single region unless you add a CDN.
• Best for: learning, or cost-focused hosting where you’ll accept the trade-offs.

Static Web Apps (Free)

• Cost: $0.
• HTTPS on a custom domain: included and automatic.
• Global performance: distributed content delivery built in.
• Best for: a personal CV or portfolio. This is my default recommendation.

Static Web Apps (Standard)

• Cost: a monthly per-app fee, plus $0.20 per GB beyond 100 GB.
• HTTPS on a custom domain: included.
• Best for: a professional or business site that needs an SLA or more headroom.

App Service (Free / Basic)

• Cost: $0 on the free tier (with heavy limits), then hourly charges.
• HTTPS on a custom domain: not on Free; available on paid tiers.
• Best for: sites with server-side code. Overkill here.

Storage + Front Door

• Cost: Storage pennies plus $35 per month base fee and per-GB charges.
• HTTPS on a custom domain: yes, with full control over headers and caching.
• Global performance: excellent.
• Best for: sites where you need that control, and the budget for it.

My recommendation

If you’re building a personal CV, start with Static Web Apps on the Free plan. It’s free, it’s fast, and it gives you the things that are awkward or expensive on the other routes: HTTPS on your own domain and global delivery.

But I’d also suggest deploying the same files to an Azure Storage static website as an exercise. It’s the most transparent option: it’s literally “files in a container,” and doing it will help you understand what the more automated services are doing on your behalf. That’s the same reason we built the site by hand in the first place.

In Part 5 we’ll do both.

Next: Part 5, Going Live: Deploying Your CV to Azure.

Sources for the figures in this post: Microsoft Learn (Static Web Apps plans and quotas; static website hosting in Azure Storage; Azure subscription and service limits) and the Azure pricing pages for Static Web Apps, App Service and Front Door. Prices were checked in September 2026 and can change.