azurebotsbotframeworkskype

AZURE Microsoft Bot Framework usage for Skype Bot cost

If not using premium channels, the bot can be created for free, but while creating it, you need to assign a storage and more, if you don't have any, you have to select "Create new". If you do, will you be billed?

We need to use the bot for simple notifications about events for less than 10 people.

Is it really going to be free or are they going to bill us? Thanks for the answers.

Solution

  • Why are you asked to create a storage account?

    You have to assign a storage during the creation of a Web App Bot in Azure Portal in order to store information, for example to store bot state.

    At the origin, Microsoft provided a Bot Framework State Service API that was the default State storage, but this was made for testing only. In production you should use reliable and performant solutions like detailed on their documentation here.

    As you can see it can be your own solution, or using Cosmos DB or Table Storage which require only a few lines of code to use.

    I think that's the reason why Microsoft is asking for this storage in the process.

    What does it cost?

    If you are not using the storage for your bot, you will not be billed anything for this resource because the costing is only dependant on the data you write / read / store, as details in Azure pricing page.

    See my below (unused) storage account cost for a running bot, since January 1st: enter image description here

    If you still don't want to create it even if I will not use it

    Instead of using the Web App Bot template, you can create only what is necessary for your bot to run, which would be 3 items:

    That's more or less what is created behind the scenes for Web App Bot template. + an additional storage.