There’s a feature for purchasing Internet Domain Names within Microsoft Azure that’s not very widely known. With the Azure App Service Domain feature, you can purchase and manage your domain names directly within Microsoft Azure. This is a sort of “hidden” feature since not many people know it exists, and it’s not talked about very often either. It provides integration between Domain Name management and Microsoft Azure that can be used to keep all your application / website management exclusively within the Microsoft Azure ecosystem; if that’s something you’re interested in.

App Service Domain

A quick search in the Azure Marketplace within the Microsoft Azure Portal for “App Service Domain” will reveal this service / feature. While branded as a part of “App Service”, it’s a separate service that can be used individually.

While the service is branded as part of Azure App Service, it can still be used stand-alone. You do not need to have an Azure App Service web app to use the feature. It can be used to register a domain name to be used just as you would with any other domain name provider.

To begin registering a domain name, a search needs to be performed for available domain names. After you type in the domain name you would like to register, the App Service Domain interface in the Azure Portal will display a list of suggested domain names based on the search.

You need to fill out the contact information, privacy protection, and accept the legal terms once you’ve selected the domain name you wish to register. You also need to specify an Azure Resource Group to organize the App Service Domain within; just as with any other Azure resource. After all this, you can go ahead and “Create” the App Service Domain and it will register the domain name on your behalf and make it manageable within Microsoft Azure.

App Service Domain Pricing Details

The Azure App Service Domain service enables custom domains to be purchased and managed within Microsoft Azure. The pricing for domains purchased through this service is $11.99 USD* per year; including Privacy Protection.

Purchasing domain names using the Azure App Service Domain service costs $11.99 USD* per year for each domain name. Plus, this included Privacy Protection as well!

Not all top-level domains (TLDs) are supported. Azure App Service Domains is setup to resell domains via GoDaddy, and only the following TLDs are available right now:

• .com
• .net
• .co.uk
• .nl
• .in
• .org.uk
• .co.in

To use the Azure App Service Domain service, you’ll need to make sure to have the spending limits on your Azure Subscription disabled and have a payment method configured. This basically means that a Free Trial subscription, or other Azure Subscription type, with free credits cannot be used to purchase domain names.

*You’ll want to double check the official App Service Domain pricing information from Microsoft as it may have changed since this article was published.

Why use App Service Domain?

It’s common to use one of various domain name providers in the industry to register and maintain Internet domain names. The App Service Domain service within Microsoft Azure adds another option that is “Azure-native”. This means that you can manage the Internet domain names for your application workloads within Microsoft Azure; just as you already do with all the other services used to build and create your application workloads.

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