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.
We have one significant web application. It is used by our entire R&D team across multiple departments as the primary platform for data analysis. We currently have our web application running on Google App Engine flexible as it gives us the ability to run the runtime we need to run.
Pros
Google App Engine is perfect for web applications running a number of services at scale.
App Engine is flexible enough to run any runtime using the flexible edition.
App Engine takes a lot of the work off of supporting and maintaining the application
Cons
App Engine could be a little easier to adopt, but it makes sense given the complexity of web applications.
Likelihood to Recommend
Google App Engine is well suited for a multitude of scenarios. Although it can be harder to adopt then something like a 'lift and shift' approach to Compute Engine and using virtual machines, App Engine is well worth it. It is perfect for application and infrastructure modernization and it's power really comes from its integration with the rest of the suite of GCP products.
We at our organisation use Google App Engine to test and deploy dynamic internal contents. As Google App Engine is able to work with multi language support, it is beneficial for small to large tasks wherever we require serverless infrastructure. It is easy to deploy and run comparing to full machine infrastructure, as Google App Engine is part of Google Cloud services, we can use it separately along with VM instances as well wherever required.
Pros
It is one of the best alternatives of full machine for small applications.
It takes less time to implement/deploy or run applications on GAE.
Cons
According to me, worst thing with GAE is it's very expensive when we compare with regular implementations.
It has fewer tutorials or documentations, so a little bit hard to implement at the first time.
Likelihood to Recommend
Google App Engine is well suited for small applications where full customization like in regular machines is not required. It takes much less time to deploy and run in Google App Engine. It is auto-scalable, so Google App Engine could be used for applications which require less or high computing. It is not suited in most cases if the budget is low.
It is used to develop and host web applications. It is very helpful in its versatility.
Pros
Monitoring and operations.
Backups.
SSL security.
Cons
Price.
No multi-threading.
Likelihood to Recommend
Google App Engine is a very good app engine application for mid scale web applications whereas its a bit pricy for small applications for constant load applications and less powerful for largescale applications. The price point can be altered a little to increase the market in the small scale segment of the application.
I use Google App Engine to program in Python for data collection and data mining. This is solely being used for engineering and development. It solves the issue of having to manage your own server and allows your apps to be accessed from anywhere there is a computer and internet access. This makes it convenient for sharing between coworkers.
Pros
Coding environment
Create test environments
Have a history of all builds
Cons
Not free
Likelihood to Recommend
This PaaS is great because you can access your programs and builds anywhere with a computer and internet connection. It's relatively cheap and easy to use. It supports everything I needed so far.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Engineering (Medical Devices company, 1-10 employees)
Google App Engine (GAE) as part of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is being used across our entire SaaS product. It provides us with an enterprise level infrastructure that can be scaled as our business needs demand very quickly and easily. By not having to build and maintain our own on premise servers, it allows us to focus on our product rather than infrastructure.
Pros
Scale - we can scale instances up/down based on business needs allowing us to meet demand without wasting money for extra capacity
Cloud Task Queues
Cons
Documentation - The documentation across the board is lacking and often times out of date or just plain wrong.
Standard instances could provide better support for more tech stacks so that flex and/or custom instances are not required.
Likelihood to Recommend
Google App Engine is especially well suited for situations where there is a variable workload during the day, e.g. inbound task processing with task queues. In this situation queues can be setup with parameters governing the process speed/scaling which allows you to easily balance performance with cost and meet a good balance.
VU
Verified User
C-Level Executive in Information Technology (Computer Software company, 11-50 employees)
We developed and deployed a basic app via Google App Engine in order to evaluate their serverless architecture. Development and deployment were mostly pain free, and we were able to quickly go live with a scalable solution where we didn't have to worry about infrastructure, using the language of our choice (many are supported).
Pros
Supports all popular languages (and you can even bring your own language runtime)
Built-in automatic scaling is great
Cons
Lags behind competing platforms (Azure, AWS) in terms of features
Less documentation, examples, etc. as compared to competitors' platforms
Likelihood to Recommend
I would say that Google App Engine is worth a look, however it doesn't seem to be as full-featured or popular as competing platforms such as AWS and Azure. It also feels a little dated in general. That said, it's still a solid platform and we were able to get live and running with little trouble.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Engineering (Health, Wellness and Fitness company, 1-10 employees)
We use it across the organization to host various internal projects and for a variety of support-level tools we use in house. Mostly PHP and NodeJS apps, some are pre-built apps that run great on app engine, others are built in house and are tailored to very specific needs that various groups or clients need.
Pros
Very flexible, runs PHP, Node, Java, Go, etc.
Standard environments with regards to the stack being used.
Now part of Google Cloud.
Cons
Documentation for certain things is lacking.
Better tutorials for certain stacks.
Likelihood to Recommend
Getting certain apps to run on App Engine can be a hassle, but if you start building something on App Engine, it's very robust and easily integrates with other Google Cloud offerings. There are, however, tutorials for getting WordPress up and running on AppEngine. Also Laravel is pretty slick with App Engine.
We use Google App Engine for content distribution of digital publishing assets as well as analytics and authentication services for a wide array of platforms. The whole organization uses Google App Engine in some capacity or another. The business problems it addresses are virtualizing services and abstracting away server configuration, load balancing, software updates and everything else we would have to do to set up the same infrastructure on a classic web server stack. Google App Engine has expedited our development and deployment processes tremendously so we can continue innovating with new services, getting them up and running quickly, while trusting that our existing services are running on a rock solid cloud platform backend.
Pros
Quick to develop, quick to deploy. You can be up and running on Google App Engine in no time.
Flexible. We use Java for some services and Node.js for others.
Great security features. We have been consistently impressed with the security and authentication features of Google App Engine.
Cons
Documentation does not always keep up with the latest changes to the service. Google App Engine has undergone a lot of changes these past couple of years. At times, we were surprised to find out that something we didn't think was possible was, or, conversely, something that was supposed to work fine which had been deprecated. We also ended up using some undocumented features and weren't sure whether they would keep working or not.
Price. Google App Engine isn't cheap. But, you get what you pay for. Rock solid service, great tools, at a hefty price.
Difficult to tell how to optimize costs. We racked up the expenses and it is still a mystery where all the costs are being incurred.
Some intimidating or arcane aspects of configuration. Most of it was a breeze but every now and then something would be pretty far out and require a few of us developers putting our heads together to figure it out.
Sometimes required reading source code to figure out how to do something. Not a ton of examples of how to do various things, nor Stack Overflow posts, at least in the beginning. I imagine this will change as the community grows. But sometimes it felt like we were all alone trying to figure out how to do things.
Likelihood to Recommend
Google App Engine is great if you want to rapidly build and deploy web services and you have the money to spend. It's also great if you have a team of developers, or at least 2 or 3, so if you get stuck then you have multiple people looking into it and trying to figure out how to proceed. It is less well-suited to a small startup looking to save cash, or to an individual developer who may get stuck on something and be totally blocked for days or weeks.
Google App Engine (GAE) is the core engine for a specialized web application in-house product. The web application allows the sales department staff to produce reporting, follow up regarding multiple deposit amounts, do the link between Google Drive (as a hosting cloud) and electronic signatures of clients. The web app is also responsible for the "after sales" process and also allows us to maintain the customers' database.
Pros
Well suited for doing asynchronous long running process jobs through task queues
Supports for huge files upload process (fast and efficient)
Integrates pretty well with Java and Spring MVC technologies
Cons
Although GAE does support relational databases if you pay for it, developers wanting to try GAE for free are forced to use cloud datastore which is a NoSQL database.
Logging is recorded and accessible through a web console. However, there is no easy way (I mean through the console) to display a custom log line format like it's possible with slf4j or log4j logging patterns. This makes reading log inefficient.
The GAE plugins for Eclipse are buggy and inconsistent. Many times we are forced to reboot the local server after a full webapp recompile, and the command line SDK is not intuitive.
Likelihood to Recommend
Scenarios where Google App Engine is well suited:
Allows endpoints for automatic email retrieval process which acts as long running jobs processes
"Cron" like web process launchable through simple endpoint URL
Java Spring MVC web application or RESTful web services integrated with single page applications (SPA)
Scenarios where it is less appropriate:
If your web application requires a short starting time GAE does not perform fast startups. However once started the web app has constant and stable processing speed
If the development team is looking for very well integrated product suite (like IDE well integrated with the backend server) then GAE requires much more improvements
It serves all our traffic to end users, which is basically one of the most important things for our organization.
Pros
Serving traffic to end users. It can scale automatically when traffic spikes.
The standard environment has some limitations, but it encourages you to write "scalable" code.
With Flexible Environment, you can serve any Docker container you want, still taking advantage of auto scaling.
Easy integration with other Google Cloud products, e.g. Datastore, Pub/Sub, Cloud Storage, etc.
Cons
Flexible environment needs scaling to zero and support for all APIs available in Standard Environment like ndb for Python and Task Queue.
Standard Environment needs to update some outdated libraries like lxml for Python.
Instance pricing of Standard Environment could be lowered, since it wasn't updated for many years.
Likelihood to Recommend
It's a good use case to use App Engine when you need to serve traffic to large amount of users, but you should avoid doing any computation on it. It's better to use Compute Engine or Dataflow to process your data. It has a free tier so it's very useful for non-yet-existing startups.
