Strapi on App Service: Overview

What is Strapi on App Service?

Strapi is an open-source, headless CMS that is highly customizable and developer-friendly, making it a popular choice for content management. When it comes to Strapi hosting, deploying Strapi, or self hosting Strapi, Azure App Service stands out as a premier solution. Azure App Service is a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web apps, offering unparalleled scalability and reliability. Deploy Strapi on Azure App Service to leverage Strapi's flexible content management capabilities with the robust infrastructure of Microsoft's cloud. Whether you're looking to self-host Strapi or find the best hosting options for Strapi, Azure App Service provides the ideal environment for high availability, security, and performance.

This offering integrates key Azure services such as:

• Azure App Service: A scalable platform-as-a-service (PaaS) optimized for running Node.js applications such as Strapi.
• Azure Database for MySQL flexible server – A fully managed database service that offers high availability, automated maintenance, and elastic scaling for MySQL databases.
• Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server: A fully managed database service that offers high availability, automated maintenance, and elastic scaling for PostgreSQL databases.
• Azure Email communication service:  A reliable and scalable service for sending and receiving emails within your applications.
• Azure Virtual Network (VNET): A virtual network service that enables secure communication between Azure resources, on-premises networks, and the internet.
• Azure Blob Storage: A scalable object storage service optimized for storing large amounts of unstructured data, such as text or binary data.
• Azure Managed Identity: A service that provides Azure resources with an automatically managed identity in Azure Active Directory, allowing them to authenticate to any service that supports Azure AD authentication without managing credentials.

This solution is designed for both small and large-scale deployments, making it an ideal for use cases such as dynamic elements for your mobile apps, corporate websites, e-commerce apps, editorial apps, configuration data for your backend and use with SSGs (Static Site Generators) etc. With greater customization control, global region availability, pre-built integration with other Azure services Strapi on Azure App Service simplifies infrastructure management while ensuring high availability, security and performance.

Quick start documentation | Create a Strapi app using the Azure portal

Making Strapi more powerful with Azure App Service

With this solution you can now deploy Strapi efficiently on App Service and provides following benefits:

• Greater customization and control: You have full control over your service configuration, database choices, and security settings, allowing for fine-tuning to match your project requirements. You can scale up or scale out your Azure resources, integrate with services such as Azure defender, App insights, Azure front door to enhance security and performance.
• Global region availability: App Service is available in most Azure regions globally, to choose a region based on geographic needs and data residency requirements. Please check the specific regions availability of Azure product.
• Deep integration with Azure services: Seamless integration with other Azure services like Blob Storage, Azure Defender, Azure Front Door, Azure App Insights, Azure Load Testing, and multiple database options (MySQL, Postgres, etc.), streamlining development workflow.
• Pre-configured setup: Get a preconfigured setup optimized for performance and security using various Azure services, ensuring desired performance and security on day one.
• High resiliency and reliability: Azure App Service achieves resilience by allowing users to configure applications to be "zone-redundant," spreading resources across multiple availability zones within an Azure region, mitigating the impact of single-point failures. Learn more
• Security & compliance: Ensuring security and reliability with SSL, DDoS protection, Web Application Firewall (WAF), Virtual Network (VNET) integration, managed identities, Key Vault, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Supports industry-leading compliance certifications including SOC, ISO, and more. Running Strapi on dedicated instances further enhances security and performance compared to shared & multi-tenant hosting.
• Enhanced performance and scalability: Strategies like autoscaling or manual scaling rules to adjust compute resources based on traffic demands, using Azure Front door (AFD) to reduce latency, integrating Blob Storage to offload static assets, and conducting load testing to fine-tune application responsiveness.
• Enterprise grade features: Automated backups and easy restoration options, staging slots for safe testing, CI/CD pipelines for automated deployments, and comprehensive logging and monitoring capabilities.

What are scenarios for Strapi on App Service?

Strapi on App Service can be used in various scenarios, including:

• Content Management: Use Strapi as the backend for content-heavy websites and applications, providing an easy-to-manage interface for content creators.
• E-commerce: Deploy Strapi for e-commerce platforms that require customizable product management and user interactions.
• Mobile Backend: Use Strapi as the backend for mobile applications, enabling efficient data management and retrieval.
• Corporate websites and intranets: Scalable and secure solutions for public-facing sites or internal portals.
• Marketing campaigns: Deploy high-performance landing pages to support digital marketing initiatives.
• And there are more use cases and showcase that you can learn on Strapi documentation.

How to estimate pricing

Strapi on App Service combines multiple Azure resources to provide an optimal experience. We have configured default plans for each service to help you get started quickly. However, it is recommended to manually adjust these plans to meet your production requirements. You can change the default plan either in the ARM template before deployment or post-deployment via the portal. Refer to Strapi Hardware requirements to set up a pricing plan for your application.

Below is a table of the various services installed, along with links to their pricing plans and the default plans selected. Note that Azure service charges depend on the region.

For latest definition of default plans, refer directly to the ARM template.

For better estimates, we recommend using the Azure pricing calculator. You can add the required Azure services, their respective plans, and other parameters to arrive at an estimate. Learn more about pricing calculator and cost optimization.

Next Steps

To get started with deploying Strapi on App Service:

• Set up an Azure account with active subscription. If you do not have an account, you can Create an account for free.
• Follow the quick start documentation to configure and deploy your Strapi application.

Related content

• How to deploy Strapi on App Service: Quick start guide
• Hosting Strapi on App Service - FAQ
• Azure App Service
• Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server
• Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server
• Azure Communication Services Email
• Azure Blob storage
• Official Strapi Documentation

Support and Feedback

The Strapi deployment templates shared in this blog post are not a managed solution. Strapi is a third-party software platform, and Microsoft Customer Support and Services (CSS) will not support the Strapi related issues. Microsoft only provides support for the underlying Azure infrastructure and the services used in the solution. If you need any assistance, feel free to open a support request through the Microsoft Azure portal. New support request - Microsoft Azure

We value your feedback and suggestions to help us enhance our solution. Please feel free to share your thoughts or start a conversation by emailing us at strapionappservice@microsoft.com.