Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Google App Engine VS Fastly

Compare Google App Engine VS Fastly and see what are their differences

Google App Engine logo Google App Engine

A powerful platform to build web and mobile apps that scale automatically.

Fastly logo Fastly

Real-time CDN
  • Google App Engine Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-17
  • Fastly Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-09

Google App Engine features and specs

  • Auto-scaling
    Google App Engine automatically scales your application based on the traffic it receives, ensuring that your application can handle varying workloads without manual intervention.
  • Managed environment
    App Engine provides a fully managed environment, covering infrastructure management tasks like server provisioning, patching, monitoring, and managing app versions.
  • Integrated services
    Seamlessly integrates with other Google Cloud services such as Datastore, Cloud SQL, Pub/Sub, and more, offering a comprehensive ecosystem for building and deploying applications.
  • Multiple languages support
    Supports multiple programming languages including Java, Python, PHP, Node.js, Go, Ruby, and .NET, giving developers flexibility in choosing their preferred language.
  • Security
    Offers robust security features including Identity and Access Management (IAM), Cloud Identity, and automated security updates, which help protect your applications from vulnerabilities.
  • Developer productivity
    App Engine allows rapid development and deployment, letting developers focus on writing code without worrying about infrastructure management, thus boosting productivity.
  • Versioning
    Supports versioning of applications, allowing multiple versions of the application to be hosted simultaneously, which helps in A/B testing and rollback capabilities.

Possible disadvantages of Google App Engine

  • Cost
    While you pay for what you use, costs can escalate quickly with high traffic or resource-intensive applications. Detailed cost prediction can be challenging.
  • Vendor lock-in
    Relying heavily on Google App Engine's proprietary services and APIs can make it difficult to migrate applications to other platforms, leading to vendor lock-in.
  • Limited control
    Being a fully managed service, App Engine provides limited control over the underlying infrastructure which might be a limitation for certain advanced use cases.
  • Environment constraints
    Certain restrictions and limitations are imposed on the runtime environment, such as request timeout limits and specific resource quotas, which can affect application performance.
  • Complex debugging
    Debugging issues in a highly abstracted managed environment can be more complex and difficult compared to traditional server-hosted applications.
  • Cold start latency
    Serverless environments like App Engine can suffer from cold start latency, where the initial request triggers a delay as the environment spins up resources.
  • Configuration complexity
    Despite its benefits, configuring and optimizing App Engine for specific scenarios can be more complex than expected, requiring a steep learning curve.

Fastly features and specs

  • High Performance
    Fastly is known for its high-speed content delivery capabilities due to its advanced edge cloud platform, which can significantly enhance the user experience by reducing latency and improving load times.
  • Real-Time Analytics
    Fastly provides real-time analytics that allow businesses to monitor traffic and performance instantaneously, enabling quick decision-making and enhanced operational efficiency.
  • Edge Computing
    Fastly offers edge computing services that allow processing to be done closer to the end user, which can reduce latency, save bandwidth, and facilitate better performance for dynamic content.
  • Scalability
    Fastly's infrastructure is designed to handle large amounts of traffic and can easily scale up to meet the demands of businesses of all sizes, making it suitable for enterprises with fluctuating traffic levels.
  • Security Features
    Fastly includes robust security features such as DDoS protection, TLS encryption, and a Web Application Firewall (WAF), which help protect websites and applications from various cyber threats.
  • API and Developer Friendly
    Fastly provides a rich set of APIs and extensive documentation that allows developers to customize and integrate its services easily.

Possible disadvantages of Fastly

  • Cost
    Fastly can be more expensive compared to other CDN providers, especially for smaller businesses or startups with limited budgets.
  • Complexity
    The advanced features and functionalities of Fastly may come with a steep learning curve for new users who are not familiar with CDNs and edge computing.
  • Support Limitations
    While Fastly does offer customer support, some users have reported that the quality of customer service can be inconsistent, which may pose challenges during critical issues.
  • Limited Presence in Some Regions
    Fastly's network, although extensive, may not have the same level of presence or performance in certain regions compared to other global CDN providers, potentially affecting service in those areas.
  • Dependency on Internet Connectivity
    As with any cloud-based service, Fastlyโ€™s performance is dependent on the quality of internet connectivity. Poor internet connections can lead to suboptimal performance.

Analysis of Google App Engine

Overall verdict

  • Google App Engine is generally considered a good choice for developers looking for a serverless platform to deploy their applications quickly without managing underlying infrastructure. Its ease of use, scalability, and integration with Google's ecosystem make it a strong option, especially for projects expecting to scale significantly or require integration with other Google Cloud services.

Why this product is good

  • Google App Engine is a fully managed serverless platform that allows developers to build scalable web applications and mobile backends. It abstracts away infrastructure management, handles scaling automatically, and offers integration with other Google Cloud services, providing a high degree of flexibility and efficiency. Its key strengths include support for multiple programming languages, built-in security features, and seamless connectivity to Google's machine learning and data analytics tools.

Recommended for

    Google App Engine is recommended for developers building web applications who prefer a Platform as a Service (PaaS) model, startups who need a solution that can grow with them without worrying about scaling issues, teams wanting to leverage Google's robust data and analytics offerings, and businesses that require a global reach with reliable performance.

Analysis of Fastly

Overall verdict

  • Fastly is generally considered good for businesses that require a reliable and fast CDN with advanced features for security and real-time analytics. Its edge computing capabilities make it an excellent choice for companies looking to optimize the delivery of dynamic and personalized content. However, like any service, whether it is best suited for your particular needs will depend on specific business requirements and budget.

Why this product is good

  • Fastly is a popular content delivery network (CDN) and cloud services provider known for its speed, scalability, and powerful edge computing capabilities. It offers real-time visibility and control, which can be particularly beneficial for businesses that need to deliver dynamic content and applications quickly. Fastly's platform is designed for high performance and efficiency, allowing for rapid scaling to handle large volumes of traffic. Additionally, Fastly is praised for its robust security features, which include DDoS protection, TLS/SSL encryption, and Web Application Firewall (WAF) capabilities.

Recommended for

  • E-commerce platforms that need to provide fast and reliable shopping experiences.
  • Media and entertainment companies requiring efficient delivery of video and audio streams.
  • Tech companies that need to leverage edge computing for real-time data processing and application delivery.
  • Businesses of all sizes seeking robust security measures for their web applications and services.

Google App Engine videos

Get to know Google App Engine

More videos:

  • Review - Developing apps that scale automatically with Google App Engine

Fastly videos

FASTLY STOCK, TOP GROWTH STOCK? FSLY

More videos:

  • Review - Fastly CEO Artur Bergman on cloud computing
  • Review - Why Fastly

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Google App Engine and Fastly)
Cloud Computing
72 72%
28% 28
CDN
0 0%
100% 100
Cloud Hosting
100 100%
0% 0
Backend As A Service
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Google App Engine and Fastly

Google App Engine Reviews

Top 5 Alternatives to Heroku
Google App Engine is fast, easy, but not that very cheap. The pricing is reasonable, and it comes with a free tier, which is great for small projects that are right for beginner developers who want to quickly set up their apps. It can also auto scale, create new instances as needed and automatically handle high availability. App Engine gets a positive rating for performance...
AppScale - The Google App Engine Alternative
AppScale is open source Google App Engine and allows you to run your GAE applications on any infrastructure, anywhere that makes sense for your business. AppScale eliminates lock-in and makes your GAE application portable. This way you can choose which public or private cloud platform is the best fit for your business requirements. Because we are literally the GAE...

Fastly Reviews

8 Best Cloudflare Alternatives (Free + Premium)
With a decade of experience in the CDN market, Fastly was founded by Artur Bergman in 2011. Fastly is one of those whirlwind service providers that expanded quickly through the years to become a force to be reckoned with today. Google recognized this and selected Fastly to be one of its CDN partners in 2015.
Source: hostscore.net
The 7 Best Content-Delivery-Network Providers
Fastly originates from San Francisco and works edge-cloud-based. In addition to the use of a Content-Delivery-Network, Fastly optimises images to relieve the server and live up to its name even more. The fewer bytes, the faster the transmission after all. In addition, Fastly does a lot in terms of security. Hence, with this provider you get a Web-Application-Firewall as well...
Source: omr.com
Top 15 Cloudflare Alternatives: A Complete Guide
Fastly is a CDN service that specialises in dynamic and event-driven content delivery. Fastly uses its powerful and distributed network of servers to cache and serve your web content and applications with low latency and high availability. Fastly also offers security features, such as SSL, DDoS protection, and WAF, to protect your web content and applications.
Introduction to Cloudflare Alternatives In 2021
If fond of extremely time CDN then โ€œFastlyโ€, an dilemma to Cloudflare, founded in the year 2011 which supplies a series of services including immediate configuration updates, instant purging, characteristics content cache, real-time streaming & analytics, private CDN, WAF, Image Optimizer, duty balancing. Fastly features pricing as such as a total variety of requests and...
10 Top Cloudflare Alternatives for Your Website
Fastly offers on-the-go pricing thatโ€™s based on the total number of requests and the volume of data transfer. The company also allows users to test up to $50 of traffic for free, without any long-term commitment. However, you can also opt for more predictable plans by opting for Fastlyโ€™s Essential, Professional, or Enterprise plans. The company also provides extensive public...
Source: beebom.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Google App Engine should be more popular than Fastly. It has been mentiond 33 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Google App Engine mentions (33)

  • Simplifying basic (genAI) web app deployment with serverless
    Google App Engine (GAE) -- the "OG" serverless platform that launched back in 2008 & somewhat modernized in 2018; uses customized, proprietary containers, free static file edge-caching, and generous outbound networking free tier. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Unlocking the Cloud: Your Essential Guide to IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS Models
    Google App Engine - Google's fully managed platform for building scalable web and mobile backends. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Guide to modern app-hosting without servers on Google Cloud
    If Google App Engine (GAE) is the "OG" serverless platform, Cloud Run (GCR) is its logical successor, crafted for today's modern app-hosting needs. GAE was the 1st generation of Google serverless platforms. It has since been joined, about a decade later, by 2nd generation services, GCR and Cloud Functions (GCF). GCF is somewhat out-of-scope for this post so I'll cover that another time. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Security in the Cloud: Your Role in the Shared Responsibility Model
    As Windsales Inc. expands, it adopts a PaaS model to offload server and runtime management, allowing its developers and engineers to focus on code development and deployment. By partnering with providers like Heroku and Google App Engine, Windsales Inc. Accesses a fully managed runtime environment. This choice relieves Windsales Inc. Of managing servers, OS updates, or runtime environment behavior. Instead,... - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Hosting apps in the cloud with Google App Engine in 2024
    Google App Engine (GAE) is their original serverless solution and first cloud product, launching in 2008 (video), giving rise to Serverless 1.0 and the cloud computing platform-as-a-service (PaaS) service level. It didn't do function-hosting nor was the concept of containers mainstream yet. GAE was specifically for (web) app-hosting (but also supported mobile backends as well). - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
View more

Fastly mentions (14)

  • The Rise of the Monolith
    Well worth a mention, Fermyon[0] and Cosmonic[1], and Fastly[2] are all standards-based and mature wasm edge/cloud providers worth checking out! 0: https://fermyon.com 1: https://cosmonic.com 2: https://fastly.com. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Need help about netstat results
    Go to fastly.com if you want to know what fastly is. Source: over 3 years ago
  • HSTS issue
    "Websites prove their identity via certificates. Firefox does not trust this site because it uses a certificate that is not valid for i.redd.it. The certificate is only valid for the following names: default.ssl.fastly.net, fastly.com, \.a.ssl.fastly.net, *.hosts.fastly.net, *.global.ssl.fastly.net, *.fastly.com,* a.ssl.fastly.net, purge.fastly.net, mirrors.fastly.net, control.fastly.net, tools.fastly.net. Source: over 3 years ago
  • Launching Nhost CDN: Nhost Storage Is Now Blazing Fastโ„ข
    No, we didn't. We are leveraging Fastly's expertise for that so you get to benefit from their large infrastructure while we get to enjoy their high degree of flexibility to tailor the service to your needs. - Source: dev.to / about 4 years ago
  • MQA is lossy
    And yet the internet still has issues. I was communicating with a guy in r/tidal over the weekend in Poland. His internet speeds were 400 Mbps down and yet Tidal Master streams couldn't play. Come to find out when people are awake his ISP and one of its peers to get to fastly.com (CDN that Tidal uses) is saturated and unable to play. You can't even begin to compare youtube or Netflix either. Netflix, youtube and... Source: over 4 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Google App Engine and Fastly, you can also consider the following products

Salesforce Platform - Salesforce Platform is a comprehensive PaaS solution that paves the way for the developers to test, build, and mitigate the issues in the cloud application before the final deployment.

CloudFlare - Cloudflare is a global network designed to make everything you connect to the Internet secure, private, fast, and reliable.

Dokku - Docker powered mini-Heroku in around 100 lines of Bash

Amazon CloudFront - Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery web service.

Heroku - Agile deployment platform for Ruby, Node.js, Clojure, Java, Python, and Scala. Setup takes only minutes and deploys are instant through git. Leave tedious server maintenance to Heroku and focus on your code.

KeyCDN - KeyCDN is a high-performance Content Delivery Network (CDN). Lowest price globally at $0.04/GB with HTTP/2 Support and free Origin Shield.