Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Google App Engine VS Joyent

Compare Google App Engine VS Joyent 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.

Joyent logo Joyent

Joyent provides cloud infrastructure solutions and big data analytics that power real-time web and mobile applications.
  • Google App Engine Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-17
  • Joyent Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-07-21

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.

Joyent features and specs

  • Scalability
    Joyent provides a highly scalable cloud infrastructure, allowing businesses to easily adjust resources according to demand, which is crucial for businesses experiencing variable loads.
  • Performance
    Offers high-performance computing options with smart technology, enabling efficient and powerful processing capabilities that are beneficial for demanding applications.
  • Security
    Joyent includes built-in security features and compliance with industry standards, ensuring that user data is protected and regulatory requirements are met.
  • Open-source Support
    Joyent is known for its support of open-source technology, making it appealing for developers looking for versatility and innovation in their projects.
  • Container-native Approach
    Supports Docker natively, which makes it easier for development teams to deploy, manage and scale applications using container technology.

Possible disadvantages of Joyent

  • Market Position
    Compared to other market leaders like AWS or Azure, Joyent has a smaller market share, which might limit community support or integration options.
  • Feature Set
    Might have fewer features and services compared to larger providers, which could limit options for businesses looking for specific cloud functionalities.
  • Complexity
    New users might find Joyent's interface and platform services complex and challenging to navigate compared to more user-friendly alternatives.
  • Pricing Transparency
    Potential users may find it difficult to estimate costs upfront as Joyent's pricing can be complex, requiring careful analysis to avoid unexpected expenses.
  • Limited Global Presence
    Joyent has a more limited global infrastructure compared to its larger competitors, which could impact performance and latency for a worldwide user base.

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.

Google App Engine videos

Get to know Google App Engine

More videos:

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

Joyent videos

Joyent Retrospective

More videos:

  • Review - Joyent - Technology Introduction

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Google App Engine and Joyent)
Cloud Computing
95 95%
5% 5
Developer Tools
60 60%
40% 40
Cloud Hosting
95 95%
5% 5
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 Joyent

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...

Joyent Reviews

Alternatives to Amazon's Cloud Services (AWS)
I first used Joyent back in 2007 when they offered free hosting for the emerging Facebook application platform. It's grown a lot since then to offer a variety of cloud services that you can run on your hardware or theirs.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Google App Engine seems to be a lot more popular than Joyent. While we know about 32 links to Google App Engine, we've tracked only 1 mention of Joyent. 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 (32)

  • 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 / 3 months 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 / 9 months 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 / 11 months 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 / 12 months ago
  • Fixing A Broken Deployment to Google App Engine
    In 2014, I took a web development on Udacity that was taught by Steve Huffman of Reddit fame. He taught authentication, salting passwords, the difference between GET and POST requests, basic html and css, caching techniques. It was a fantastic introduction to web dev. To pass the course, students deployed simple python servers to Google App Engine. When I started to look for work, I opted to use code from that... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
View more

Joyent mentions (1)

  • Is there a USB image for current builds for install and test new things
    What is the difference between official NetBSD binary packages built from the stable branch, and this from joyent.com. Source: over 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Google App Engine and Joyent, 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.

CoreOS - CoreOS platform provides the components needed to build distributed systems to support application containers.

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

OpenShift Container Platform - Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is the secure and comprehensive enterprise-grade container platform based on industry standards, Docker and Kubernetes.

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.

Amazon ECS - Amazon EC2 Container Service is a highly scalable, high-performanceโ€‹ container management service that supports Docker containers.