AWS vs Google Cloud vs Heroku

This article will compare AWS vs Google Cloud vs Heroku according to its features and pricing structure.

Cloud computing has proved its existence in multiple fields for decades. It uses distributed resources such as data centers and remote servers to accomplish tasks.  

With cloud computing services being on the rise, it has become crucial to leverage it across all organizations. 

According to a study, 69% of businesses already use cloud technology in one capacity or another. On the other hand, 18% say they plan to implement cloud-computing solutions at a significant point in time.

As the data shows in a study by Dell, companies investing in cloud, big data, security, and mobility enjoy up to 53% faster revenue growth than their competitors. 

Many industry leaders recognize the many benefits of the cloud computing trend. The technology is being used to run organizations, dramatically increase profit margins, serve the customers, and run the organizations.

Developers are often torn between choosing the right platform for the app. Let go of your doubts and evaluate the three notable platform choice of the present times. Keep reading to explore the three platforms and know how they differentiate from one another. 

What is Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

AWS does not need any formal introduction, given the popularity it offers. Amazon Web Services is a leading provider, providing 170 AWS services to developers.

Amazon Web Services is a subsidiary of Amazon and focuses on providing infrastructure as a service, along with a platform. AWS provides users with a virtual cluster of computers that can be accessed from anywhere and at any time. 

Launched in 2006, the platform offers several service offerings, including Elastic Book Store, Elastic Compute Cloud, Simple Storage Service, Content delivery network, and more. 

The platform provides easy-to-use, scalable, reliable, and cost-effective cloud computing solutions. The comprehensive computing platform of Amazon is developed with a combination of the platform as a service, infrastructure as a service along with packaged software as a service offering. 

Amazon’s subsidiary offers an on-demand Cloud Computing platform to companies, individuals, and governments. As one of the oldest providers, it has extended its services to establish a more extensive user base, earning trust and reliability from users. 

Features of AWS

Amazon Web Services has varied features, making it highly reliable among different firms. Here are some of the prominent features of AWS: 

• Mobile friendly access 

The Amazon Web Services feature is available for iOS and Android. AWS Mobile Hub guides you through the sustainable feature of the app.

It comprises a console that helps you access AWS services, including testing, development, and monitoring mobile applications. It comprises several lucid ways to configure and select mobile app features such as push notifications and content delivery.

It comprises a console helping you access AWS services that include testing, development, and monitoring mobile applications. 

• Serverless cloud functions

Amazon gateway helps users by running the code and scaling it. The only thing a user needs to do is upload code with a smartphone’s help.

Users must not take care of servers as AWS easily manages the whole process. Apps that are made must deliver a great experience to users. Users need several tasks to run simultaneously, and AWS comes to the rescue helping users focus on building the application.

The server management is performed by AWS and performs patching, scaling, and infrastructure administration. 

• Database

Amazon offers a database catering to the requirement. The database provided is completely managed by them. Here are some of the databases along with their uses: 

• Relational database: Transactional Purposes 
• Data warehouse: Analytics 
• Non-relational database: Internet Scale Applications 
• In-memory data store: Caching and real-time workloads 
• Graph database: The application with highly connected data 

• Storage

This is another popular feature of AWS and offers Amazon a flexible, easy-to-use, and economic advantage.

The storage offered can be used independently and combined to meet the requirement. Here are the most popular kinds of storage offered by AWS: 

• Amazon Glacier: It is beneficial for long-term storage 
• The Amazon EBS: This offers block-level storage volumes promoting persistent data storage for use using EC-2 instances. 
• Amazon Simple Storage Service: It offers scalable object storage for analytics, archival and ensures data backup. 

• Security and compliance

It allows customers to innovate and scale. In addition, customers are required to only pay for the service they use. Providing security at the port access level and at the protocol, they offer no upfront expenses. 

Pricing

AWS has competitive pricing, which makes it an attractive choice for businesses and individuals for businesses and individuals.

The company offers a one-year free tier that comprises several services. AWS products are free and offer 25 GB of storage, 1 million requests per month in AWS Lambda, in addition to 100 million events per month in Amazon Mobile Analytic at zero cost. 

Amazon Web Services need payment 12 months after signing up or post exceeding the predefined number of services. The pricing packages are customizable and often hit the lowest. Moreover, AWS follows the ‘pay-as-you-go’ model.

This is a model where you only pay for the number of services used. There is no package, subscription, fees, or long-term contracts.

What is Google Cloud?

Google Cloud Platform enables individuals to use similar infrastructure as Google for its popular products, such as YouTube, Google Drive, and Gmail.

It caters to a wide audience with access to the service, with it constantly trying to compete with AWS. Google Cloud similarly offers several services, including Google App Engine, Google Cloud CDN, Google Compute Engine, Google Cloud DNS, and more. 

Google Cloud is a computing resource provider that deploys, develops, and operates applications on the web. Although, the cloud infrastructure serves as the host of applications, Google Cloud is primarily a service for maintaining and developing original applications. This can be published from the hyper-scale data center facilities. 

Google keeps an optimum track of the resources, including processing power, database queries, data storage, and networking connectivity consumed. You pay for the resources per minute, with discounts applied while using the services. 

Features of Google Cloud

• Fault tolerance and high availability

A strong global footprint is a crucial quality in a cloud platform. With 18 regions, 134 network edge locations, and as many as 55 zones, GCP ensures easy availability of applications. Moreover, they are resilient to challenges, and the service is designed to assist with application deployment considerations. 

• Scalability and usability

Power-packed with built-in services, Google Cloud comprises built-in services that auto-scale applications while distributing the application load. It furthermore allows users to use identical instances, scaling up and down numbers of instances based on target utilization. It offers a large variety of load balances to distribute different loads. 

• Ability to reduce costs

A major feature making GCP stand out from the rest is the ability to reduce costs. Costs are associated with recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives compared to those on-premises.

It possesses a strong global network, a scalable service infrastructure, worldwide presence while being privacy compliant. 

• Strong infrastructure

Google cloud platform is extremely user-friendly, a global platform, and continually upgrading. The cost-effective platform is highly secure, and you no longer need to worry about the changes in the business market infrastructure.

Moreover, Google continuously keeps upgrading for the future with updated technical amenities. Some of the essential features in this category are live migration, global load balancers, customizable machine types, google grade security, and more. 

• Robust data and analytics: 

Offering advanced technology, ‘Big Data’ enables easy searches while building better products. Google’s excellent data service, as offered by Google Cloud Datalab, Google Big Query, etc., lets you explore the ever-changing landscape of data analysis and usage. Furthermore, Google’s applications, such as Cloud Dataflow and Maps, suggest the best options per your query. 

Pricing

The pricing of the GCP services consumes fundamental resources of cloud computing such as connectivity, processor power, data storage, memory, etc.

It offers workloads for free, and it is crucial to create an account to evaluate the products of Google Cloud and its performance.

New customers get $300 worth of credits for the purpose of evaluating, running and deploying their workload instances.

The customers can use 20+ products for free and available for a limit as set on a monthly basis. Moreover, the pay-as-you-go pricing structure lets users pay solely for the services used.

There are no zero termination charges, and prices vary with usage and product. 

What is Heroku?

Heroku refers to a cloud service platform, enabling simple deployment and application development. Since it manages hardware and servers, businesses using Heroku are rightly able to prioritize the applications. It is primarily known for running apps in dynos and was developed by developers targeted to be used by developers. 

By offering easy to navigate interface, developers experience ease to access and know exactly what they need to do on logging in.

They are aware of how the applications run and monitor them well. It is open and convenient for developers to build the language chosen.

Developers are given the ability to choose the language they want and develop the app accordingly. The add-ons are extremely robust features that get deployed to the app with the help of one single click. 

Features of Heroku

• Easy to connect to salesforce

Heroku Connect allows users to create bidirectional sync between salesforce and the app. Since its first use, it has been proven to be an easy-to-adept tool, even for people not using cloud tool configurations.

In addition, it offers a constructive dashboard, where tasks such as deploying, managing, and tracking metrics are easier.

• Hassle free hosting

The container-based tool in the cloud supports various programming languages and several add-ons. It offers deployment provisioning, leaving developers free to focus on the project.

It removes any worries about infrastructure, preventing them from worrying about the version to use, the libs to install, and the like.

However, the abstraction comes with a price, with a high average processing value compared with other key players in the field. 

• Command Line Interface

Featuring an impressive Command Line Interface, it helps users manage and control the applications on it. Several commands, such as Heroku logs and Heroku PS, promise to be your best friends by offering attractive functionalities. Moreover, it is simple to install; one can install and start playing with it.

• Supports multiple languages

An agnostic app supporting multiple languages, Heroku platform supports more than eight languages from scratch. It includes languages such as Java, Node, and Python. 

• Supports varied databases and data stores

Heroku allows developers to opt from any database and data store, per individual applications’ needs. The Postgres SQL database makes it easy to access the applications while safeguarding them.

The developers must make most of the specific add-ons and work wide multiple databases and data stores such as Redis, MySQL, etc.

These add-ons make it extremely easy for developers to manage data stores, store data, and monitor data usage. 

Pricing

Heroku is a Freemium service, and the pricing starts at $7 per month for Hobby Dyno. For starters, the service is extremely affordable to start with. Heroku offers several sophisticated services, especially under Advanced and Enterprise plans.

The pricing in this module starts at $250 per month, offering dedicated resources to applications. Not to forget, Heroku also offers a free plan to help you explore the platform well. The Buttons and Buildpacks are free, in addition to several Heroku Add-ons. 

AWS vs Google Cloud vs Heroku Comparison