I used to mess around with Azure subscriptions a couple of years back, and I remember there was some sort of annual credit, maybe around $250, that I could use for testing and practice over a few months. Now, when I set up a new account, it looks like that's changed to just a $250 credit for the first 30 days, after which I can only use free resources. I'm trying to figure out the best way to set up a personal sandbox for testing. I can definitely use the free virtual machines for basic stuff, but I also want to learn about Azure AD, Intune, and other areas that require different licenses, like O365 E3 or E5. How do others set this up? Is it more cost-effective to just pay for the necessary services?
1 Answer
Honestly, there's no cheap way around this. Once the credits are gone, you either have to cancel or switch to Pay-As-You-Go. If you’re part of a business account, you might want to create a sandbox subscription with some budgets and alerts in place. If not, your options are to either go for a Pay-As-You-Go subscription or get a Visual Studio subscription, which includes monthly credits.
Yeah, I'm leaning towards paying as well since I want to test different tenants. I’ll need to check out the Visual Studio subscription but don’t know if it covers O365 licenses.