Azure sneakily hides cheaper option in it's UI

Recently a friend had to set up some cloud infrastructure on Azure. He was trying to create a VPN Gateway through the web UI, but couldn’t find the “Basic” tier (the cheapest on Azure). The only available options started at more than $100 / month!

He later stumbled upon this support request (archived), where a Microsoft employee shamelessly explains what’s going on: the Basic SKU is no longer available in Azure portal. And you have to use PowerShell or CLI if you want to create a Basic SKU VPN Gateway. It turns out this is even “documented” in a dark corner of their FAQ.

From the perspective of a user who’s trying to get something done through the Azure portal, this seems like Microsoft is intentionally hiding the existence of this product’s basic tier. My expectations for cloud vendors were already low, but this hits a new record.