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Google Cloud vs Google Compute Engine comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 2024

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
6.9
Organizations benefit from Google Cloud by shortening project timelines and utilizing cost-free tools, achieving substantial time and cost savings.
Sentiment score
6.3
Compute Engine offers initial cost savings and performance boosts, but financial benefits and precise savings remain challenging to gauge.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Google Cloud's support is seen as competent but often criticized for slow response times and separate cost requirements.
Sentiment score
6.3
Google Compute Engine support receives mixed reviews; some praise responsiveness while others note inadequate assistance and delayed responses.
I consider them good partners when it comes to support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Google Cloud's scalability and Kubernetes integration enable effortless expansion, appealing to users despite cost considerations.
Sentiment score
8.0
Google Compute Engine is scalable and versatile, suitable for varying workloads, with strong network and security features.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Google Cloud is praised for reliability, scoring high in stability, but some note rare service-specific issues compared to competitors.
Sentiment score
8.3
Google Compute Engine is highly reliable with a 99.99% SLA, frequently surpassing performance expectations and stability compared to competitors.
 

Room For Improvement

Google Cloud needs improvements in usability, cost, support, integration, security, training, resources, language support, and service expansion.
Google Compute Engine users seek UI enhancements, expanded options, improved security, synchronization, and better support and marketing focus.
Providing more hypervisors would be beneficial.
 

Setup Cost

Google Cloud offers flexible pay-as-you-go pricing, but some users find it pricier than competitors like Azure and AWS.
Google Compute Engine offers competitive, flexible pricing, often cheaper than Azure and AWS, with savings possible through resource optimization.
As far as I know, it is a little more expensive compared to other cloud options.
 

Valuable Features

Google Cloud offers powerful features like user-friendliness, scalability, security, and managed services, appealing to diverse developer and user needs.
Google Compute Engine offers customizable VMs, scalability, cost-effectiveness, security features, and diverse compute and storage options.
If customers use different technologies within their environment, GCP cannot offer a full performance analysis covering all the disclosures.
In GCP, there's a custom configuration feature unlike AWS and Azure.
 

Categories and Ranking

Google Cloud
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (5th)
Google Compute Engine
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
10th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Google Cloud is 8.4%, up from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Compute Engine is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Monirul Islam Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Great for big data with off-the-charts scalability for storage and databases
The solution should be more configurable for high-volume databases. The managed service does not allow flexible database configurations that are needed for better filter performance. We have a TPS first-grade, high-volume database using an ERC system. We are moving to Clarity for managed services and need more configurations to support it. The solution could improve its management services for MongoDB. The website's memory only allows one TB.
Arundeep Veerabhadraiah - PeerSpot reviewer
A highly scalable and seamless platform which is easily automated
One of GCE's best features is the managed instance groups. We typically use managed instance groups for high availability. You can set certain parameters for managed instance groups where if the load of the computer or server increases beyond 80%, for example, the solution will automatically spawn another instance, and the load will be automatically divided between two systems. If the load is 80% of one of the VMs or GCEs, once the load is divided, it comes down to 40%, so the availability of your systems goes up. However, that all depends on the parameters or configurations we put on the instance group. You also have regular health checks on these managed instance groups, which are configurable. If these health checks determine something wrong with the VM, they will automatically kick off or spawn a new GCE instance. This way, the outage time is less. Previously, on-premises, unless somebody reported the issue to the helpdesk saying that a particular service was unavailable, then a support team would need to troubleshoot what went wrong, which takes a long time. At least 30 minutes to one hour. But by using these managed instance groups, we can reduce the outage time, and second, we can configure them with minimal resources, bringing down our cost. And if the load increases, the managed instance groups automatically respond to new things. Subsequently, our costs decrease. We have a wide range of VMs. There are general-purpose VMs that can be used for hosting general-purpose applications. If some of our applications are memory intensive, then we have a lot of VMs in the M1 series. We can use a range of memory-optimized VMs for these things. We have C-series VMs for compute-intensive applications. If we use some mathematical formulas and require a very high throughput from that, there are GPU-optimized VMs used for machine learning or 3D visualizations in rendering software. GPU-enabled VMs are pretty powerful and responsive. Again, the best part is that we can spin them up when we need them, and once we're done with our work, we can shut them down, allowing tremendous cost savings for any customer. Previously, if we wanted a very high-configuration VM, we had to own the entire hardware and have it on our on-prem data center. And once we'd done with a particular activity, the system would just be lying there on our premises. That is not the case now. We use and decommission it, so we're only billed for the time we're using the product. One of the best things is the preemptible VMs or Spot VMs. These are the cheapest VMs in Google Cloud, but it has a string attached to it where Google can shut down these VMs whenever Google teams split. You only get about 90 seconds notice before they shut down this particular VM. There are scenarios where customers can use these preemptible VMs, for example, when running a batch job. Batch jobs are run once or twice daily, depending on the customer's requirement. Once we are done running these batches, we can decommission the VM. Even if, in the middle of this batch job, Google shuts down these VMs, we can pick up the processing from wherever the VM left off. These are some of the beautiful things we have on Google Cloud concerning the Compute Engine.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
52%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Computer Software Company
18%
University
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Cloud?
Google Cloud is perceived as a cost-effective and user-friendly option, especially compared to AWS. The current affordability and ease of use make it suitable for medium-sized companies. While the ...
What needs improvement with Google Cloud?
In terms of Google services, providing more hypervisors would be beneficial. Currently, in my region, they don't offer many services as they have just started. They have some local instances, yet i...
What is your primary use case for Google Cloud?
My platform offers a monitoring solution for the virtual machines hosted in GCP. GCP is one of the firms that I work with. For customers who use GCP as an infrastructure service, software as a serv...
What do you like most about Google Compute Engine?
Everything is simple and useful. The initial setup is not challenging.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Compute Engine?
Google resources are cheaper compared to AWS and Microsoft Azure. Among the three, Google is the cheapest option.
What needs improvement with Google Compute Engine?
Google has a lack of focus on their products. They have many products in various areas of the market, but they do not productize or appeal to the market effectively. They should concentrate on prod...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Allthecooks, BetterCloud, Bluecore, Cosentry, Evite, Ezakus, HTC, Infectious Media, iStreamPlanet, Mendelics, SageMathCloud, Sedex, Treeptik, Wibigoo, Wix, zulily, Zync
Find out what your peers are saying about Google Cloud vs. Google Compute Engine and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.