Google Cloud vs Heroku comparison

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Google Cloud

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Heroku and Google Cloud are competing products in the platform-as-a-service and cloud computing markets. Google Cloud has the advantage in scalability and features, aligning it with enterprises needing advanced solutions, whereas Heroku is favored by startups for its simplicity and affordability.

Features: Heroku's features include seamless integration with multiple programming languages, an app-centric approach, and continuous integration capabilities. In contrast, Google Cloud provides robust infrastructure capabilities, advanced machine learning tools, and a comprehensive global network.

Room for Improvement: Heroku could enhance its scalability and offer more detailed customization options to attract more extensive user bases. Additionally, expanding its enterprise-level features would better cater to larger organizations. Google Cloud could improve its user complexity by simplifying deployment processes. Lowering pricing complexity and offering more beginner-friendly resources would be beneficial. Further enhancements in customer support could also help.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Heroku simplifies deployment with its automated model and responsive customer support ideal for rapid launches. Google Cloud offers a complex deployment model with multiple custom options, supported by detailed documentation and extensive advanced support plans.

Pricing and ROI: Heroku offers competitive and predictable pricing, advantageous for budget-conscious teams which results in satisfactory ROI for smaller projects. Google Cloud features a complex pricing structure with scalable options that deliver high ROI for larger organizations, thanks to its comprehensive service offerings. The key difference lies in Heroku's predictable, lower-cost model versus Google Cloud's flexible pricing tailored for extensive use.

To learn more, read our detailed Google Cloud vs. Heroku Report (Updated: January 2025).

Google Cloud vs. Heroku

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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 Cloud

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

5th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (5th)

Heroku

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

11th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Google Cloud is 7.3%, up from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Heroku is 2.9%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

Monirul Islam Khan

Data Specialist at a non-profit with 10,001+ employees

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.

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Faizan Haider

Senior Software Engineer at Aldaim Solutions

Used for server deployment and provides auto maintenance of databases

Heroku is deployed on the cloud. We can deploy our private and public projects over at Heroku. Most of the time, when we are starting any new project from scratch, we have to implement our MVP for that project or the core idea. We are unsure how our traffic flow will go or the actual production environment requirements. We don't want to spend the most on the server sites, so then we can use it with our go-to plan for Heroku, and all the resources are available in the basic plan with the minimum expenses. So, it helps us to deploy and make our features available online at the minimum cost. Once we know our needs, we can add the professional add-ons and shift it to another platform. Heroku supports any resource listed in the marketplace. We just have to deploy our AI solutions, and Heroku can also support AI projects. I would recommend the solution to other users. I advise users not to purchase extra add-ons but to make scalable resources so that they can use all the resources efficiently. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's features are very good and our staff loves using them."

"Regarding Google Cloud's data analytics features, I find the presentation of information and the ability to move and transform data to be the most valuable. As for machine learning capabilities, they are helpful, especially in detecting anomalies or outliers in our data. For instance, Google Cloud can identify unusual network behavior and provide recommendations on how to address or leverage these findings effectively."

"The automatic sync between my mobile device data and photos to the cloud is the most valuable feature."

"Google Cloud is 100 percent stable."

"I like it because it's convenient. Google Cloud is also stable and scalable. The technical support is good as well."

"The customer service team for this solution is very knowledgeable."

"The infrastructure is easy to manage."

"Google Cloud has low downtime."

More Google Cloud pros

"One of the best things about Heroku is that it is very easy and straightforward to deploy an application."

"The most valuable feature of Heroku is the continuous integration and applications it provides."

"Thanks to Heroku, we don't need to do as much direct management in AWS."

"The solution's most valuable feature is the auto maintenance of databases."

"It is easy to deploy applications, and we don't need to bother about software updates on the server. We don't need to bother about machines, servers, and hardware. We only need to care about the system and functionality that we need or want to develop. They take care of everything else. It provides high availability. It is a pretty good solution that provides everything that we need. It has everything that we need to run our applications. We have many different applications, and we generate three million bills for a company in Brazil. We see more than a billion requests per day in another application. Everything works just fine, and it is very good."

"The product is stable."

"What I found most valuable about this solution is that it's easy to use and integrate with GitHub actions."

"I like the tool's scalability, CLI, and dashboards."

More Heroku pros

Cons

"The Spanish version is in beta. It needs to be farther along."

"The product could be improved by expanding the initial storage space available."

"Google Cloud could improve the integration with other solutions."

"The product must provide AI features."

"Google Cloud should improve its security. The main challenge we've encountered is related to security. As a member of the security team, I've noticed some limitations in the security features. For example, the rules and signatures need to be more refined to detect and process attacks accurately."

"I would like to see an increase in storage with Google Cloud."

"Technical support needs help."

"I consider Azure more secure than Google and Amazon because of all its certifications, but Google is secure enough and improving."

More Google Cloud cons

"Their support is good, but they can improve their response time."

"We don't find the pipelines intuitive. The user experience could be better. Having to set up multiple apps, then a pipeline, seems like an overkill on the amount of work to do."

"They could flesh out some of their analytics a little more."

"The tool's configuration is complex."

"We would like to be notified when something goes wrong in the process. When something is not working, we should get an alert."

"I think this solution would be improved if free demos were available indefinitely."

"Heroku should increase its slug size limits."

"The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly."

More Heroku cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For the license, we didn't have to pay for any additional fees."

"Pricing for Google Cloud could be improved. It would be better if it were lower."

"I am not familiar with the pricing, but I would guess that it is probably cheaper than Microsoft Suite"

"We pay for a license."

"Google Cloud is quite expensive, and I rate it at seven out of ten."

"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the tool's price as an eight."

"The solution is cheaper than AWS."

"We approached Google Cloud with certain cost assumptions but were surprised to find that our actual expenses were higher than expected. Initially, we had anticipated spending a set amount on the solution, but in reality, we ended up spending more than that. It would be helpful to have greater transparency and educational documentation on the cost-related aspects of Google Cloud."

More Google Cloud pricing and cost advice

"The tool is free."

"The price of Heroku could be less expensive."

"I rate the tool's pricing a three out of ten."

"There is a standard fee for a processing unit, they call them "dynos," and then you pay for add-ons."

"Its price is very good."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

52%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Educational Organization

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

University

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?

The performance after long-term use shows the storage is too full, and I cannot add more storage without paying for it. I want to migrate to another solution if I need to pay for additional storage...

What is your primary use case for Google Cloud?

For personal storage, Google Workspace, Google portal, Google video, Google file, and Google Cloud Shell for programming language.

What do you like most about Heroku?

I like the tool's scalability, CLI, and dashboards.

What needs improvement with Heroku?

I don't like that the web server crashes every day, every 24 hours. The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly. The Docker features are not great. You cannot use any ...

What is your primary use case for Heroku?

We use the solution for web applications and web APIs.

Alibaba Cloud vs Google Cloud

Comparisons

Compared 27% of the time

Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs Google Cloud

Compared 13% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs Google Cloud

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Google Cloud

Compared 11% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Google Cloud

Compared 1% of the time

More Google Cloud Competitors

Microsoft Azure vs Heroku

Compared 35% of the time

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Heroku

Compared 12% of the time

AWS Fargate vs Heroku

Compared 9% of the time

Google App Engine vs Heroku

Compared 7% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Heroku

Compared 3% of the time

More Heroku Competitors

Product Reports

Google Cloud

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Google

Overview

Google Cloud is an Infrastructure as a Service Cloud (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution that provides infrastructure tools and services for building applications on top of a public cloud computing platform. As one of the leading global infrastructures, this product allows users to securely manage enterprise data, receive valuable insights, and store documents. Google Cloud provides its various services through tools and services for data warehousing, security key enforcement, application programming interface (API) management, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML).

The use cases of Google Cloud can be divided into four main categories:

Big data
Compute
Services
Storage

The solution is utilized by organizations of all sizes and industries, as it is suitable for the following purposes:

Running and building applications: Google Cloud lets businesses run and build their applications anywhere because of its commitment to open-source, hybrid, and multi-cloud. This can accelerate development time as businesses avoid vendor lock-in.
Data insight: Google Cloud provides companies with advanced ML and analytics for their data. This can facilitate business decisions and improve work processes, as every team member can have access to data reports via this solution.
Security: Utilizing Google's technology, this solution helps users protect and defend their data and applications against threats and harmful activities.
Team collaboration: Google Cloud offers companies advanced collaboration features. They can integrate email, chat, video calling, and document collaboration all in one place when using this platform.

Google Cloud Features

Google Cloud offers multiple features for its clients. Some of these include:

Big data features: The solution offers full big data services through tools such as BigQuery and Google Cloud Dataflow. These tools allow users to process large data queries as well as create, monitor, and receive reports from data processing pipelines.
Containers: The solution offers containers, which allow users to speed up deployment and scale applications.
Cloud debugger: This feature allows users to debug code during the production process. In this way, businesses are able to locate issues early in the code and fix them before deploying the application.
Cloud save: This feature provides the ability to synchronize cloud-stored data across all devices an organization is supporting. Through it, users can save and retrieve information and maintain all data copies up to date.
Cloud trace: This Google Cloud feature allows users to detect the reasons for performance bottlenecks and fix the issues. It also provides users with information on the time their product takes to process certain requests, allowing them to follow performance more closely.
Hosting features: The solution offers two hosting options. App Engine is the PaaS of Google Cloud and Computes Engine is their IaaS.
Load balancing: This feature balances the traffic of multiple compute instances across various geographic regions.
Maintenance: Users receive frequent insight into the performance of their applications and through automations, Google Cloud lets them know of any issues that need to be fixed.

Google Cloud Benefits

Google Cloud brings various benefits to its users. Some of these include the following:

The pricing model of Google Cloud allows users to pay only for the selected features and tools they wish to use, which saves their organizations money.
Users can rely on accelerated content delivery through Google Cloud Content Delivery Network (CDN).
Google Cloud offers a wide variety of tools and libraries, which assist users in the development of cloud applications.
The tool has an advanced admin control that allows users to easily add or remove new users and maintain the security of business platforms.
Google Cloud offers consulting services whereby experts provide assistance with cloud strategy development.
The platform is updated on a frequent basis, which can increase companies' productivity through consistent innovations.
Google Cloud offers remote access from anywhere at all times via Google's web applications.
The solution reduces the risks of data breaches as it offers minimal storage of offline data.
Users can expect support not only from the platform but from the growing online community as well, where their questions can be answered in a timely manner.
The product provides detailed documentation for its clients, allowing them to benefit from tutorials and other samples, in order to learn to work with it in the most efficient way.

Reviews from Real Users

Isuru P., an assistant vice president at a tech services company, likes Google Cloud because it is easy to deploy next-generation applications using it.

An IT solutions consultant at a tech services company rates Google Cloud highly because they find the solution stable with a good user experience and a straightforward setup.

Established in 2007, Heroku is a cloud application platform providing a streamlined, efficient place for web app developers to create and deploy their applications. Heroku is designed to maximize developer productivity. With the entire web application development process available on the Herokucloud, creating and rolling out web apps has been made more efficient, convenient, and cost-effective than ever before.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Facebook, UrbanDictionary, Code for America, Mailchimp, Rapportive, GitHub, TED, and Lyft.

Google Cloud vs. Heroku