Google App Engine vs Render

Google App Engine and Render are among the top PaaS providers for small and medium businesses. Every business needs a website today, so it is not their best choice to manage their IT infrastructure, and that’s where these PaaS providers come in.

Selecting the right service provider between Google App Engine and Render can simplify over half of your app development job. 

Google App Engine

App Engine from Google is its managed PaaS that you can use to ease the process of developing, deploying, scaling, testing, and hosting your applications.

Going with App Engine means you do not need to manage any IT personnel or IT infrastructure at your place because everything will run on cloud infrastructure and Google’s data centers.

Apart from development and deployment, App Engine takes care of other digital needs through its serverless structure, including performance and security.

Thus, you only need to focus on the main requirements and features while App Engine takes care of the infrastructure and all its relevant needs.

Strong diagnostics features

App Engine comes with Cloud Logging and Monitoring features for monitoring your application’s performance and overall health. It also provides reports through the cloud debugger enabling your developers to find and fix bugs in the app easily.

Fully managed and secure services

While working with App Engine, you only need to focus on the source code and nothing else. All else is managed by the App Engine while maintaining the highest security and performance measures.

A complete suite of tools

Google comes with its cloud services ecosystem with all the different developer tools you may need. It brings a complete suite of cloud tools to keep all the services running on one platform for easy development and updates. It also ensures higher performance.

Versioning

A unique feature of App Engine is that it lets you host different versions for development, testing, and production environment requirements.

Pricing

Although it provides competitive pricing compared to the market, no pricing plans are provided. It is because Google App Engine charges for your services and resources.

It means you can enjoy optimal performance from your application while only paying for the resources you use. Here are the details about some of the pricing elements at App Engine’s flexible environment:

• vCPU for $0.063 per core per hour
• Memory $0.009 per GB per hour

While many other instances are available at the App Engine, you can refer to the price estimate calculator at Google App Engine to get an idea about the price you will be paying for using its services.

Render

Render brings a unified cloud platform for building and running your websites with private networks, TLS certificates, Global CDN, and automatic deploys from Git.

So, it improves the application user experience and facilitates the developers. Render takes care of the scaling and performance of your application, and it also supports a lot of backends.

Hosting with Render is instant, and it is better than most other static site platforms because Render keeps everything about your application updated. The only thing that you may miss here is it not being serverless.

Instant development and deployment

Render’s deployment and development experience is almost instant because it supports updates through Git Push.

While you only have to focus on the code, including the main features of your app, Render manages all else about your application with a few clicks.

No need for maintenance

When you develop your app with Render, you do not need to worry about the maintenance or management of your application. Render manages the whole infrastructure for the highest performance of your app.

Reliable

Render brings high security and reliability to your app. It defines its access rules and firewalls and manages the security certificates to make your already working custom domain more secure. It also offers flexibility in its services.

All services run on one platform

Render supports hosting your website and running all related services on one platform, from Cron Jobs to docker files, static and private services, background workers, etc. Thus, the application deployment becomes easier with a significant increase in performance.

Pricing

Render keeps its pricing clear and simple by mentioning each resource’s price. So you can see which resources you will use and easily estimate the cost. Below are the details about the pricing of different services:

Static sites

The static sites hosting service is free, providing 10GB monthly bandwidth, excellent CDN speeds, unlimited collaborators, and custom domains with security.

Web services

The Web services here start at $0 monthly with shared CPU resources and the least amount of ram. However, the starter plan starts at $7 monthly, and the most expensive Pro Ultra plan starts at $450 monthly.

You also have the choice to get a custom plan. Web services at Render also include Private services and Background workers having similar plans with no free usage.

PostgreSQL

The PostgreSQL from Render brings 1GB SSD with an expansion option, automatic backup daily, and the ability to connect from anywhere. You can start with it for free for 3 months with limited resources.

The starter plan starts at $7 monthly, while the most expensive Pro Plus starts at $185 monthly. You can also get a custom plan.

Redis

Redis from Render starts for free, and there is a starter plan for $10 monthly. The Pro Plus plan starts at $250 monthly, and you can contact the sales team to get custom prices.

Cron Jobs

Cron jobs at Render start at $1 monthly, with the starter plan costing 0.016 cents per minute. The Pro Plus Cron jobs plan costs 0.405 cents per minute. To get enterprise-grade services, you can contact the Render sales team.

Render vs App Engine Comparison

Conclusion

Google App Engine and Render are both cloud-based hosting platforms that offer developers a way to deploy their applications without having to worry about server management.

However, there are some key differences between the two platforms. For example, Google App Engine is designed specifically for use with Google’s own suite of products, such as its Cloud Datastore and Cloud Storage services. Render, on the other hand, supports a wider range of programming languages and databases.

Overall, both platforms have their pros and cons, and which one you choose will depend on your specific needs and preferences.

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