Google App Engine vs. IBM Cloud Foundry

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google App Engine
Score 8.3 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
IBM Cloud Foundry
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
IBM Cloud Foundry is an IBM version of the open-source platform designed for building, testing, deploying, and scaling applications. Enterprises can run Cloud Foundry in a public isolated environment, while natively integrating with other IBM Cloud services, such as AI, Blockchain, and IoT.
$0.07
Per GBH
Pricing
Google App EngineIBM Cloud Foundry
Editions & Modules
Starting Price
$0.05
Per Hour Per Instance
Max Price
$0.30
Per Hour Per Instance
Community Runtimes
$0.07
Per GBH
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google App EngineIBM Cloud Foundry
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google App EngineIBM Cloud Foundry
Considered Both Products
Google App Engine
Chose Google App Engine
Azure App Service is in par with Google App Engine although you may want to use Azure App Service if you are integrating with other Microsoft IT components, for example SQL Server. Google App Engine is great when in long run, you will be using Google cloud components, for …
IBM Cloud Foundry
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
IBM Cloud Foundry is among the services provided by our cloud provider. This is why we choose to go with Cloud Foundry.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Google App EngineIBM Cloud Foundry
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Google App Engine
8.7
31 Ratings
6% above category average
IBM Cloud Foundry
7.6
24 Ratings
8% below category average
Ease of building user interfaces9.017 Ratings7.010 Ratings
Scalability9.031 Ratings8.524 Ratings
Platform management overhead8.931 Ratings8.512 Ratings
Workflow engine capability9.023 Ratings8.020 Ratings
Platform access control8.930 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Services-enabled integration8.027 Ratings7.523 Ratings
Development environment creation8.928 Ratings7.722 Ratings
Development environment replication8.027 Ratings6.49 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification9.027 Ratings4.711 Ratings
Issue recovery8.925 Ratings7.520 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes8.028 Ratings7.522 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google App EngineIBM Cloud Foundry
Small Businesses
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Score 8.9 out of 10
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.5 out of 10
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.5 out of 10
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google App EngineIBM Cloud Foundry
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(35 ratings)
8.5
(32 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.3
(8 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
7.7
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.4
(12 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google App EngineIBM Cloud Foundry
Likelihood to Recommend
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
IBM
As it is an open-source platform as a service, it is very easy to operate, scale, and deploy regardless of what programming language and framework it's written in. However, it could be improved in terms of scalability. There should be proper documentation for easier and clearer understanding to make the process smooth.
Read full review
Pros
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
IBM
  • Simplicity - the command line tool provided can get you up and running within minutes.
  • Resourceful - IBM Cloud Foundry is built on top of the open source Cloud Foundry technology, so any resources you find online about Cloud Foundry generally can be applied.
  • Feature rich - provides all the necessary features for a cloud based platform, such as auto-scaling, 0 downtime deployment.
Read full review
Cons
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)
Read full review
IBM
  • Need: VISUALIZATION CAPABILITIES! Particularly with the Conversation Service.
  • Need: Annotation capabilities for dialog nodes in Conversation Service.
  • Need: Search/querying capabilities in Conversation Service
  • Need: Clearer documentation of the S2T service. I had to use a third party website for an understanding of how to use this.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
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.
Read full review
IBM
No answers on this topic
Usability
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.
Read full review
IBM
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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.
Read full review
IBM
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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
IBM
CF is what we initially went with to establish a development pipeline and start our cloud journey, now we are expanding this and although we are now pulling in many other tools and functions around CF, it is not being replaced. It stands out as having a key place working ‘with’ git, Kubernetes, IBM cloud etc, not against or segregated from it.
Read full review
Return on Investment
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.
Read full review
IBM
  • IBM Bluemix is mainly a foundation enabler at this stage, although our business plan does look promising.
  • The low cost of development on Bluemix for a start-up like us is so helpful......we had no spare cash for this project besides what we could save or borrow at first, and that wasn't much. We are still trying to attract venture capital to cover the main Cordova Coding effort plus the launch "Cash Burn".
  • Features like push notifications, mobile-back end, and world-beating security help us to sell our SaaS products/services.
  • The pure (usually!) functionality of IBM products and services is very rewarding to work with.They are so insightful and thoughtful, to say naught of clever!
Read full review
ScreenShots