Choosing between Azure Logic Apps & Azure Functions.
Choosing between Azure Logic Apps & Azure Functions.
If you already know how to code, then Azure Functions might be easy way to migrate some of your applications to the cloud with minimal changes. What if you don’t and still want to put some serverless business automation in place, consider Azure Logic Apps.
Aside the ability to code, there are a few things to know about these two services to be able to make the best choice for your scenario:
Automation Complexity:
Azure Logic apps is best suited for business scenarios involving other azure or business automation services, as it comes with 100s of connectors to popular applications & services.
Consider Azure functions when there is a need to have multiple pieces of services for specific functions that are called in response to events.
Usage & Licensing
Logic Apps offers predictable pricing for consistent workflows. There is the Standard plan, where you pay for a fixed set of resources and also Consumption plan, where you pay for actual execution and triggers
It depends on the number of connectors in use and the frequency that they are used.
Azure Functions generally follows a pay-as-you-go consumption-based pricing model, where you only pay for the resources used during the execution of the functions. This refers to the memory allocated used during execution. There are other plans that offer dedicated resources too.
Key Audience:
Azure Logic Apps are suited for super users, low-code devs & developers. Its workflow UI designer makes it possible for non developers to build their automations. Developers can add more complexities using code or switch to the code view if they want.
Azure functions is a purely code based serverless service. Codes will have to be written in any of the supported languages using an IDE or code editor. Scripts can also be directly written in the portal.
In conclusion, I describe below some scenarios:
Best Suited Scenarios:
Use Azure Logic Apps if your tasks are related to:
Event driven workflows
Data manipulation and transformation
Connection to Azure resources and business automation tools.
Use Azure Functions if there is a need for:
Messaging
Building API & Backend
Complex third party integration