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Visual Studio Application Insights Pricing Discounted for Volume Users
Microsoft announced pricing cuts for volume users starting June 1 while Application Insights is in public preview.
Earlier this week, Microsoft said it would reduce the pricing of its Visual Studio Application Insights while it was in public preview. It's still free to use the basic service, but there are Standard and Premium versions that allow for larger sets of data for longer periods of analysis.
Application Insights at its essence is a performance monitor for detecting and diagnosing problems in mobile and Web applications. It supports the monitoring of a number of application environments, including iOS, Android, Windows, J2EE, and ASP.NET apps, as well as WCF services. It is served as a software development kit that is embedded into an application that needs to be monitored, and it's through that connection that data from an application is then streamed in real time to an Azure portal. (Read "Application Insights Update Allows for Sharing Customized Monitors," for our recent coverage on the solution.
The free version allows up to 5 million data points to be tracked. As the number of data points tracked goes up, developers who want to maintain a constant vigil on app usage can opt for Standard and Premium services. The Standard version pricing when it goes live will be $49 for up to 15 million data points tracked, and $3.50 per million thereafter. The Premium service will be $199 for 50 million data points, and then $4 per million over that. During the public preview, the pricing of the Standard and Premium versions are discounted to half the regular pricing.
Currently, a 30-day trial that provides for all the services under the Premium tier is available for free, for developers who want to test drive the service's capabilities, such as Continuous Export, which automates the export of application telemetry into an Azure account that developers set up for monitoring (that service is unavailable to free users, except those who are using the Premium 30-day trial).
To use Application Insights, start here. It does require an Azure account for data streaming and storage.
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