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I have a 1 website and 1 database and 1 SSL hosted on azure. I used to have the 'Basic' hosting package but was paying $70 a month for a bare bones setup with the minimum scaling on everything.

I realize my low traffic site doesn't need a dedicated machine so I tried moving to a Shared plan. Now it is telling me I have to be on the Basic plan in order to have an SSL.

Is there a way around this? Or am I actually expected to pay roughly $70 a month for the most basic website setup out there?

hanesjw
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  • Have you tested any proposed solution? – JuanK Dec 28 '15 at 20:04
  • Consider not using Azure and running on a Linux server. They can cost as little as $5 a month. If you are using MVC, try MVC Core with nginx https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/publishing/linuxproduction – Daniel Roberts Jan 04 '17 at 22:33
  • Go take a vote on this suggestion and maybe Microsoft may implement a solution. https://feedback.azure.com/forums/169385-web-apps/suggestions/39223321-support-app-service-managed-certificates-on-free-a – Martin Brown Apr 12 '20 at 14:38

4 Answers4

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There's a work around to Azure not allowing SSL on Shared web app plans with custom domains.

You can create your website with Azure shared plan, and use CloudFlare to route your traffic to your domain. So basically your domains DNS would point to CloudFlare and you would configure CloudFlare with your azure shared website. CloudFlare Free plan comes with a free SSL certificate. So essentially your traffic is SSL secured.

Troy Hunt shows the way.

Dharmendar Kumar 'DK'
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    I wouldn't recommend using that method, it's a bit of a hack. You get SSL from your user to Cloud Flare then you have to rely on Cloud Flare to use SSL to Azure. At best you now have to rely on both Cloud Flare and Azure to be secure and at worst you may have unsecured traffic between Cloud Flare and Azure. – Daniel Roberts Jan 04 '17 at 22:19
  • I know this is old, but I believe that point is addressed in the article. – PerpetualStudent Aug 20 '18 at 00:32
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    Successfully used this method today (6th of September, 2018). – Lauri Harpf Sep 06 '18 at 09:17
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    Apart from letting you confiure SSL on Shared Azure accounts this approach also gives you all the good things of CloudFlare - DDoS protection, global CDN, etc – Dharmendar Kumar 'DK' Sep 21 '18 at 20:17
  • My reading of the terms of cloudflare is that this is only allowed for non-commercial uses. – Martin Brown Apr 12 '20 at 14:29
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    I managed to get this to work perfectly. Things have changed a little bit since, but the free Cloudflare account together with Azure's cheapest plan that you can use a custom domain is a great option. – Hoots Sep 03 '20 at 16:35
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If you need SSL over your custom domain there's no way, at least on azure web Apps. You'll need to run the site in Basic plan.

The workaround:

Deploy your site in an Azure VM using the cheaper plan: A0 15 USD / month and configure there your IIS + SSL Certificate

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Otherwise

If you need HTTPS using your azurewebsites domain (mysite.azurewebsites.net) this one IS included in service just use https to browse the website.

Community
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JuanK
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  • And the worst is that this limit apply for letsencrypt configuration!, i lost my time try to config this, for just see a message in the last step in kudus config that this cant be possible :(. – Juan Ruiz de Castilla Mar 14 '21 at 02:05
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You will have to be on "Basic" plan in order to have SSL. see details from below link.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/app-service/plans/

Xiaomin Wu
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    Thanks for the reply. Is it just me or is $70 a month for a database, website, and SSL a little excessive? I have to be missing something here. – hanesjw Dec 15 '15 at 20:10
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    @hanesjw Azure is very open to suggestions and feedback. If you think we should adjust our offer, please post feedback/suggestion to here https://feedback.azure.com/forums/169385-web-apps-formerly-websites – Xiaomin Wu Dec 15 '15 at 21:26
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Unfortunately, its 2021 and Azure still hasn't addressed this issue. There are at least 2 Azure feature requests open for this with thousands of votes.

In any case: if you have a simple web site and can't justify the cost for upgrading to the Basic App Service plan then https://stackoverflow.com/users/634938/dharmendar-kumar-dk comment above is the best answer. Cloudflare's free level account is still only takes a minute to setup and works quite well.

I wouldn't recommend using the Cloudflare workaround for anything collecting sensitive info from the user. The path from Cloudflare to your Azure app won't be encrypted. In many cases this probably isn't an issue, especially if your goal is to just get a secure lock in user's browsers.

Lets hope that the Azure team will finally address this sometime in the near future. I can't imagine this involves anything of a technical challenge to them. I suspect they are trying to limit the number of simple low end sites running in Azure.

JeffC
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