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Amazon EC2 vs Google App Engine comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.3
Amazon EC2 cuts costs, boosts efficiency, reduces downtime, and enhances innovation compared to on-premise infrastructure.
Sentiment score
4.9
Google App Engine reduces costs and enhances value, but effectiveness varies, relying on user understanding and optimal resource use.
I would say I have saved more than a week with Amazon EC2 compared to my previous on-premises setup.
Architect at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Once we deployed this same application as part of Google App Engine, the cost drastically reduced to just $120 for the small instance we use for our development.
Enterprise Cloud Architect at Johnson & Johnson Medtech
Operationally, it was efficient for us because we could easily spin up new versions to demonstrate new functionality without modifying the original environment.
Senior Software Engineer at Cimpress
Google App Engine offers discounts for high resource utilization, similar to committed use discounts for Compute Engine.
Associate Projects at Cognizant
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
Amazon EC2 support is responsive and efficient, with high ratings, though some face integration challenges requiring partner assistance.
Sentiment score
5.8
Google App Engine offers inconsistent support quality, with experiences varying by customer relationship, package level, and support needs.
I would rate technical support from Amazon a 10, as we have on-prem AWS experts.
Consultant at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
They route us toward the appropriate team handling Google App Engine or other services, so when there is an issue, the respective team connects and provides support.
Enterprise Cloud Architect at Johnson & Johnson Medtech
The technical support was very quick and responsive, with a direct team line available.
Google invests in companies with technical expertise, offering connections to enterprise clients and technical support for their products.
Senior Regional Sales Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon EC2's scalability and flexibility in resource adjustment are highly rated, though some concerns with older instance types exist.
Sentiment score
6.3
Google App Engine scales well with automatic features, though flexible instance deployment and handling intensive requests require improvement.
Google App Engine scales well in the standard environment, which automatically handles traffic without manual scaling.
Software Engineer (DevOps)
Google App Engine is highly scalable and can integrate easily with other applications.
Technical Lead at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
With automatic scaling, Google Cloud handles the scaling process, which leads to my high rating.
Senior Engineer at Brillio
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Amazon EC2 is stable and reliable, boasting 99.99% uptime, auto-recovery, and minimal downtimes with proper configuration.
Sentiment score
6.9
Google App Engine is highly stable, with minimal disruptions and quick issue resolution, praised for low maintenance requirements.
I have not experienced any crashing or instability with Google App Engine.
Software Engineer (DevOps)
However, large code bases can still cause it to slow down.
Technical Lead at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
I would rate the stability of Google App Engine a perfect 10 out of 10, as it is completely managed by Google.
Senior Engineer at Brillio
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EC2 users seek cost-effective solutions with better scalability, integration, support, security, and platform compatibility improvements.
Google App Engine faces pricing, support, and scalability challenges, with limited language support, database options, and migration complexities.
I have heard from multiple people that if you have an Amazon EC2 instance running and you stop it, the billing continues unless you terminate the Amazon EC2 instance.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
I think improvements can be made to Amazon EC2 by increasing the memory, offering more instance types, and including GPUs as mentioned in the keynote.
Architect at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The price for Amazon EC2 could be lower; it's not cheap, so when we want something cheaper, we do go serverless if we can.
Consultant at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
It would be beneficial if Flex services could scale down to zero instances during periods of no traffic.
Senior Software Engineer at Cimpress
The pricing is higher compared to alternatives like Kubernetes and Compute Engine.
In the Flex environment, SSH access is not available for private instances.
Software Engineer (DevOps)
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EC2 pricing varies by usage, offering flexible models but can be costly for large deployments despite competitive options.
Google App Engine provides competitive pay-as-you-go pricing, affordable for light usage but higher for robust applications.
For F1 usage with 256 MB, it is free.
I've never heard anyone express that the licenses are too expensive.
Senior Regional Sales Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
My GCP billing is about 10 lakh INR per month, and Google App Engine contributes only 25,000 to 30,000 INR.
Software Engineer (DevOps)
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EC2 offers scalability, cost efficiency, security, and flexibility with easy provisioning and seamless AWS integration for diverse workloads.
Google App Engine offers users scalability, reliability, and integration, focusing on development and reducing infrastructure management efforts.
With the cloud, deployment is easy, and within a minute, we can deploy the server and give it to the developers so they can work on it right away after deployment.
Architect at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The main benefits Amazon EC2 provides for me as an end user are cost savings, as they are more OpEx costs rather than CapEx for us.
Consultant at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Amazon EC2 offers flexibility.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
The solution offers scalability, autoscaling based on user demand, and security, as Google manages all updates and security patches.
I also appreciate the Google App Engine standard environment because it handles traffic scaling without manual intervention.
Software Engineer (DevOps)
Deploying code is straightforward without worrying about deployment or integration.
Technical Lead at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EC2
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Compute Service (2nd)
Google App Engine
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Cloud Services solutions, they serve different purposes. Amazon EC2 is designed for Compute Service and holds a mindshare of 13.6%, up 5.4% compared to last year.
Google App Engine, on the other hand, focuses on PaaS Clouds, holds 2.6% mindshare, up 2.2% since last year.
Compute Service Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon EC213.6%
AWS Lambda14.2%
AWS Fargate10.4%
Other61.800000000000004%
Compute Service
PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Google App Engine2.6%
Amazon AWS13.5%
Microsoft Azure12.9%
Other71.0%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

BS
AWS Architect at Corvit Networks
Elasticity and auto scaling enhance performance and cost efficiency
Amazon EC2 features that I have found the most valuable and useful include elasticity and scalability, a variety of instance types, pay-as-you-go pricing, security, isolation, AMIs, integration with other services, Spot Instances, and high availability of reliability, user data, and EC2 metadata. These include Amazon EC2 images, image builder, and auto scaling as instance types, pricing models, and security with VPC, IAM roles, and security groups. The most beneficial features of Amazon EC2 for cloud operations are EC2 Auto Scaling with Elastic Load Balancing, which allows scale up and scale down, maintains high availability, and optimizes costs. Auto Scaling provides fault tolerance, performance optimization, and cost efficiency. A real-world benefit is that an instance automatically handles the load. When traffic drops, it reduces the number of instances. Other highly beneficial Amazon EC2 features include Spot Instances, multiple instance types, custom AMIs, VPC security groups, strong network and access security, and Elastic IPs, which are the static IPs for dynamic instances.
RK
Senior Engineer at Brillio
Have managed resources seamlessly thanks to robust platform capabilities
The areas of Google App Engine that I would to improve or enhance include its allowance for complete end-to-end deployment and scalability; however, it is manageable only for a few languages. For instance, it doesn't support languages C and C++, only basic support for Node.js, Java, and Ruby. It's not a comprehensive solution for all scenarios. Moreover, the security feature is based on IAM roles, but it should ideally be based on Active Directory (AD) roles. For IAM-based roles, we need to add the proper users and provide all security permissions manually. In an AD-based model, we would simply add users to a specific group, and all permissions would be inherited.
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Aug 14, 2013
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise13
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EC2?
The scalability and elasticity are helpful.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EC2?
Advice on Setup Cost, Pricing, and Licensing for EC2: 1. Start Small & Use Free Tier if Possible For new users or small applications, the AWS Free Tier offers limited EC2 usage free for 12 mont...
What needs improvement with Amazon EC2?
The price for Amazon EC2 could be lower; it's not cheap, so when we want something cheaper, we do go serverless if we can. From my side, a point for improvement is definitely the pricing. It could ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google App Engine?
I believe it is reasonably priced. I've never heard anyone express that the licenses are too expensive.
What needs improvement with Google App Engine?
The error logging system in Google App Engine could be enhanced. While there are troubleshooting documents with Google-defined error logs, identifying the exact root cause can be challenging. Often...
What is your primary use case for Google App Engine?
My primary use case for Google App Engine is within the finance industry, dealing with enterprise-scale businesses.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2
GAE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Expedia, TimeInc., Novaris, airbnb, Lamborghini
Khan Academy, Best Buy, Gigya, MetOffice, Getaround, Mimiboard, NewsLimited, WebFilings, and CloudLock.
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893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.