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Amazon AWS vs Google App Engine vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS is 13.0%, down from 16.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google App Engine is 2.1%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 9.2%, up from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon AWS13.0%
Google App Engine2.1%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry9.2%
Other75.7%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Asif  Meem - PeerSpot reviewer
Managed cloud services have helped accelerate experiments with flexible configuration options
Sometimes the costs associated with spinning up a service, especially managed services, have implications. For example, if I create a Glue job, that will create S3 buckets and other resources that have cost implications, but once I clean up a Glue job, it does not delete the other accessory resources. Sometimes, I have to go hunting for what resources Amazon AWS might have provisioned and how it is costing behind the scenes. It can be complex depending on your level of expertise. It is not as easy to get started, especially when it comes to secure practices. Amazon AWS is more hands-on than other platforms.
Chandra Shekar Reddy Arrabolu - PeerSpot reviewer
Effortless server management and automatic scaling boost productivity
The error logging system in Google App Engine could be enhanced. While there are troubleshooting documents with Google-defined error logs, identifying the exact root cause can be challenging. Often, issues must be escalated through support to product engineering teams who access internal logs for resolution. Increasing the visibility of logging would help users identify issues more easily. Regarding runtimes, the validity period limitations can be problematic. When companies use legacy applications, migrating to new versions requires significant code changes and isn't always a simple lift-and-shift operation. Google App Engine should consider continuing to provide security patches for legacy applications, especially for customers with substantial billing. The manual scaling feature needs improvement, as it isn't available for all runtimes. Adding this capability across all runtimes would be beneficial for controlling instance scaling within specific parameters.
Stephen  Hack - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use, simple to sign-in, but lacking graphical interface
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is used as a cloud platform Pivotal Cloud Foundry has helped our organization by the way we've set it up, it's easy to sign in, bind services, push services, and create YAML files. The most valuable features of Pivotal Cloud Foundry are its ease of use and the command line…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The scalability of the product is the solution's most valuable feature."
"The most important feature is deploying our production in multi-data regions around the world."
"They integrate well with various other solutions."
"It is highly available and on-demand. So, you can scale up and scale down whenever required."
"The stability of the solution is very good."
"With the pay-as-you-go model, we don't have to predict future IT needs. We can just scale up as we want. That helps with a lot of agility in deploying stuff in our IT infrastructure."
"Amazon AWS is user-friendly and intuitive."
"It has helped reduce the cost by rationing the computing power and paying only on a per usage basis, instead of provisioning unneeded, idle, or unutilized computing power that is used only at 20% of its capacity or time."
"The customer service is excellent and very responsive."
"The auto-scaling feature helped us significantly in our fast-paced environment where the number of users was increasing rapidly."
"I've found that all of the features are valuable, especially the shared drive and the ability for multiple people to use their documents at the same time."
"What I appreciate most about Google App Engine is that the deployment is significantly easier compared to a conventional Linux platform."
"I've noticed measurable benefits and return on investment by choosing Google App Engine."
"The most valuable features of Google App Engine include the ease of rolling back deployments when failures occur, the ability to track deployment times, and the feature to split traffic between different instances."
"The zero infrastructure management is valuable, allowing me to focus on the code rather than the service."
"Seurity features - unauthorized individuals are unable to access certain applications."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."
"It supports CI/CD, and is integrated with the CI/CD very well."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."
"We find its stability and scalability valuable."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."
"The solution is stable and resilient. In our company, we do not even see any challenges with the solution."
"It provides a set of developer-friendly tools that simplify application deployment."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies. It has a very good performance."
 

Cons

"It would be better if there was a way to see which components were still on. We have some situations where I forget that some components are turned on. We forget some components are on, and we only see that these components are on when we see the bill at the end of the month. It would also be better if AWS had specialized firewalls or integrations with leading products. For example, a specialized firewall with content filtering. We were looking for some firewall tools, and we saw that AWS doesn't have any specialized firewall tools in its services portfolio. So, we are looking for other tools like FortKnox, Forcepoint, and Check Point because we didn't find the solutions in AWS services."
"It has the technical support features, but they need to be improved. It has lots of users, but they need to be managed accordingly."
"The billing should be more competitive."
"We have a very good approach internally with what we have developed. It involved overcoming some hurdles regarding the single point of truth or single point of configuration, which is sometimes not that easy for AWS. There are dashboards and you have your web service, but bringing all these together and orchestrating is sometimes quite difficult."
"Its subscription model or pricing model is too complex, which should be improved."
"One of the issues I'm facing is that my RDS SQL Server version 5.8 is reaching its end of life, and I need to upgrade it to a customer-wanted version. I want to do this on Graviton instances, but Graviton only starts with version 8.0 and currently doesn't support the 5.8 series. We've raised a Priority Feature Request (PFR) with AWS to have this functionality added for at least three months. This would give us enough time to upgrade our database to the 8.0 version without any issues."
"It's a good cloud, however, if I compare it with Azure, Azure is more of a feature-rich cloud."
"They need to improve the engines' availability of services since they have been reducing that availability."
"I would like a simpler deployment tool on laptops. It is a bit complicated at the moment. We know how to do it, but it could be easier to deploy it on laptops."
"There needs to be more directions in terms of how to use the solution."
"Google Cloud support for Google App Engine is very poor, with unresponsive and unaware agents. It took them almost a month to inform me that SSH is not possible with private instances."
"Currently, we have to use Google CLI and utilize Google App CLI SDKs for deployment. If options were available to enable these SDKs for Terraform and CloudFormation, it would be more helpful for executing one-click deployments."
"There are two versions of Google App Engine: flexible and standard versions. I think they can improve by having only one version."
"Data consumption of the device could be improved."
"The documentation and community are lacking for this product."
"The areas of Google App Engine that I would to improve or enhance include its allowance for complete end-to-end deployment and scalability; however, it is manageable only for a few languages."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology it is a bit complex."
"I'd like to see a larger service offering."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry doesn't have certain advanced features."
"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it t can take time for users to learn it."
"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is not scalable, infinitely, because when you install it on a set of virtual machines it is very hard to scale. It's easy to scale on an application level, but not it is not similar to if you were using Amazon. Amazon you can scale thousands of applications."
"It should offer more security features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Technical support is expensive."
"Reasonably priced and comparable to similar services."
"The pricing is reasonable. It's not expensive, nor will it be cheap, but the free credits initially given provide leverage for new companies to start their businesses."
"We are happy with the pricing."
"Pricing is good. It's average."
"Monthly licensing fee."
"It's expensive. It costs you an arm and a leg."
"Amazon AWS has pay-as-you-go options available."
"We pay the license yearly. It's about $6 a month, which is $72 a year per person, so it's about $500."
"I would like to have more free application with it. Some of the applications, I am paying more for them. I think that they must be free."
"If we don't know how to work with the tool, we might have some spikes in price."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
"We do pay for the licensing cost because we have opted for a private cloud setup. So, it is a cloud setup, and we have to make payments based on the cloud size. I do not consider it very costly when comparing it to the market."
"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
Amazon Web Services, Rackspace OpenStack, Microsoft Windows Azure and Google are the major cloud hosting and storage service providers. Athough Amazon is top of them and is oldest in cloud market, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google are giving tough competition to each other and to Amazon also for…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Educational Organization
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
37%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Insurance Company
6%
Healthcare Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business131
Midsize Enterprise48
Large Enterprise112
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Google App Engine?
The product's setup and deployment phases are easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google App Engine?
Google App Engine is affordable compared to other available platforms. The pricing structure is reasonable and not ov...
What needs improvement with Google App Engine?
The error logging system in Google App Engine could be enhanced. While there are troubleshooting documents with Googl...
Which would you recommend - Pivotal Cloud Foundry or OpenShift?
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a cloud-native application platform to simplify app delivery. It is efficient and effective....
 

Also Known As

Amazon Web Services, AWS
No data available
PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
Khan Academy, Best Buy, Gigya, MetOffice, Getaround, Mimiboard, NewsLimited, WebFilings, and CloudLock.
Humana, Citibank, Mercedes Benz, Liberty Mutual, The Home Depot, GE, West Corp, Merrill Corporation, CoreLogic, Orange, Dish Network, Comcast, Bloomberg, Internal Revenue Service, Ford Motor Company, Garmin, Volkswagen, Solera, Allstate, US Air Force, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ScotiaBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Red Hat and others in PaaS Clouds. Updated: August 2025.
868,229 professionals have used our research since 2012.