In the second post of this compare/contrast/debate series, I present the biggest cloud platforms.
You're welcome to pick your favorite and debate it out, but comments comparing the major differences are very welcome. 🙏
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Latest comments (51)
I use digital ocean for simpler pricing structure 😄
This is what I tell new people coming to the cloud:
AWS: First to the market, has the most offerings in the PAAS. Because it was first, it is also burdened by a funky UI and AIM. Like the Amazon store, you have access to just about everything you could want - but it's not always consistent quality. Documentation can also be hit or miss.
Azure: If you are a shop that uses Microsoft servers and you need to lift and shift - there isn't anything better. Microsoft also has some cool unique PAAS offerings. CosmosDB is very cool for example. The UI experience for someone new is good with Microsoft and their documentation is also solid. Azure, like all Microsoft products, is usually a good thing to use. Also, Azure is trying hard to unseat AWS, so there is effort in innovation and pricing.
GCP: Easiest UI by far. Less PAAS offerings overall, but nothing missing where it counts. Lots of 3rd party integrations to fill the gaps too. GCP has made it easy for vendors to add to their marketspace. When you do find a feature you like, Firebase, Cloud Run, Kuberneties, etc... they are usually pretty damn awesome. For instance, the Firestore database with realtime queries is very unique. Firebase Auth is the best auth system out of the box (and it's nearly free!). But, like AWS has their version of Kafka - GCP only offers a more simple Pub/Sub. If you want Kafka, you have to use the Confluent service from the marketplace.
Of course, everyone's experience will be a little different. Because I work for a service company and have to use all these cloud providers in many ways - I tend to find the areas of poor documentation where others on a more predictable "happy path" might find AWS docs fantastic. Honestly all of them will be gret.
Since I believe in having an opinion, I will say that anytime I start a new project to work on some tech, it is always in GCP unless there is a specific feature I need from another provider. Cloud Run is awesome - love it. Firebase Auth is super awesome. And I like Firestore more than DynamoDB. I do wish that GCP had a version of MongoDB (AWS has DocumentDB and Azure has Cosmos), but if I really need that NoSQL I can use that 3rd party thing again and turn on Mongo's Atlas.
And, if you are building a mobile app, I strongly feel that the Firebase line of tools still beats AWS and Azure's tools hands down. (at least today)
@ben If possible start a thread for Dokku vs Heroku !!!!
Just to add to the discussion: BigQuery is amazing! switched from Redshift and it feels like switching from driving a Subaru to a Bentley :) Huge win to GCP in my book
I would have loved to say something more surprising than "Google has the best cloud" but here we go 😭 I find it easier to use. When GCP apis are not so good it still match my logic when I code not so good apis so I always get back on my feet 😓 . It's the fastest to get to work for me. AWS comes second it's more difficult but it has its own version of every great opensource project. DynamoDB is great. My worst experience is Azure I dislike its UX, each time it required too much work to get something running. It lacks magic and I end up typing / copy-pasting commands in a terminal way to soon for my tastes. It has a lot of data-centers located in interesting places. Those three have a really big service offering so I'm far from having tested everything 😣 .
I've used BOTH Azure and GCP and Azure is the clear winner for me
AWS is an absolute mess! Calculating your monthly cost is close to Alchemy or possible witchcraft. Also whats with all the random names for simple services. On the plus side its reliable and solid once you have learned that EC2, RDS, Route53, S3 = Instance, Database, Domain Management, Storage.
The azure portal is much cleaner than AWS and the quickstart templates are awesome. github.com/Azure/azure-quickstart-...
Two of my emails are killed on AWS now. (via deleting the account.)
I used AWS years ago and it was ok.
I've been using Azure for many years now and it's fantastic.
I've been using GCP and in particular Firebase for a couple of years now and it's incredible.
What I remember as a huge pain with Azure and wouldn't want to go through it again is their active directory and the integration with a web app. A REALLY BIG PAIN.
Firebase (on GCP) makes your users login very simple and this is what I use today if I have the chance.
Cheers!
Yes! I just did a spike on switching from Auth0 to AAD B2C for our tokens and it was hell
darn, I was hoping that it would improve over time but apparently no...
thanks
My last employer had no direct need for serverless plus a strong reluctance to spend, so I haven't used them to date.
Now that I'm unemployed, have found that ~90% of the job postings (frontend, backend, full-stack, data science, ML, you name it) require or heavily screen for serverless skills/experience.
So will be picking up serverless soon, have been looking quickly at all 3 trying to decide where to invest my time.
At least as far as the job postings go, it seems pretty clear, about 7:3:1 AWS:Azure:GCP ratio.
Great to see interesting and healthy debate on cloud seevices... check out the cloud service comparison website to learn more...
PRs are welcome.
httpp://comparecloud.in/
I don't know enough about Azure, but did deploy a couple demo apps back when I was in school and it was simple. But that's been like 4 years now I think.
I mostly use AWS right now, but that's mostly because what we use at work. I find it a bit too complex really. While I understand their very small services that are meant to do one thing makes it so you can combine different services to make a powerful system, I find it very complex to get started with just to make something simple. Plus I really don't like how hard it seems to be too get good pricing information for a lot of their services.
I actually do have an application that uses a mixture of AWS and GCP. I have the application and it's database on AWS but do some OCR and storage on GCP as I found it just flat out nailed what I was trying to do. Other than though I mostly find the UI weird. Some things seem easy then some things seems very hard to navigate (then again I don't know if any cloud platform has it right).
I need to do more research on Azure though. I hope to learn more about it soon.
Azure is super simple, but love for Aws and Gcp is biased, most lovers are Microsoft haters irrespective of actual feature comparison.
I stay away from Gcp as Google is known to sneak and steal your information. A company which is built upon such privacy invasion foundation. I can never trust Google solutions.
I use Aws for SES, it’s only cheapest mail sending solution compared to none in Azure, for everything else Azure is better. Azure is primary cloud and Aws is storage backup.
Azure is real simple for Windows users, Aws is little complex, but familiar to Linux users.
👏 Let's 👏 go 👏 multi 👏 cloud 👏.
Hi all!
I would say AWS > GCP
Favorite thing from AWS: Lambda, S3 + Cloudfront. There you can get a web app up and running in less than a day.
Favorite thing from GCP: Shell console and Kubernetes :)
I hate from AWS: Pricing... ugh
I hate from GCP: The UI is kind of complicated, it's like they are stashing a lot of stuff in little space.
I have never used Azure, even though I'm open to <3
I'm late to the conversation here.
The GCP FIrebase tools gives you a web app that offers WAY more features (like auto certs, HTTP2, etc...) and you can have a deployment going in about 15 minutes.
Seriously, check out the Firebase CLI tools. Just create a project with hosting and cloud functions and you have a simpler version of Lambda/S3/Cloudfront. HUGELY easier.
In the end, they both work. And Cloudfront has some better rules for things like IP filtering.
Last, I guess if you are used to AWS you might find it easier. I work with both daily, so I am used to both. GCP is sooooo much better in the UI. They also have APIs for everything and the GCLOUD command tool has full coverage. Someone new to the cloud providers, GCP is super easy.
Agree with UI AWS > GCP, both navigation is mess but GCP make it worst. I use search which is much faster to locate what I want, AWS search result is straightforward
I use GCP now but moving to AWS for ML, SageMaker blazingText.