Azure Container Instances vs Sliplane

If you're looking to deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications, both Azure Container Instances (ACI) and Sliplane can help you out. But, they serve different needs and users. Let's break down the key differences and see which one might be the best fit for you.

In a nutshell:

Azure, in general,is known to target enterprise clients. It integrates well with other Azure services that allow highly scalable and redundant setups but comes at a premium price point. Sliplane, on the other hand, is focused on startups, SMBs, and solo developers looking for a simple and affordable alternative to get containers running in the cloud quickly, without the overhead of managing infrastructure.

Scalability

Scaling on Azure Container Instances

Azure container instances offers vertical scaling. You can specify the exact number of CPU and Memory that should be reserved for your containers, CPU is limited to 4 virtual cores, memory up to 16 GB. Horizontal scaling is not supported out of the box. In theory it's possible by adding a load balancer in front of your instances, but Azure offers two different products that already do that: Azure Container Apps (ACA) and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). You can deploy globally to a dense network of data centers operated by Microsoft.

Scaling on Sliplane

On Sliplane, you deploy your applications on virtual private servers. You have the possibility to scale these servers vertically if needed. Servers go up to 16 vCPUs and 32 GB of RAM. Similar to ACI, horizontal scaling is also possible but not natively supported. You would have to spin up new servers manually and handle load balancing with a custom load balancing service. If you want to scale globally, you can deploy your services to six different locations: two in Germany, two in the US, one in Finland, and one in Singapore.

Reliability

Azure Container Instances Reliability

Azure provides an SLA that starts refunding you 10% if monthly uptime is below 99.9% (~40 minutes of downtime) and up to 25% if it goes below 99.0% (~7 hours of downtime). Additionally, Azure provides advanced tooling for creating high-availability setups with redundancy across all components of the system, although this goes beyond Azure Container Instances capabilities.

Sliplane Reliability

Sliplane does not provide SLAs. It is built mostly on top of Hetzner infrastructure. In the past three months (Nov 24 - Jan 24), uptime was over 99.95%, and going back further, it was consistently over 99.99%. It's safe to say that the general reliability of the service is rock-solid. Sliplane does not offer tooling for high-availability setups >99.99% uptime out of the box. When it comes to backup and recovery options, Sliplane provides automatic daily volume backups for every server, which can be restored within the platform.

Ease of Use

To better understand the difference, let’s look at the deploy flow of both platforms.

How to deploy an application with ACI?

I can't explain it in more detail than the ACI documentation itself, so if you need a detailed guide, I suggest you look there. There are several ways to deploy applications with ACI, but to give you a rough example, the steps may look something like this:

1. Set up your Azure account.
2. Go to the Container Instances app.
3. Create a new resource and provide all Basics, Networking and Advanced settings.
4. Deploy the application.

By default ACI deploys containers from a registry, which means if you want to setup a CI/CD pipeline, you need to configure some addional services like Azure Container Registry to store your images and Azure DevOps to build your images.

I won't go into the details here, just take note, that getting the setup right and understanding some of Azure's concepts can take some time if you have not done it before.

How to deploy an application with Sliplane?

You can find a detailed guide to deploy a service with Sliplane in the docs. The steps involve:

1. Sign up with your GitHub account.
2. Create a project.
3. Create a server to deploy to.
4. Choose either a repository or registry as a deploy source and
   deploy your service with all the config it needs (environment variables, volumes, etc.).
5. You can deploy new versions of the service by pushing new commits to your repo or via webhook.

Pricing

Pricing of Azure Container Instances

Azure Container Instances bills by the second that your containers are running. Additionally, you pay for storage of container images, persistent storage and backups for your apps, cloud build time, and networking fees.

The pricing structure is quite complex, so I'll only cover some examples that are close to what Sliplane offers. I won't look at savings plans or one-off discounts.

Compute:

As mentioned before, you can configure the exact amount of memory and CPU that you need. For comparison, let's try to replicate a setup close to Sliplane. Take note that CPU is capped at 4 cores and memory at 16 GB:

ACI prices in US East, monthly prices have been calculated based on 30.42 days of runtime, prices from 03/05/2025

Storage and Network:

In US East, Azure's Managed Disks start at $0.30 for 4 GB plus a transaction fee for read, write, and delete operations. The transaction fee is limited by the maximum number of transactions, e.g., max. $1.00 for a 4 GB disk. For the comparison, I will neglect it, even though a high number of transactions can have a quite significant influence.

Bandwidth charges from US East to the internet start at $0.08 per GB ($80 per TB) for outgoing traffic, incoming traffic is free. 100 GB egress are included for free each month.

Let's include storage and network resources in our calculation, as these are also provided on Sliplane:

ACI prices in US East including storage and networking fees, comparable to what Sliplane offers, monthly prices have been calculated based on 30.42 days of runtime, prices from 03/05/2025

Additional fees:

It doesn't stop there. You'll also be charged for Backups, Registry storage, Cloud builds and more that you might need on top of your ACI configuration. The exact costs depend on your project, and as I mentioned before, it's complicated.

Pricing of Sliplane

Compared to ACI, Sliplane's pricing is simpler. You pay per server, which includes storage and traffic up to a certain limit. Beyond that, there are additional costs for extra bandwidth.

In US East, server prices are as follows:

Sliplane US server prices, including networking and storage at an exchange rate of $1.05 EUR-Dollar, 03/05/2025

Additional bandwidth costs $0.0021 per GB ($2.10 per TB).

Summary

In summary, Azure Container Instances and Sliplane are suited for different users and needs.

Azure Container Instances:

Azure is generally known for targeting mainly enterprise clients. It provides good integration with other Azure services and offers a rock-solid service.

That being said, there is a certain learning curve to getting into the platform, and it takes a while to fully understand the product suite and Azure concepts that are necessary to get an application running in the cloud.

Additionally, the service comes at a premium price point, and it's very easy to lose track of what's going on with your bill since Azure's usage-based pricing is very complex.

Target Audience:

• Large enterprises with high reliability and security requirements, with no restrictions on budget.
• Teams with Azure integration needs (e.g. Azure AI Services, Azure SQL, ...).
• DevOps teams that already have extensive Azure knowledge and are willing to invest in the Azure ecosystem.

Sliplane:

Sliplane is not competing with Azure for enterprise use cases. Its focus lies on startups, SMBs, and solo developers who can't justify spending thousands of dollars for an additional 0.01% of uptime.

Overall, the platform is much simpler to use, as it hides most of the infrastructure complexity and allows users to focus on their apps.

It comes with predictable pricing at highly competitive rates.

Target Audience:

• Startups, SMBs, or solo developers who don't want to deal with AWS complexity.
• Non-DevOps teams that want reliable but easy-to-use infrastructure.
• Companies looking for cost-effective alternatives and a predictable pricing model.