Google Cloud CDN vs. Heroku Platform

Google Cloud CDN is available globally and supports various load balancers available in different regions around the globe, so I find Google Cloud CDN as one of the best choices for CDN as it serves globally and it is really fast, safe, and secure. It might be not suitable for you if you do not have any technical background.

Incentivized

Heroku is very well suited for startups looking to get a server stack up and running quickly. There is little to no overhead when managing your instances. However, you'll need a background in basic DevOps or system management to make sure everything is set up correctly. In addition, it's easy to accidentally go crazy on pricing. Make sure you're only creating the server instances you need to run the base application and set up an auto-scaler plugin to handle peaks.

Incentivized

• The intelligent categorization and management of site content cache in Google Cloud CDN is unique and offers the best results with simple settings.
• It has powerful servers in all geographical regions of the world and the speed of the site will increase many times for the customer with smart routing.
• It has AnyCast IP feature and website receives a single global IP address. In this case, the site loads at the same speed worldwide.

Incentivized

• Heroku has a very simple deployment model, making it easy to get your application up-and-running with minimal effort. We can focus on our efforts the unique aspects of our application.
• The robust add-on marketplace makes it easy to try out new approaches with minimal effort and investment -- and when we settle on a solution, we can easily scale it.
• Heroku's support is quite good -- their staff is quite technical and willing to get into the weeds to diagnose even complicated problems.

Incentivized

• Unable to use any kind of code to show different content.
• Absence of cloud workers as provided by Cloudfront, Cloudflare and Akamai.
• No support for dynamic routing.

Incentivized

• Large price jumps between certain resource tiers (2x Dyno for $50 per month versus Performance Dyno for $250). Free Postgres next jumps to $50 per month.
• Marketing/Branding to non-technical stakeholders. As the years pass, I've had to fight more to convince stakeholders on the value of Heroku over AWS.
• Improve Buildpack documentation. This is one area where Heroku's documentation is fairly confusing.

Incentivized

Heroku is easy to use, services a ton of functions for you out of the box, and provides a means to get a software product off the ground and managed quickly and easily. The tools provide allows a small to medium size org to move very quickly. The CLI tools provided make managing an entire technical infrastructure simple.

Incentivized

There is not really an interface for managing rules directly, compared to market leaders, Google's implementation is probably strong on the technical side but for the average user it might be lacking. There are no advanced features which can be compared to what other leaders in the CDN sector are providing or they can be achieved but with high implementation cost and usage of other products in the Google Cloud suite

Easy to use web based console and easy to use command line tools; deployment is done directly from a GIT repository. What more could you ask for? The one thing that keeps me from giving it a 10 is that custom build packs are almost incomprehensible. We used one for a while because we needed cairo graphics processing. Fortunately, I was able to figure out a different way to do what we needed so that we could get off the custom build pack.

Heroku availability correlates pretty strongly to AWS US EAST availability. We had a couple of times where there was a Heroku-specific issue but not for the last 7-8 months.

The only issue that I ever have is that about 1 out of 20 deployments (git push) will hang and need to be cancelled and done again.

I didn't have the need to use support from Google when I was either testing or setting up my website. Information was easily found by searching online if I needed to, and the options that I needed to install or enable were there on the setup page. Honestly, I was a former systems administrator so most of this stuff is not challenging for me.

Incentivized

I've used it for many years without facing any major problem. It's not hard at all to get used to it, it's documentation is outstanding and simple. We are close to 2020 and I don't think most of the existing companies or startups should still face old problems such as wasting time deploying code and calculate computing resources.

Incentivized

Be ready to pay a bit more than expected in the beginning if you're migrating from a big server. The application is probably not ready for the change and you have to keep improving it with time.

It's also important to consider that you can't save anything to the disc as it will be lost when your application restarts, so you have to think about using something like S3.

Incentivized

We have limited software developers and don't have the need for a big cloud service provider along with their costs. Google Cloud CDN brings to usr, reliability and brand familiarity. Google Cloud CDN also doesn't bother us with pitches or 1000 emails about the products. We went and signed up for it, without dealing with a pushy salesperson.

Incentivized

Heroku is the more expensive option for hosting compared to some of the cloud platforms we investigated, but it's worth it for us because of the plug-and-play nature of Heroku deployment. We can be up and running in a few minutes and know with precision how much it will cost us each month to run the application, unlike Amazon Web Services where you have to go to great pains to configure it correctly or else you might end up with a shocking monthly bill. Overall, spending the time to configure Amazon Web Services or one of its competitors is likely the more affordable and powerful choice, because you have control over so many specifics of the configuration. But it also requires the burden of continuing to maintain and update your AWS instance, whereas with Heroku they take care of security fixes and platform upgrades. It's a great service and we are happy to pay the extra cost for the value-adds Heroku provides.

Incentivized

• Google Cloud CDN has worked great as a tool to provide more reliable and faster interactive web experiences such as with e-learning sites.
• The product can require additional training costs, even for experienced IT administrators.
• Overall, ongoing costs can also be prohibitive for organizations with smaller web presences.

Incentivized

• It has been critical in seamlessly operating our platform with runs all of our programs.
• It has been impressive with its ability to scale quickly which results in the growth of our work.
• It allows for tracking of different features which allows for quick problem solving which saves us time.