[Morphling]

I actually think Azure is nice platform, but they've effectively priced me out.

What I mean is that if I want a basic VPS on Azure it costs ~10€/mo to run the server for the month, but there are many VPS providers who offer a lot better hardware for same price.

I guess Azure is meant for bigger needs than mine where you can run 100-200€/mo by default and then scale up when needed, but since my little blog + test/dev server won't need to be scaled it just seems too expensive.

[mobiplayer]

If you plan on building something, but your needs are not there yet you may want to apply for a BizSpark account that covers $150/mo if I'm not wrong. OTOH for a blog you may want to check the PaaS offerings (e.g. Azure Websites).