WebGL Static Hosting with Azure, Web App Service necessary ?

We're looking at a robust and reliable host for our WebGL game.

One option is to use Microsoft Azure, and there is this fundamental question about what Azure services subscription(s) is/are need to do this that I can't find an answer for:

As far as I understand it, our WebGL Build is static - that is the WebGL app is downloaded to the browser and runs and there is no need for any server side process to do dynamic content processing.

Given that, it seems that simple Azure Blob static content hosting is all that is needed. Blob hosting is very inexpensive - as little as $5 / mo.

However, every single the Azure Unity WebGL tutorial that i have found uses an Azure Web App Service subscription, and there is never any information given that explains why that service is used or if it is necessary.

The minimum App Service subscription costs 10 times as much as the Blob service, so you see why I am trying to find answers to this issue!

Thanks for any advice!

 

Do you have experience using that service to host a WebGL file?

We are already using PlayFab for authentication and user data storage, so no need any dynamic service with Azure to do that.

 

All you need is a basic hosting company. If you want to use Azure, you can but it's definitely not needed just for a WebGL file to host.

 

Hey thanks!

Do you have experience with WebGL and Azure?

Yes, I know, I have been dealing with Web hosting services for a number html projects for many years now, but we were thinking we might give cloud hosting a go because of its reliability and robustness.

With the hosting service I use for my personal web sites I have to upgrade for faster bandwidth more power to handle greater numbers of concurrent requests. I mean, we're hoping to have hundreds of thousands of users all over the globe, and if 1000s of them all open the game at the same time, we need a system at the back end that can deliver it without problems. So we are shopping around.

It's just not stated in the tutorials if there is something intrinsic in WebGL delivery that requires an Azure Web Service subscription. Do you know for a fact that there is not?

 

I have used AWS S3 buckets on large scale enterprise projects with a good degree of success for WebGL, and am still working on a live project that uses this.

If it works in an S3 bucket I cant see why it would not work in an azure blob.

 

I've used this, and there is not.

You can use an azure storage container for a webGL build.

It's not entirely without limitations; if your build is wrapped by a frontend framework like angular/vue/react, you may find that the history api limitations on the storage account are problematic; you should instead use the 'Azure Static Web Apps' service for that (azure has so many similar names, Static Web Apps are still not the same as using an app service, and considerably cheaper to host).

...anyway, if you're just putting a vanilla WebGL build up, it'll work fine.

Just FYI though, just remember you pay for traffic, like on S3; "as little as $5 / mo" depends entirely on how many visitors you get.