DigitalOcean App Platform vs. Google Compute Engine

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
DigitalOcean App Platform
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
The DigitalOcean App Platform enables developers to build, deploy, and scale apps on what they describe as a simple, fully managed PaaS. Users of the former Nanobox, acquired by DigitalOcean in 2019, have been migrated to the App Platform upon Nanobox's end of life in March 2021.
$5
per month
Google Compute Engine
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Google Compute Engine is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) product from Google Cloud. It provides virtual machines with carbon-neutral infrastructure which run on the same data centers that Google itself uses.
$0
per month GB
Pricing
DigitalOcean App PlatformGoogle Compute Engine
Editions & Modules
Basic
$5
per month
Professional
$12
per month
Preemptible Price - Predefined Memory
0.000892 / GB
Hour
Three-year commitment price - Predefined Memory
$0.001907 / GB
Hour
One-year commitment price - Predefined Memory
$0.002669 / GB
Hour
On-demand price - Predefined Memory
$0.004237 / GB
Hour
Preemptible Price - Predefined vCPUs
0.006655 / vCPU
Hour
Three-year commitment price - Predefined vCPUS
$0.014225 / CPU
Hour
One-year commitment price - Predefined vCPUS
$0.019915 / vCPU
Hour
On-demand price - Predefined vCPUS
$0.031611 / vCPU
Hour
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DigitalOcean App PlatformGoogle Compute Engine
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPrices vary according to region (i.e US central, east, & west time zones). Google Compute Engine also offers a discounted rate for a 1 & 3 year commitment.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
DigitalOcean App PlatformGoogle Compute Engine
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
DigitalOcean App PlatformGoogle Compute Engine
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
DigitalOcean App Platform
6.8
2 Ratings
18% below category average
Google Compute Engine
-
Ratings
Ease of building user interfaces7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability4.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform management overhead4.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform access control4.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Services-enabled integration9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment creation10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment replication10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification6.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue recovery8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes6.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
DigitalOcean App Platform
-
Ratings
Google Compute Engine
6.6
44 Ratings
21% below category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.126 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings8.241 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings7.737 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings5.242 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings3.027 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings5.643 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings6.944 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings7.044 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings7.92 Ratings
Best Alternatives
DigitalOcean App PlatformGoogle Compute Engine
Small Businesses
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Score 9.0 out of 10
Linode
Linode
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.5 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.5 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
DigitalOcean App PlatformGoogle Compute Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(2 ratings)
7.3
(44 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(6 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(6 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(10 ratings)
User Testimonials
DigitalOcean App PlatformGoogle Compute Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
DigitalOcean
I would only get into it if I where willing to pay for the support plan and getting some assurances from the team as to where they are headed. The platform itself is great and can save you a ton of hard work and money. but it's hard to be confidant in it's sustainability.
Read full review
Google
Google Compute Engine is so easy to implement and run. It doesn't require much knowledge to build an app since they provide multiple options to choose from with their prebuilt sample list. We can easily make customization on any website app we built for our client according to their needs and make changes if required.
Read full review
Pros
DigitalOcean
  • Hosting of serverless application
  • Hosting of load balancer
  • Hosting of virtual appliances
Read full review
Google
  • Scaling - whether it's traffic spikes or just steady growth, Google Compute Engine's auto-scaling makes sure we've got the compute power we need without any manual juggling acts
  • Load balancing - Keeping things smooth with that load balancing across multiple VMs, so our users don't have to deal with slow load times or downtime even when things get crazy busy
  • Customizability - Mix and match configs for CPU, RAM, storage and whatnot to suit our specific app needs
Read full review
Cons
DigitalOcean
  • The company has not been very communicative as of lately. Not much news, no apparent work on missing features.
  • Some components are incomplete as far as some critical features. For example, I use RethinkDB as my database and it's missing critical features like backup and clustering, so It is unusable and they should have made that clear from the get go.
  • The pricing on the support plan is vague. I do have the feeling it is actually well worth the money, but it's hard to form a decisions based without more predictable specific.
  • Seems to me like the platform's future is unclear.
Read full review
Google
  • Built-in monitoring via Stackdriver is quite expensive for what it provides.
  • Initially provided quotas (ie. max compute units one can use) are very low and it took several requests to get an appropriate amount.
  • Support on GCE is limited to their knowledge base and forums. For more hands-on support provided by Google, you must pay for their Premium services.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Google
Overall services are good to go. Received good feedback from users. Have regional server locations. It has free extra service included.
Read full review
Usability
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Google
Having interacted with several cloud services, GCE stands out to me as more usable than most. The naming and locating of features is a little more intuitive than most I've interacted with, and hinting is also quite helpful. Getting staff up to speed has proven to be overall less painful than others.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Google
GCE is highly available system. So far we have not experienced any planned or unplanned outages. We do experience application errors however they are not GCE reated. GCE provides us with wide ranges of option to make systems highly available like block storage, global load balancing, GPU accelerators and Machine Managers which manages different VMs.
Read full review
Performance
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Google
It's good in terms of Performance, as compared to other VMs or Compute Engine Services by other providers. Google Compute Engine integrates seamlessly with other Google Cloud Platform services, allowing users to leverage a wide range of tools and services without significant performance degradation.
Read full review
Support Rating
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Google
  • The documentation needs to be better for intermediate users - There are first steps that one can easily follow, but after that, the documentation is often spotty or not in a form where one can follow the steps and accomplish the task. Also, the documentation and the product often go out of sync, where the commands from the documentation do not work with the current version of the product.
  • Google support was great and their presence on site was very helpful in dealing with various issues.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
DigitalOcean
It can help you to host your virtual appliance or serverless application at very low cost. DigitalOcean marketplace also helps you to deploy the serverless app or virtual appliance effortlessly. It is suitable for small scale deployment and the process to setup an account and roll out your app via marketplace is easy and cheap.
Read full review
Google
Google Compute Engine provides a one stop solution for all the complex features and the UI is better than Amazon's EC2 and Azure Machine Learning for ease of usability. It's always good to have an eco-system of products from Google as it's one of the most used search engine and IoT services provider, which helps with ease of integration and updates in the future.
Read full review
Return on Investment
DigitalOcean
  • The platform is saving me a lot of time I would have been wasting on operations instead of development.
  • The platform is saving me a lot of money as I can easily switch between cloud providers to find the best price.
  • I am worried though for the price I might have to pay in case of an unexpected system issue.
  • Hopefully I will be able to pay the support plan before that.
Read full review
Google
  • With Google Compute we don't have the overhead of managing our own data centers reducing costs and reducing the staff needed to manage systems.
  • As I said earlier, Google's costs are ~1/2 of AWS, so we are able to see a ROI much faster.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Google Compute Engine Screenshots

Screenshot of How to choose the right VM
With thousands of applications, each with different requirements, which VM is right for you?Screenshot of documentation, guides, and reference architectures
Migration Center is Google Cloud's unified migration platform with features like cloud spend estimation, asset discovery, and a variety of tooling for different migration scenarios.