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Google Compute Engine pros and cons

Vendor: Google

4.3 out of 5

17 reviews
88% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Google Compute Engine offers significant cost savings, up to 90% with ephemeral instances and auto-scaling. It is managed by Google, removing hardware provisioning needs, and supports API integration with custom configurations and features like preemptive and Spot instances. However, security is complex; users face quotas, licensing challenges, lack of multi-region support, and slow support. Despite these issues, it distinguishes itself from AWS and Azure.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Google Compute Engine provides cost savings up to 90 percent with ephemeral instances.

Auto-scaling is a highly valuable feature.

Google manages all hardware, eliminating the need for users to provision.

API integration, automation capabilities, and features like preemptive and Spot instances are beneficial.

The custom configuration feature sets it apart from AWS and Azure.

CONS

Google Compute Engine has a complex security environment that is difficult to set up and easy to disrupt.

Users encounter quota issues when deploying VMs within a project.

The licensing process is not straightforward.

Google Compute Engine lacks multi-region support and does not offer tracking mechanisms.

Support response times can be delayed.

Google Compute Engine Pros review quotes

Google Certified Professional Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees

Nov 22, 2017

I could not have found a better product to perform interactive data analysis and begin my career as a Data Engineer.

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DA

Douglas Augusto

Software Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Dec 8, 2017

Compared to other IaaS providers, I believe that Google Compute Engine (GCE) stands out with the ability to customize the virtual machines.

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AS

IT Support at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Oct 1, 2019

The initial setup is reasonably straightforward. It's a handful of networks and a handful of computers.

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Google Compute Engine

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JB

Janagan Balasubramaniam

Engineer at SLT Visioncom Pvt Ltd

Jan 17, 2023

The support for ephemeral instances has been particularly valuable for me. It allows me to significantly reduce costs for temporary virtual machines by automatically destroying them once they are no longer needed, which can result in cost savings of up to 90 percent. Additionally, the solution is easy to use.

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Leonard Niehaus

Solutions Architect at CGI

Feb 22, 2023

The solution helps to direct SSH into the machine at the click of a button. It also helps to deploy container images right from the UI. There is no need to manage the containers on the machine. I also like the tool’s Spot provision model.

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Senior Data Scientist at Breuninger

Aug 31, 2023

Google is managing all hardware. You don't need to provision or pre-provision your computer engine.

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Infrastructuer Security at Premise Data

Sep 5, 2023

The solution is readily available, and software engineers can provision it. It is scalable and allows self-service.

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DV

Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Sep 8, 2023

From a feature perspective, I find API integration, automation capabilities, and features like preemptive and Spot instances valuable. Migration tools have also been useful.

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SS

Associate Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Sep 14, 2023

The main motive for choosing Google Compute Engine is pricing.

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Arundeep Veerabhadraiah

Associate Director - Cloud Infrastructure at Kyndryl

Oct 4, 2023

One of GCE's best features is the managed instance groups.

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Show 6 more reviews (out of 16)

Google Compute Engine Cons review quotes

Google Certified Professional Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees

Nov 22, 2017

There have been a few (rare) instances where I've encountered a stability issue during the beta pre-production stage of the product.

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DA

Douglas Augusto

Software Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Dec 8, 2017

The GCE only has virtual machines with processors and video cards of the new generation in the North American region, the GCE has expanded in new areas, like Latin America, but it does not carry powerful hardware.

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AS

IT Support at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Oct 1, 2019

The biggest problem is that it's got a very archaean and complex security environment that has to be very carefully set up and is easy to break.

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Google Compute Engine

Free Report: Google Compute Engine Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Google Compute Engine. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2026.

885,444 professionals have used our research since 2012.

JB

Janagan Balasubramaniam

Engineer at SLT Visioncom Pvt Ltd

Jan 17, 2023

Google Compute Engine does not have many options at a lower tier level. If they had more options it will be better. For example, Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure, have more options and different types of instances, of VMs we can select.

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Leonard Niehaus

Solutions Architect at CGI

Feb 22, 2023

I would like to improve the solution’s UI while deploying a container. It is sometimes hard to figure out the container’s details and format that you want to deploy. The tool does not give you a guide to find out the error and why the container is not starting up which could be because you have configured it wrong. This is always a hit on the setup.

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Senior Data Scientist at Breuninger

Aug 31, 2023

It is not very user-friendly for non-experienced users

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Infrastructuer Security at Premise Data

Sep 5, 2023

Google Compute Engine needs to have multi-region support. It would also be nice to have a tracking mechanism.

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DV

Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Sep 8, 2023

The licensing process is not a very straightforward process.

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SS

Associate Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Sep 14, 2023

I rate the product's stability around five to six out of ten.

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Arundeep Veerabhadraiah

Associate Director - Cloud Infrastructure at Kyndryl

Oct 4, 2023

There have been instances when a customer has tried to deploy a certain number of VMs inside a project, and they come across quota issues.

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Show 6 more reviews (out of 16)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Amazon AWS vs Google Compute Engine

Microsoft Azure vs Google Compute Engine

Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs Google Compute Engine

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Google Compute Engine

Google Cloud vs Google Compute Engine

VMware Cloud Foundation vs Google Compute Engine

Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) vs Google Compute Engine

Google Firebase vs Google Compute Engine

SAP S4HANA on AWS vs Google Compute Engine

Tencent Cloud vs Google Compute Engine

Joyent Triton Compute vs Google Compute Engine

IONOS Cloud vs Google Compute Engine

Bigstep Metal Cloud vs Google Compute Engine

See all alternatives

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