Heroku vs Google Cloud: Which Cloud Platform is Right for You?


Choosing a reliable cloud computing platform that supports containerised applications, which requires a secluded runtime environment to work uniformly takes work. 

We have hand-picked two most famous platforms, Heroku and Google Cloud, for developers to pick from. 

In this blog post, we will overview both platforms separately, understand what they are and how they work, and then compare Heroku and Google Cloud based on their features and benefits. 

What is a Heroku Platform?

Heroku is a popular container-based PaaS platform for developers to deploy and manage web applications. It's a fully managed platform that handles operations, manages server infrastructure, and offers a simple way to get code from production machines to the cloud and end users. 

What are the pros and cons of using Heroku Platform?

Pros of the Heroku Platform

  • Scalability and Flexibility

    In simple terms, Heroka automatically scales up applications based on their usage. 

  • Easy Deployment

    The Heroku platform is super easy to use and requires minimal setup.

  • Variety of Add-ons and Integrations

    The platform allows developers to extend their application’s functionality by offering several add-ons like Postgres, Apache Kafka, and Redis.

Cons of the Heroku Platform

  • Cost

    The Heroku platform might be costly for large and highly-engaging apps, and you also have to pay $35 monthly to purchase additional Dynos to scale up your app.

  • Limited Control over Infrastructure

    Heroku Dynos goes unreachable whenever there is no traffic for over an hour and only becomes responsive when re-opened. 

What is a Google Cloud Platform?

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is another widely famous cloud-computing service offered by Google, which provides services like computing, machine learning analytics, etc., and tools for deploying, building and managing applications. 

GCP withstands a variety of programming languages and frameworks, including Node.js, Java, Python and PHP. Your data present on the cloud is protected by the Google Security Team, taking advanced security measures.

What are the pros and cons of using Google Cloud Platform?

Pros of the Google Cloud Platform

  • Scalability and Flexibility

    GCP is highly scalable and uses auto-scaling to adjust the sum of virtual machine instances hosting your application. 

  • High Level of Control over Infrastructure

    The platform provides many innovative tools for cloud warehousing, like BigQuery and real-time data processing tools, like Google Cloud Dataflow. 

  • Advanced Machine Learning Capabilities

    GCP is an innovative structure built to harness robust cloud attributes in big data and machine learning to determine answers instantly, create better products, and fuel powerful applications. 

Cons of the Google Cloud Platform

  • Complexity

    The Google Cloud Platform tends to be confusing while browsing the web interface, and the pricing scheme is also quite complex as the users might get unexpected costs.

  • Cost

    The Google Cloud platform offers many services and tools and is slightly more expensive than a traditional cloud-computing service. 

  • Limited Community Support

    GCP has very few global data centers compared to Heroku. It only has three data centers, i.e., USA, Europe and Asia. Hence, it has limited availability of resources and options for users.

Comparing the Heroku and Google Cloud Platforms

Now that we better understand what Heroku and Google Cloud are and how they work, let's compare the two based on specific attributes. 

Heroku

Google Cloud

pricing

Heroku’s pricing is per Dyno, and the basic plan of the platform starts at $7/month. 

The forum follows pay-per-usage criteria, so the higher the traffic, the larger the bill. The basic plan of GCP begins at $0.01 per hour. 

Ease of Use

Most DevOp teams find Heroku easier to use and learn, and are even designed to make the app development process intuitive. 


Google Cloud holds the advantage of being able to custom-build Docker images which helps developers stay in control.

Features

Heroku is a PaaS implementation with core features like operational experience and security and compliance. 

GCP offers suite of cloud computing services for storage, hosting, computing, machine learning, IoT, and app development tools.

Heroku OpEx aids developers in identifying and addressing the bugs present in their application stack by notifying testers. 

GCP offers multiple hosting solutions, including the App Engine, a PaaS implementation, the Compute Engine, and an IaaS implementation. 

scalability

Heroku presents automatic scaling, allowing applications to scale up based on their utilization. 

Depending on the customer's requirements, Google Cloud offers both manual and automatic scaling. 

performance

When it comes to performance, Heroku has dedicated servers that prevent out-of-space issues for app dependencies.

Google, on the other hand, uses a vCPUS, a kind of virtual machine or a virtual CPU, so that developers can quickly deploy required microservices. 

Integrations

Heroku has the most robust built-in integrations that are with Github and Slack(ChatOps) and even allows integrating third-party CI/build servers in the workflow, if required.

Google Cloud allows lesser integrations comparatively through custom Build Steps and native integrations like Docker or Kubernetes. 

Customer Support

Heroku has a support center where you can resolve all your queries.
It even has an additional support service, a premium support plan for its premium customers. 

Google Cloud also hosts a support center with tons of documentation and forums. it offers additional support tools like Stackdriver and Cloud Support to provide satisfactory solutions. 

Which platform should you choose? Use Case Recommendation

Imagine an organization currently using Salesforce’s NonProfit Success Pack as their CRM, Marketing Cloud for marketing automation, and Community Cloud for their volunteer portal.

Additionally, they are using QuickBooks Online for accounting, TalkDesk for their call records, Rallybound for their donation management and various other systems. 

  • Choosing Heroku Platform

    Now, if you opt for Heroku, it can be used as a central data management point for all the data truth for these multiple systems. And using Heroku with Heroku Connect will allow you to enable bi-directional communication in real time. 

  • Choosing Google Cloud Platform

    If we use the Google Cloud Platform, it will store all the information with backups and act as the mediator between you and your company. It will connect your Google Drive, Gmail account, Google Sheets, Google Calendar, and even Hangouts Meet, all in one place. 

Which one should you go for?

For a big corporate company in this scenario, the Google Cloud Platform might perform better than Heroku. In contrast, if it’s a startup or a small company, Heroku would be better as it would be pocket-friendly and comes with numerous attributes to look forward to. 

So, choose according to your company’s requirements, as both Heroku and Google Cloud are the leading cloud-computing platforms in today’s time period.  

Conclusion

Both Heroku and Google Cloud are the two most powerful cloud-computing platforms, offering tons of features and benefits.

However, they indeed differ in various elements, and these fundamental differences should be noted clearly before deciding which platform to choose. 

Moreover, you need to evaluate your requirements thoroughly, and if you need help, you can talk to the app hosting companies to gain better clarity in selecting the right platform for your company. 

About the author

Youssef

Youssef is a Senior Cloud Consultant & Founder of ITCertificate.org

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