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Google App Engine vs. Microsoft Azure vs. Microsoft SQL Server

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Google App Engine

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AGoogle 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

    Microsoft Azure

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.

    $29

    per month

    Microsoft SQL Server

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft SQL Server is a relational database.

    $1,418

    Per License

    Pricing
    Google App EngineMicrosoft AzureMicrosoft SQL Server
    Editions & Modules
    Starting Price
    $0.05
    Per Hour Per Instance
    Max Price
    $0.30
    Per Hour Per Instance
    Developer
    $29
    per month
    Standard
    $100
    per month
    Professional Direct
    $1000
    per month
    Basic
    Free
    per month
    Subscription
    $1,418.00
    Per License
    Enterprise
    $13,748.00
    Per License
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Google App EngineMicrosoft AzureMicrosoft SQL Server
    Free Trial
    NoYesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesYesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—The free tier lets users have access to a variety of services free for 12 months with limited usage after making an Azure account.—
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Google App EngineMicrosoft AzureMicrosoft SQL Server
    Considered Multiple Products
    Google
    Chose Google App Engine
    Compared with Microsoft Azure, Google App Engine requires a more complicated development environment setup. It's not as simple as using Visual Studio 2015 with Azure SDK. There are multiple IDE on the market to choose from for developing apps for Google App Engine. JetBrains …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google App Engine
    If you have a small team which is also responsible for development of the product then surely go for it. And if you have a larger team with dedicated person to take care of deployments. Go for cheaper options such as compute engine or AWS (be sure to do your research on pricing …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google App Engine
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google App Engine
    I think that Microsoft and Amazon are simply investing more in their offerings, and there are a bunch of cool PaaS solutions out there as well. Google App Engine is solid, and is probably the right choice for some projects. But ultimately one should evaluate each platform …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google App Engine
    • No management of operating system
    • Cheaper
    Incentivized
    Microsoft
    Chose Microsoft Azure
    We have settled with Microsoft Azure considered its effective administration and the ability to data visualization and analysis, together with the top-notch security/stability.
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Azure
    Nowadays it is too hard to say why and how one cloud service is better than the other. IT is probably the question that combines a lot of different aspects like price, functionality, how it looks, ease of administration, size of the infrastructure. As for me, it is more …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Azure
    A few years ago we were a fairly large AWS shop. At a specific point the decision was made to go to Azure and we have been very happy with the outcome. Azure works better, integrates better, has better support and is cheaper that What we had with AWS. Simply put Azure is the …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Azure
    Honestly in my opinion there is no one winner in this area. Both Azure and AWS are great in their own way. Pricewise it all depends in where you're from. Options are very similar and quality of what you get as well as the customer service are both great.
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Azure
    Amazon has more or less all the features like Azure. With Microsoft being a technology company, for any new feature in Microsoft, the integration will be seamless.
    Incentivized
    Microsoft
    Chose Microsoft SQL Server
    Since we run a .NET shop I'm not able to speak too much on how it compares to the alternatives. I would say in our dealings with MYSQL demonstrated that Microsoft SQL Server is less complicated to get up and running initially. The user interface of MYSQL seemed to be complex …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft SQL Server
    My experience with Microsoft SQL Server and the form to connect across multiple data connector: Flat file, CSV, Access, Oracle, MySQL, excel file, XML, JSON. Also, MS SQL has a good Reporting tool and interaction with the Web Apps like an HTTP.Requesting data. MS SQL Server is …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft SQL Server
    Microsoft SQL Server is more secure and offers more robustness for our data. SQL Server is also great because of its integration with Microsoft Visual Studio. It's also great because developers can build reports and stuff like that from scratch. It's faster compared to PostgreSQ…
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    92%
    Would buy again
    12 Answers
    92%
    Would buy again
    34 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    53 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    13 Answers
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    31 Answers
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    45 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    92%
    Happy with the feature set
    12 Answers
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    35 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    53 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    89%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    24 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    39 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    92%
    Implementation went as expected
    12 Answers
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    34 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    45 Answers
    Features
    Google App EngineMicrosoft AzureMicrosoft SQL Server
    Platform-as-a-Service
    Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure and Microsoft SQL Server
    Feature
    Google App Engine
    9.5
    32 Ratings
    20% above category average
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft SQL Server
    -
    Ratings
    Ease of building user interfaces9.018 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Scalability10.032 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform management overhead9.032 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Workflow engine capability8.024 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform access control10.031 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Services-enabled integration10.028 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Development environment creation10.029 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Development environment replication10.028 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Issue monitoring and notification9.028 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Issue recovery9.026 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Upgrades and platform fixes10.029 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
    Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure and Microsoft SQL Server
    Feature
    Google App Engine
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Azure
    8.4
    27 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Microsoft SQL Server
    -
    Ratings
    Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.126 Ratings00 Ratings
    Dynamic scaling00 Ratings8.725 Ratings00 Ratings
    Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.624 Ratings00 Ratings
    Pre-configured templates00 Ratings8.225 Ratings00 Ratings
    Monitoring tools00 Ratings8.326 Ratings00 Ratings
    Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings8.424 Ratings00 Ratings
    Operating system support00 Ratings8.926 Ratings00 Ratings
    Security controls00 Ratings8.626 Ratings00 Ratings
    Automation00 Ratings8.224 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Google App EngineMicrosoft AzureMicrosoft SQL Server
    Small Businesses
    IBM Cloud Foundry
    Score8.5 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Object Storage
    Score9 out of 10
    Amazon RDS
    Score8.1 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Cloud Private
    Score9.6 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    SingleStore
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    AWS Elastic Beanstalk
    Score8.6 out of 10
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9 out of 10
    SAP IQ
    Score5.4 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Google App EngineMicrosoft AzureMicrosoft SQL Server
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (36 ratings)
    8.7
    (96 ratings)
    7.9
    (107 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.3
    (8 ratings)
    10.0
    (17 ratings)
    9.0
    (8 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (8 ratings)
    8.3
    (36 ratings)
    7.6
    (17 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.8
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.4
    (12 ratings)
    9.0
    (27 ratings)
    7.9
    (26 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.0
    (6 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    Data Sources
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (5 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Google App EngineMicrosoft AzureMicrosoft SQL Server
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Azure is particularly well suited for enterprise environments with existing Microsoft investments, those that require robust compliance features, and organizations that need hybrid cloud capabilities that bridge on-premises and cloud infrastructure. In my opinion, Azure is less appropriate for cost-sensitive startups or small businesses without dedicated cloud expertise and scenarios requiring edge computing use cases with limited connectivity. Azure offers comprehensive solutions for most business needs but can feel like there is a higher learning curve than other cloud-based providers, depending on the product and use case.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Microsoft SQL is ubiquitous, while MySQL runs under the hood all over the place. Microsoft SQL is the platform taught in colleges and certification courses and is the one most likely to be used by businesses because it is backed by Microsoft. Its interface is friendly (well, as pleasant as SQL can be) and has been used by so many for so long that resources are freely available if you encounter any issues.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Microsoft Azure is highly scalable and flexible. You can quickly scale up or down additional resources and computing power.
    • You have no longer upfront investments for hardware. You only pay for the use of your computing power, storage space, or services.
    • The uptime that can be achieved and guaranteed is very important for our company. This includes the rapid maintenance for security updates that are mostly carried out by Microsoft.
    • The wide range of capabilities of services that are possible in Microsoft Azure. You can practically put or create anything in Microsoft Azure.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Easy to configure and use with Visual Studio and Dot Net
    • Easy integration with MSBI to perform data analysis
    • Data Security
    • Easy to understand and use
    • Very easy to export database and tables in the form of SQL query or a script
    Incentivized
    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)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • The cost of resources is difficult to determine, technical documentation is frequently out of date, and documentation and mapping capabilities are lacking.
    • The documentation needs to be improved, and some advanced configuration options require research and experimentation.
    • Microsoft's licensing scheme is too complex for the average user, and Azure SQL syntax is too different from traditional SQL.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise edition has a high cost but is the only edition which supports SQL Always On Availability Groups. It would be nice to include this feature in the Standard version.
    • Licensing of Microsoft SQL Server is a quite complex matter, it would be good to simplify licensing in the future. For example, per core vs per user CAL licensing, as well as complex licensing scenarios in the Cloud and on Edge locations.
    • It would be good to include native tools for converting Oracle, DB2, Postgresql and MySQL/MariaDB databases (schema and data) for import into Microsoft SQL Server.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Moving to Azure was and still is an organizational strategy and not simply changing vendors. Our product roadmap revolved around Azure as we are in the business of humanitarian relief and Azure and Microsoft play an important part in quickly and efficiently serving all of the world. Migration and investment in Azure should be considered as an overall strategy of an organization and communicated companywide.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    We understand that the Microsoft SQL Server will continue to advance, offering the same robust and reliable platform while adding new features that enable us, as a software center, to create a superior product. That provides excellent performance while reducing the hardware requirements and the total cost of ownership of our solution.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Google
    I had to revisit the UI after a year of just setting up and forgetting. The UI got some improvements but the amount of navigation we have to go through to setup a new app has increased but also got easier to setup. Gemini now is integrated and make getting answers faster
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    As Microsoft Azure is [doing a] really good with PaaS. The need of a market is to have [a] combo of PaaS and IaaS. While AWS is making [an] exceptionally well blend of both of them, Azure needs to work more on DevOps and Automation stuff. Apart from that, I would recommend Azure as a great platform for cloud services as scale.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    SQL Server mostly 'just works' or generates error messages to help you sort out the trouble. You can usually count on the product to get the job done and keep an eye on your potential mistakes. Interaction with other Microsoft products makes operating as a Windows user pretty straight forward. Digging through the multitude of dialogs and wizards can be a pain, but the answer is usually there somewhere.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    Its does not have outages.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    SSAS data cubes may some time slow down your Excel reports.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    We were running Windows Server and Active Directory, so [Microsoft] Azure was a seamless transition. We ran into a few, if any support issues, however, the availability of Microsoft Azure's support team was more than willing and able to guide us through the process. They even proposed solutions to issues we had not even thought of!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    We managed to handle most of our problems by looking into Microsoft's official documentation that has everything explained and almost every function has an example that illustrates in detail how a particular functionality works. Just like PowerShell has the ability to show you an example of how some cmdlet works, that is the case also here, and in my opinion, it is a very good practice and I like it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    It was good
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    very hands on and detailed training
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    As I have mentioned before the issue with my Oracle Mismatch Version issues that have put a delay on moving one of my platforms will justify my 7 rating.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Other than SQL taking quite a bit of time to actually install there are no problems with installation. Even on hardware that has good performance SQL can still take close to an hour to install a typical server with management and reporting services.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    As I continue to evaluate the "big three" cloud providers for our clients, I make the following distinctions, though this gap continues to close. AWS is more granular, and inherently powerful in the configuration options compared to [Microsoft] Azure. It is a "developer" platform for cloud. However, Azure PowerShell is helping close this gap. Google Cloud is the leading containerization platform, largely thanks to it building kubernetes from the ground up. Azure containerization is getting better at having the same storage/deployment options.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    [Microsoft] SQL Server has a much better community and professional support and is overall just a more reliable system with Microsoft behind it. I've used MySQL in the past and SQL Server has just become more comfortable for me and is my go to RDBMS.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    SQL server does handle growing demands of a mid sized company.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • For about 2 years we didn't have to do anything with our production VMs, the system ran without a hitch, which meant our engineers could focus on features rather than infrastructure.
    • DNS management was very easy in Azure, which made it easy to upgrade our cluster with zero downtime.
    • Azure Web UI was easy to work with and navigate, which meant our senior engineers and DevOps team could work with Azure without formal training.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Increased accuracy - We went from multiple users having different versions of an Excel spreadsheet to a single source of truth for our reporting.
    • Increased Efficiency - We can now generate reports at any time from a single source rather than multiple users spending their time collating data and generating reports.
    • Improved Security - Enterprise level security on a dedicated server rather than financial files on multiple laptop hard drives.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots