Amazon Web Services vs. Google App Engine

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Web Services
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing services. With over 165 services offered, AWS services can provide users with a comprehensive suite of infrastructure and computing building blocks and tools.
$100
per month
Google App Engine
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Google App Engine is Google Cloud's platform-as-a-service offering. It features pay-per-use pricing and support for a broad array of programming languages.
$0.05
Per Hour Per Instance
Pricing
Amazon Web ServicesGoogle App Engine
Editions & Modules
Free Tier
$0
per month
Basic Environment
$100 - $200
per month
Intermediate Environment
$250 - $600
per month
Advanced Environment
$600-$2500
per month
Starting Price
$0.05
Per Hour Per Instance
Max Price
$0.30
Per Hour Per Instance
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon Web ServicesGoogle App Engine
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAWS allows a “save when you commit” option that offers lower prices when you sign up for a 1- or 3- year term that includes an AWS service or category of services.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Web ServicesGoogle App Engine
Considered Both Products
Amazon Web Services
Chose Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services has a much more seasoned and known set of tools. The learning resources and documentation is much more prevalent and applicable to more scenarios which definitely helps with implementation. Google cloud does offer comparable products, and the user interface …
Chose Amazon Web Services
I selected AWS for my development environment and disaster recovery, due to the simplicity compared to other vendors.
Google App Engine
Chose Google App Engine
AWS and Heroku are both great, and I use them both extensively for different projects. Google App Engine was chosen because it is much more innovative than AWS, and because Heroku specializes in Ruby on Rails. Even though Heroku supports Java and other services, we feel Google …
Chose Google App Engine
With GAE it's a matter of "code your app and deploy it". You don't care on what servers or on how many servers it runs. System administration is done for you. With AWS you still have to be a system administrator with good knowledge and undestanding of load balancers, database …
Features
Amazon Web ServicesGoogle App Engine
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Web Services
8.4
78 Ratings
2% above category average
Google App Engine
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime9.172 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling8.873 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.369 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates7.166 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.373 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.166 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support7.972 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls8.674 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation8.325 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Web Services
-
Ratings
Google App Engine
8.7
31 Ratings
10% above category average
Ease of building user interfaces00 Ratings9.017 Ratings
Scalability00 Ratings9.031 Ratings
Platform management overhead00 Ratings9.031 Ratings
Workflow engine capability00 Ratings9.023 Ratings
Platform access control00 Ratings9.030 Ratings
Services-enabled integration00 Ratings8.027 Ratings
Development environment creation00 Ratings9.028 Ratings
Development environment replication00 Ratings8.027 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification00 Ratings9.027 Ratings
Issue recovery00 Ratings9.025 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes00 Ratings8.028 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon Web ServicesGoogle App Engine
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.3 out of 10
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon Web ServicesGoogle App Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(81 ratings)
8.0
(35 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.4
(10 ratings)
8.3
(8 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(12 ratings)
7.7
(7 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
7.2
(24 ratings)
8.4
(12 ratings)
Online Training
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(3 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Web ServicesGoogle App Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
This is something that is actually common across most cloud providers. A comprehensive understanding of one's use cases, constraints and future directions is key to determining if you even need a cloud solution. If you are a 2-person startup developing something with a best-scenario audience of 1k DAU in a year, you would very likely best served by a dirt-cheap dedicated Linux server somewhere (and your options to graduate to a cloud solution will still be open). If, however, you are a bigger fish, and/or you are actively considering build-vs-buy decisions for complicated, highly-loaded, six-figure requests per minute systems, global loadbalancing, extreme growth projections - then MAYBE you solve all or part of it with a cloud provider. And depending on your taste for risk, reliability, flexibility, track record - it might be AWS.
Read full review
Google
App Engine is such a good resource for our team both internally and externally. You have complete control over your app, how it runs, when it runs, and more while Google handles the back-end, scaling, orchestration, and so on. If you are serving a tool, system, or web page, it's perfect. If you are serving something back-end, like an automation or ETL workflow, you should be a little considerate or careful with how you are structuring that job. For instance, the Standard environment in Google App Engine will present you with a resource limit for your server calls. If your operations are known to take longer than, say, 10 minutes or so, you may be better off moving to the Flexible environment (which may be a little more expensive but certainly a little more powerful and a little less limited) or even moving that workflow to something like Google Compute Engine or another managed service.
Read full review
Pros
Amazon AWS
  • During the month-end, we experience high resource utilization; however, with AWS's scalability, we can effectively tackle the peak load.
  • With AWS IAM, we don't need to set up complete infrastructure for identity and access management, as AWS provides end-to-end IAM services.
  • With AWS, development has become very easy as it's very quick to spin up and destroy the environment, which saves costs.
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Google
  • Quick to develop, quick to deploy. You can be up and running on Google App Engine in no time.
  • Flexible. We use Java for some services and Node.js for others.
  • Great security features. We have been consistently impressed with the security and authentication features of Google App Engine.
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • When there is any misconfiguration of EC2 related to SSM Connect. It doesn't clearly states that what particular configuration is missing.
  • Debugging networking related issues could be improved.
  • From the security group page, it's difficult to determine which resource a security group is associated with.
Read full review
Google
  • There is a slight learning curve to getting used to code on Google App Engine.
  • Google Cloud Datastore is Google's NoSQL database in the cloud that your applications can use. NoSQL databases, by design, cannot give handle complex queries on the data. This means that sometimes you need to think carefully about your data structures - so that you can get the results you need in your code.
  • Setting up billing is a little annoying. It does not seem to save billing information to your account so you can re-use the same information across different Cloud projects. Each project requires you to re-enter all your billing information (if required)
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Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
We are almost entirely satisfied with the service. In order to move off it, we'd have to build for ourselves many of the services that AWS provides and the cost would be prohibitive. Although there are cost savings and security benefits to returning to the colo facility, we could never afford to do it, and we'd hate to give up the innovation and constant cycle of new features that AWS gives us.
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Google
App Engine is a solid choice for deployments to Google Cloud Platform that do not want to move entirely to a Kubernetes-based container architecture using a different Google product. For rapid prototyping of new applications and fairly straightforward web application deployments, we'll continue to leverage the capabilities that App Engine affords us.
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Usability
Amazon AWS
AWS offers a wide range of powerful services that cater to various business needs which is significant strength. The ability to scale resources on-demand is a major advantage making it suitable for businesses of all sizes. The sheer volume of options and configurations can be overwhelming for new users leading to a steep learning curve. While functional the AWS management console can feel cluttered and less intuitive compared to some competitors which can hinder navigation. Although some documentation lacks clarity and practical examples which can frustrate users trying to implement specific solutions.
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Google
Google App Engine is very intuitive. It has the common programming language most would use. Google is a dependable name and I have not had issues with their servers being down....ever. You can safely use their service and store your data on their servers without worrying about downtime or loss of data.
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Reliability and Availability
Amazon AWS
Availability is very good, with the exception of occasional spectacular outages.
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Google
No answers on this topic
Performance
Amazon AWS
AWS does not provide the raw performance that you can get by building your own custom infrastructure. However, it is often the case that the benefits of specialized, high-performance hardware do not necessarily outweigh the significant extra cost and risk. Performance as perceived by the user is very different from raw throughput.
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Google
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Amazon AWS
The customer support of Amazon Web Services are quick in their responses. I appreciate its entire team, which works amazingly, and provides professional support. AWS is a great tool, indeed, to provide customers a suitable way to
immediately search for their compatible software's and also to guide them in a
good direction. Moreover, this product is a good suggestion for every type of
company because of its affordability and ease of use.
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Google
Good amount of documentation available for Google App Engine and in general there is large developer community around Google App Engine and other products it interacts with. Lastly, Google support is great in general. No issues so far with them.
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Implementation Rating
Amazon AWS
The API's were very well documented and was Janova's main point of entry into the services.
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Google
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Amazon Web Services fits best for all levels of organisations like startup, mid level or enterprise. The services are easy to use and doesn't require a high level of understanding as you can learn via blogs or youtube videos. AWS is Reasonable in cost as the plan is pay as you use.
Read full review
Google
We were on another much smaller cloud provider and decided to make the switch for several reasons - stability, breadth of services, and security. In reviewing options, GCP provided the best mixtures of meeting our needs while also balancing the overall cost of the service as compared to the other major players in Azure and AWS.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • Using Amazon Web Services has allowed us to develop and deploy new SAAS solutions quicker than we did when we used traditional web hosting. This has allowed us to grow our service offerings to clients and also add more value to our existing services.
  • Having AWS deployed has also allowed our development team to focus on delivering high-quality software without worrying about whether our servers will be able to handle the demand. Since AWS allows you to adjust your server needs based on demand, we can easily assign a faster server instance to ease and improve service without the client even knowing what we did.
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Google
  • Effective employee adoption through ease of use.
  • Effective integration to other java based frameworks.
  • Time to market is very quick. Build, test, deploy and use.
  • The GAE Whitelist for java is an important resource to know what works and what does not. So use it. It would also be nice for Google to expand on items that are allowed on GAE platform.
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