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Google App Engine vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Google App Engine
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Pivotal Cloud Foundry
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Google App Engine is 2.1%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 9.8%, up from 8.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Chandra Shekar Reddy Arrabolu - PeerSpot reviewer
Effortless server management and automatic scaling boost productivity
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, issues must be escalated through support to product engineering teams who access internal logs for resolution. Increasing the visibility of logging would help users identify issues more easily. Regarding runtimes, the validity period limitations can be problematic. When companies use legacy applications, migrating to new versions requires significant code changes and isn't always a simple lift-and-shift operation. Google App Engine should consider continuing to provide security patches for legacy applications, especially for customers with substantial billing. The manual scaling feature needs improvement, as it isn't available for all runtimes. Adding this capability across all runtimes would be beneficial for controlling instance scaling within specific parameters.
Stephen  Hack - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use, simple to sign-in, but lacking graphical interface
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is used as a cloud platform Pivotal Cloud Foundry has helped our organization by the way we've set it up, it's easy to sign in, bind services, push services, and create YAML files. The most valuable features of Pivotal Cloud Foundry are its ease of use and the command line…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Administering App Engine is simple; it has intuitive UIs and a very scalable app engine."
"What I appreciate most about Google App Engine is that the deployment is significantly easier compared to a conventional Linux platform."
"I've noticed measurable benefits and return on investment by choosing Google App Engine."
"The customer service is excellent and very responsive."
"The product's initial setup phase was straightforward, considering that there is good documentation explaining the implementation part of it."
"The features of Google App Engine that I have found most valuable for my use cases include its easy deployment process, where there is minimal configuration required, allowing a few details in a configuration file before pushing it to Google App Engine, which auto-scales and requires less maintenance with no downtime over three years."
"The initial setup is okay. It's not too complex. Deployment took about one day."
"The functions and features of Google App Engine that I have found most valuable are that it is serverless, and the learning curve is easy to follow."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies. It has a very good performance."
"I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities."
"It provides a set of developer-friendly tools that simplify application deployment."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is the UI, it is easy to use."
"The most valuable features of Pivotal Cloud Foundry are its ease of use and the command line interface has the ability to push instances to the cloud easily."
"It supports CI/CD, and is integrated with the CI/CD very well."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."
"It is a scalable product...We are not facing any particular issues since most of the applications in our company are written in Java and .NET."
 

Cons

"Google Cloud support for Google App Engine is very poor, with unresponsive and unaware agents. It took them almost a month to inform me that SSH is not possible with private instances."
"The documentation and community are lacking for this product."
"The areas of Google App Engine I would to see improved or enhanced in the future include expanding inbuilt support for more programming languages than the current limited options such as Python, Go, and Node, ideally adding support for languages such as Java."
"I am limited to sending a photo to five people. I want to be able to send a photo to many people, not just five."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"One drawback is that the app needs to be written to be compatible with Google App Engine, making it not cloud agnostic, hindering straightforward migration to other platforms such as AWS."
"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."
"The support for the Indian region is not as good as compared to the support that is offered to the regions in Europe."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry doesn't have certain advanced features."
"It is not straightforward to setup."
"Regarding the setup phase, every step is a hurdle. With Pivotal Cloud Foundry, I won't get any proper resources for that. Even if I Google it, there is no proper solution for Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"There are no synthetic application monitoring and real-time monitoring features."
"In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."
"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it t can take time for users to learn it."
"In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools."
"It should offer more security features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would like to have more free application with it. Some of the applications, I am paying more for them. I think that they must be free."
"If we don't know how to work with the tool, we might have some spikes in price."
"We pay the license yearly. It's about $6 a month, which is $72 a year per person, so it's about $500."
"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."
"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
"We do pay for the licensing cost because we have opted for a private cloud setup. So, it is a cloud setup, and we have to make payments based on the cloud size. I do not consider it very costly when comparing it to the market."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
Amazon Web Services, Rackspace OpenStack, Microsoft Windows Azure and Google are the major cloud hosting and storage service providers. Athough Amazon is top of them and is oldest in cloud market, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google are giving tough competition to each other and to Amazon also for…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Educational Organization
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
37%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google App Engine?
The product's setup and deployment phases are easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google App Engine?
I haven't been involved on the pricing side, so I'm not exactly aware of the costs, although we did analyze log retention costs, but overall, I'm not sure how Google App Engine compares to other pr...
What needs improvement with Google App Engine?
I have not yet used the real-time logging feature.
Which would you recommend - Pivotal Cloud Foundry or OpenShift?
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a cloud-native application platform to simplify app delivery. It is efficient and effective. The best feature is how easy it is to handle external services such as database...
What do you like most about Pivotal Cloud Foundry?
I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pivotal Cloud Foundry?
I would say it is around a nine out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. Just short of Oracle. It's sort of Oracle cloud.
 

Also Known As

No data available
PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Khan Academy, Best Buy, Gigya, MetOffice, Getaround, Mimiboard, NewsLimited, WebFilings, and CloudLock.
Humana, Citibank, Mercedes Benz, Liberty Mutual, The Home Depot, GE, West Corp, Merrill Corporation, CoreLogic, Orange, Dish Network, Comcast, Bloomberg, Internal Revenue Service, Ford Motor Company, Garmin, Volkswagen, Solera, Allstate, US Air Force, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ScotiaBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Google App Engine vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.