When should you choose Azure App Service over AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) to host a web application ?
Answer
App Service is a managed platform designed to deploy a web application or API directly without managing the underlying infrastructure or orchestrating containers yourself: you push code or an image, App Service handles the rest, including simple horizontal scaling and certificates. AKS gives full control over a Kubernetes cluster, suited to a complex microservices architecture that needs fine-grained orchestration, sidecars, or Kubernetes-specific patterns, but at the cost of much heavier operational overhead. For a simple or medium application without a need for advanced orchestration, App Service avoids unnecessary complexity.
Common trap
The trap is choosing AKS by default because Kubernetes has become a de facto standard, without the project actually needing its level of orchestration: it adds significant operational overhead and a learning curve for a benefit that can remain theoretical on a simple application.