Web Hosting Plans with Azure Websites

Q: What are Web Hosting Plans with Azure Websites?

A: There are numerous tiers of service available for Azure Websites, such as free, shared, basic, and standard. Instead of selecting a tier when creating an Azure Website you select an existing Web Hosting Plan or create a new one; the Web Hosting Plan uses a specific tier of service. Azure Websites placed in the same Web Hosting Plan share an infrastructure; for example, if the Standard tier is selected with five instances, then on the Azure fabric five virtual machines are created. If two Azure Websites are deployed to the same Web Hosting Plan, then those two Azure Websites share the five virtual machines. If the tier of a Web Hosting Plan is changed, it affects all the Azure Websites that use the Web Hosting Plan.