Functioning Azure WordPress for less than $3500?

[levseltzer]

Microsoft generously grants non-profit organizations $3500 per year in Azure services. I have set up a few clients with WordPress on Azure (using the standard app called "WordPress" which seemingly runs under Windows), but I am finding two problems:

1. The service is exceedingly slow. Much slower than competing services such as wpengine or wpx.net which cost about $250/year and give lightning performance.
2. The costs usually go above $3500/year!

Is there an easy option to run a responsive WordPress website on Azure? I asked tech support and they responded with a link to a complex page diagramming how Azure can be responsive if suddenly thousands of people come to your website. I don't need that. I need the website to simply show a page within 10 seconds (now it is 60) when one (1) person visits. If I get a second visitor and he has to wait another few seconds for the page, then so be it.

Thank you.

[#2]

@levseltzer If you are still working on WordPress, I would urge you to try out WordPress on Azure App Service | Microsoft Azure Marketplace

[#3]

I already set up some clients with https://github.com/azureappserviceoss/wordpress-azure
Are you referring to something else? Or were improvements made?
Thank you.

[#4]

@levseltzer 

You can also try Wordpress on a single node AKS cluster. 

Helm Charts to deploy WordPress in Kubernetes (bitnami.com)

It is literally 2 commands if you already have an AKS setup already.

This creates the Wordpress web app and a MariaDB app in the AKS cluster that can handle scale and all the rest. If you start with a single server in the node pool you should not come close to that amount.

 - Johan