Google App Engine Reviews & Insights

Score9.2 out of 10

228 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Google App Engine are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Efficient Email Servers: Users have praised the email servers for their efficiency in delivering messages promptly, ensuring reliable communication.

Easy Data Upload: Many users find the ability to upload data to web applications effortlessly as a valuable feature that enhances their overall user experience.

Automatic Scaling of Apps: The automatic scaling of apps based on user demand is highlighted by users as a beneficial feature that ensures smooth performance even with increasing usage.

Various Programming Language Support: Users appreciate the platform's support for programming languages like Java, Python, Php, and Ruby, which facilitates development and adds flexibility.

Straightforward Billing System: The straightforward and easy-to-understand billing system provided by Google is appreciated by users for simplifying financial management within the platform.

Project-Based Resource Management: The project-based management of resources by Google is seen as a beneficial feature that contributes to efficient resource allocation and utilization.

Flexibility in Scaling Instances: Users value the ability to scale instances up or down based on business needs, allowing effective demand response while optimizing costs.

Managing Server-less Resources Efficiently: The ease of managing server-less resources and deploying applications efficiently is highlighted as a key strength of the platform.

Cost-Effective Solution for Small Applications: Google App Engine is recognized as a cost-effective and time-saving alternative for running small applications, enabling quick implementation.

Google App Engine Reviews

9 Reviews

Enterprises (1,001+ employees)

App creation and management goodness.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

November 1, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our organization uses Google App Engine for writing, deploying and testing the code as it requires minimal configuration for testing of code and the code gets covered even in production which is a plus point. It helps in mitigating the errors and deploying and testing the code seamlessly to production.

Pros

Apps get automatically scaled based on the users, more users more instances and app runs smoothly.
Debugging and monitoring applications is easy even in production it automatically debugs the code.
It supports a lot of languages like Java, Python, Php, Ruby, etc which adds to the ease of development.

Cons

For beginners, there is a learning curve that can be reduced by decluttering the functionalities.
For much big migrations it takes to a lot of time to deploy which can be reduced.
The scaling of applications based on the user count is not seamless and it requires improvement.

Likelihood to Recommend

Google App Engine is a great tool for app building that provides support for a lot of languages and scalability options when the user base increases by creating parallel instances of the app which reduces the downtime. It automatically debugs the code even in the production as well as sandbox environments which reduces the risk of functionality breaking.

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (Computer Software company, 5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Google App Engine - For companies that don't have time to admin machines

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

February 22, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using Google App Engine in production environment for some applications from our health care insurance model. It allows us to focus on developing applications while Google App Engine handles hosting. It is easy to deploy and run.

Pros

Serverless is easy to manage and scale up and down resources.
Ease to deploy.

Cons

Monitoring and troubleshooting are not so easy.
Creates vendor lock-in

Likelihood to Recommend

Google App Engine is recommended for small and fast applications that scale, because of some lack of monitoring, it's not a better choice for critical applications with complex scenarios and integrations.

Kadu Barral

SRE in Information Technology at SulAmerica Seguros (Insurance, 5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

View profile

A reliable web application hosting platform

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

October 31, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Google App Engine to house many of our mission-critical web applications with zero downtime. It solves the need to have 100% uptime with no added long term equipment costs and additional IT support staff.

Pros

Ease to deploy.
Flexible ability to scale to meet increases in users.
Ability to program in various languages allowing for different development teams to work with it.

Cons

The ability to only run web applications. If it could also run self-executing non-web based applications it could be used more heavily.
It only allows the use of the Google Cloud store which limits the ability to use other cloud stores already in use in the enterprise.
It's a closed API that can lock into being dependent entirely on Google. There are many open-source projects ongoing that can help to alleviate.

Likelihood to Recommend

If there is a need to deploy a web application on new equipment without purchasing hardware and requiring additional IT support, then App Engine will fit the need. The pricing is low and can be scaled to meet the needs.

Verified User

Manager in Engineering (Information Technology and Services company, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Google Apps where it fits

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

August 1, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Google Apps seems to be the choice for our designers over Office 365, we have had to implement it as a solution in order to please them. It is mostly being used for email because of the ability to tie in with MAC OS and bind to their workflow bouncing between Adobe CC and OSx.

Pros

Works with OSx
Creates cohesive workflow
Allows for easy collaboration

Cons

Sheets is not as robust as Excel.
Hangouts seems to lack some of the resolution you get with Skype.
It does not tie well with AD when using another solution like Office 365.

Likelihood to Recommend

Google Apps would work really well in the SMB environments, in a business looking to switch fully to Google only as the solution it could work really well. Cost wise it is cheaper than Office 365 and adds value when it comes to the licensing cost of Microsoft office and Exchange.

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (Retail company, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Google Apps for Work - It works!

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

March 15, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Google Apps across our entire organization for email, calendaring, collaboration ( via Google Docs, Sheets, Sites, Hangouts, etc…) directory, archiving and retention, as well as social and video delivery (YouTube). The primary use of Google Apps in our organization is for corporate email. The platform is stable and reliable. Our users are familiar with the interface, keeping training requirements low.

Pros

Robust email system.
Easy to understand document sharing.
The calendar integrates well with email.

Cons

The Apps have limitations. Be sure you are OK with those limitations before you install. Google has not been responsive to feature requests.
Managing Calendar without a third-party tool is nearly impossible.
Integration with Active Directory is kludgy at best. Do NOT expect the integration to be smooth or the functionality robust.

Likelihood to Recommend

If your installation relies on Active Directory integration, you may want to consider the product from the company in Redmond, WA instead. In my opinion, this is Google Apps weakness.

Verified User

Professional in Information Technology (Publishing company, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Try GAE for a change!

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

October 20, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Google App Engine is used for hosting an application by one of the teams in our department. The application is responsible for handling file storage and access levels for two major components that are owned by two different teams. Google Cloud Storage is used for hosting these files.

Pros

Google App Engine offers the platform to develop an end to end application without the need of having any other software installed.
Google App Engine allows rapid deployment of applications and immediate availability of the code deployed in the cloud.
Google App Engine offers services that allow you to quickly prototype any application and have it deployed at a minimal cost. The console allows you to view and manage the status of your application so that everything can be done from a developer perspective without the involvement of the Ops team.

Cons

I feel that the restrictions regarding no threads, no writing of files to the disk and so on, are great for keeping things secure however they can be real blockers sometimes and make it very difficult to find workarounds for problems that you are trying to solve while developing your application.
The 12 simultaneous connections limit to the database instance from an instance cannot be increased, so the available performance options can sometimes be not enough for heavy load apps.
The customer service is always responsive when we open support tickets however there isn't an offering for assistance on site if needed or consultations regarding best practices.

Likelihood to Recommend

A scenario where Google App Engine is well suited is when you want to develop a quick prototype and you don't have servers as an infrastructure option and you just need to have something running quick. Also make sure the app doesn't need to create new threads, write to the file system, or use Java classes outside of the JRE class whitelist.

Verified User

Team Lead in Engineering (Business Supplies and Equipment company, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Google App Engine's best feature is cloud endpoint

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 8, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are currently evaluating Google App engine as a platform as a service to our customers. The Google App Engine cloud endpoints is equivalent to Microsoft Azure's web apps or API apps. We are impressed with its ability to deploy Java or Python based RestFul API directly to Cloud endpoints. I coded the logic in the RestFul API to access Google's Cloud DataStore (kind-entity-property type of data store). Google's SDK made it easy to integrate its App Engine with its storage solutions. I have not tried its Cloud Bigtable from Cloud endpoints but I'm sure it's on our next task list.

Google App Engine's primary programming language is Java. I tried JetBrain's IntelliJ IDEA for managing Google App engine cloud endpoint projects. I used the community edition, which had less support for Google App Engine Cloud endpoint. The enterprise edition should have better support.

For those who prefer to use Python, JetBrains may have just released PyCharm for $99. Nothing comes for free. If you work at a company that has those licenses, you should feel lucky. Having a good IDE is critical to productivity. It has a "PyCharm Free Educational (Classroom) License" for free.

Pros

Auto scale application load.
Platform as a Service feature abstracts the web server layer.
Perfect for Android or iOS app server logic development.
Connect to different Google storage types.

Cons

Able to use C# as the programming language in its SDK.
Integration with Visual studio C# for using Google app engine cloud endpoint SDK.
Documentation on choosing a IDE to get started. Doing things in the command line is too basic. It's good to know them but having a sophisticated IDE is the next step to achieve higher productivity.

Likelihood to Recommend

What kind of data store do you plan to use for your server side application? Make sure Google App Engine SDK supports them.
Will your server applications be REST based? Think about using cloud endpoint.
Do you plan to use a JSP page with servlet class?

Hil Liao

Cloud software engineer in Research & Development at Avanade (Information Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

View profile

Good App Engine (GAE)

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

October 6, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The Google App Engine solution is helping an entirely new category of applications that process data in real-time and at scale very robustly. It has faster, easier, more detailed simulations and solutions for all cloud related requirements. We use Google App Engine to develop and deploy both internal and public web applications. The APIs for accessing the datastore are very easy to use.

Pros

The APIs for accessing the datastore are very easy to use.
Implementing text indexing and search related applications perform better on Google App Engine compared to other app engines.
Reliable NoSQL datastore, including atomic transactions and a query engine.

Cons

Developers have read-only access to the filesystem on Google App Engine.
Google App Engine limits the maximum rows returned from an entity get to 1000 rows per Datastore call.
Not suitable for CPU intensive calculations.

Likelihood to Recommend

Google App Engine's infrastructure removes many of the system administration and development challenges of building applications to scale to millions of hits. Google handles deploying code to a cluster, monitoring, failover, and launching application instances as necessary.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Information Technology and Services company, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

University Final Year Project Review

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

June 4, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I used Google App Engine in my final year project to store news stories relating to crime in a database and then plot them on a Google Map depending on whether they were "crime" stories or not.

Pros

Database management
User Friendly
Excellent GUI

Cons

Provide webinars
Implement modules in college and Universities to use the product
Give regular seminars to students and businesses

Likelihood to Recommend

Will the person be able to use it to it's full potential?

Jennie Masterson

Enterprise Support Advisor in Customer Service at JDR Insurance (Information Technology and Services, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Loading Reviews List....

Google App Engine's best feature is cloud endpoint

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 8, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Auto scale application load.
Platform as a Service feature abstracts the web server layer.
Perfect for Android or iOS app server logic development.
Connect to different Google storage types.

Cons

Able to use C# as the programming language in its SDK.
Integration with Visual studio C# for using Google app engine cloud endpoint SDK.
Documentation on choosing a IDE to get started. Doing things in the command line is too basic. It's good to know them but having a sophisticated IDE is the next step to achieve higher productivity.

Likelihood to Recommend

What kind of data store do you plan to use for your server side application? Make sure Google App Engine SDK supports them.
Will your server applications be REST based? Think about using cloud endpoint.
Do you plan to use a JSP page with servlet class?

Hil Liao

Cloud software engineer in Research & Development at Avanade (Information Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

View profile