Google Cloud Hosting is not a single plan like some of the other hosts we review on this site, but a collection of cloud products built for enterprises and scaling startups, but also with some entry-level plans for individual developers and small businesses.
We'll cover the most popular options here, and give some color and opinions on the matter, but this won't be totally comprehensible coverage due to scope!
Google's most popular cloud hosting products are:
- Compute Engine
- Cloud Storage
- Cloud SQL
- BigQuery
- Google Kubernetes Engine
- Speech-to-Text
These quick descriptions below highlight each one.
We'll start with pricing first so you have a sense of what numbers to keep in mind, and we'll use some illustrative examples.
Google Compute Engine Example Pricing
The pricing estimator estimates $138.70/month for Compute Engine with these settings:
- Number of instances: 1
- Hours of computing per month: 730
- Operating System/Software: Free: Debian, CentOS, CoreOS, Ubuntu or BYOL (Bring Your Own License)
- Provisioning Model: Regular
- Machine Type: General purpose
- Series: N1
- Machine Type: n1-standard-4
- Number of vCPUs:
- Amount of Memory: 15 GBs
- Boot type disk: Standard Persistent Disk
- Boot disk size: 20 GiBs
- Location: Iowa, US
Here is the Iowa pricing table, direct from Google:
| Item | On-demand price (USD) | 1-year resource-based commitment price (USD) | 3-year resource-based commitment price (USD) | 1-year flexible CUD consumption rate (USD) | 3-year flexible CUD consumption rate (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Predefined vCPUs | $0.032578 / vCPU hour | $0.02052414 / vCPU hour | $0.0146601 / vCPU hour | $0.02345616 / vCPU hour | $0.01759212 / vCPU hour |
| Predefined Memory | $0.003702 / GB hour | $0.00233226 / GB hour | $0.0016659 / GB hour | $0.00266544 / GB hour | $0.00199908 / GB hour |
More examples to come from BigQuery and other Google Cloud Hosting Options
For more detailed and up-to-date pricing, check out Google Cloud's pricing calculator.
What is Google Cloud? Explaining the Essentials
Everyone knows Google, a lot of people even outside of tech, like in finance and business management, are familiar with Google Cloud, but don't know much beyond the basics.
This explainer is primarily for business decision makers – non-technical experts evaluating whether they should proceed with exploring Google Cloud as a cloud hosting solution for their organization.
This video is directly from Google and is a 101 intro to Google Cloud. I'll explain it for non-technical people next:
Highlights for Non-Technical People:
- As mentioned in the video, “Cloud computing is all about getting things done using other people's computers”. The Cloud has been talked about repeatedly in tech and business circles since 2010, but not everyone knows what it is. It really is just extracting out servers that used to be in the basement of your corporate office, and moving them to a dedicated data center for economic, security, and quality reasons.
- Google Cloud enables you to build and host applications, store and analyze data, all on Google's highly scalable and reliable computing infrastructure.
- Google already has data centers all around the world to power their own products. What Google Cloud does is allow anyone to share this first-class infrastructure that they have already built. A key point not mentioned in the video is that Amazon's AWS was the first to do this, and it powered nearly all of Amazon's profits for years, and Google has been playing catch up in a way ever since.
- Scale is one of the key advantages of cloud infrastructure.
- Google Cloud allows you to only pay for the storage and services you need at any one time.
Applications for Running Code:
- Compute Engine
- Cloud Run
- App Engine
Storing Data:
- Cloud Storage: For unstrucutred storage like images, video, and audio files
- Cloud SQL: hosts Google-managed versions of MySQL, Postgres, and SQL Server.
- Cloud Firestore: NoSQL document-based realtime database. According to the video, “It's popular for use cases like gaming, where it's very important for users to have the most up-to-date version of data in real-time.”
AI & Machine Learning:
- Good for developers and non-developers alike
- Vision AI: Will take an image and find objects, labels and more
- Natural Language AI: Get information about entities, sentiment, syntax, and categories
- Vertex AI: Build and deploy your own machine learning models. For training, hosting, and and managing machine learning models.
Using Multiple Google Cloud Applications Together:
This visualization shows how you might use different applications on the Google Cloud Platform together.
What Types of Organizations is Google Cloud Most Suited for?
- Organizations with customers all around the world, and need data centers closer to them for better speed, delivery, and localization.
- Organizations with seasonal spikes in traffic and cloud computing resource needs, especially around the holiday season. – the key advantage of cloud is allowing you to scale up and down without managing this on your own. Ecommerce retailers serving international customers with considerable demand are a key example here.
- Google's Cloud Spanner helps solve this – managing a database charting strategy, managing backups, and meeting performance requirements.
Our Official Google Cloud Hosting Review
Unlike consumer-friendly web hosts mostly featured on this site, Google Cloud is a full platform. It includes many different applications that can work together, and Google Cloud Web Hosting is just one use case.
We'll focus primarily on using Google Cloud for web hosting, but also cover other applications and use cases.
Big note: Cloudways may be the most beginner-friendly way to get started on Google Cloud.
Before we continue, I wanted to call out that Cloudways may be the best option for getting started on Google Cloud, since Google Cloud is primarily geared towards developers and technical leaders.
I've fumbled around Google Cloud as a business owner, with help from a data engineer, and it's not the easiest thing to learn.
If you want to take advantage of Google Cloud's scale and infrastructure, but with a much simpler interface and pricing, Cloudways is a better bet. See our full Cloudways breakdown here for more.
Best Features of Google Cloud Hosting
Google’s main two competitors include Amazon Web Services (AWS) and RackSpace hosting. They are heavily influenced by Linux – particularly the Google variant of Linux. Yes – Google has its own Linux variant.
Excellent Performance
The Google Cloud platform has excellent performance. To test this, we had to compare a minimum of two different services. We used RackSpace in our test since RackSpace tends to outdo its competitors in terms of performance. In this case, Google Cloud outperformed RackSpace. When we tested Google Cloud against RackSpace, we were able to achieve the benchmarked numbers with one vCPU from the Google Cloud platform, while it took RackSpace two vCPUs to achieve the same numbers.
Bills in Minute-Level Increments
Google has a very sophisticated pricing calculator, and they even make their calculating algorithms public – right down to the bare JSON code. With all these algorithm going on, Google will bill you in minute level increments. They define a month as 720 minutes, and for benchmarking purposes, if you spent the entire month benchmarking, you would be billed for 720 minutes.
When you purchase their IAAS package, prices start at $6092 per year and begin with their eight-server Web app package.
Excellent Internal Data Center Networking
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but Google’s networking standard is top-notch. When you set up your VMs, you can easily and quickly create virtual private networks. This includes public and private subnets to arrange your VMs. You’ll also get access to firewalls, gateways and routers. You’ll find that these are easy to set up – if you know the Linux command line. Navigating your way around the Google Cloud platform doesn’t require a background in IT. However, if you want to get the most from the service, it is most likely your best bet to have one.
Easy-to-use Big Data analysis with BigQuery
The target audience for the Google Cloud platform is not just power users. They use the command line interface to keep up with other competitors in the IAAS industry. This includes Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, RackSpace Managed Cloud and IBM/SoftLayer, who are all targeting people with IT administration experience – not just power users.
If you fall into this category, Google Cloud platform makes it easy to do everyday tasks such as assigning temporary IP addresses to reserve IP addresses.
Downsides of Google Cloud Hosting
There are some things that we found Google Cloud can do better. Here’s what we found.
Only Three Data Centers
Google Cloud only has three data centers – globally. They have one in Iowa in the United States, one in Belgium, Germany and one in Taiwan. No matter how well Google Cloud may do on their benchmarking tests, your website and your data will only go as fast as the weakest link. That’s basic physics. If I have a Blu-ray player hooked up to an HDTV through an RCA cable, I am not going to get high-definition delivered. Forcing the video through the RCA cable, a cable that cannot handle high-definition will make it so that my video will not play at high-definition. The weak link would be the RCA cable. To get HDTV from a Blu-ray player, I have to have a Blu-ray player, an HDMI cable and an HDTV. Every link has to be able to handle the bandwidth.
The same principle applies to the Internet. When Google Cloud only has three data centers, the very network the Internet is based on may slow down your website. Whoever your slowest link is between you and your resources determines the user experience.
I will say this for the Google Cloud platform. They have recently opened up a data center in South Carolina in the United States.
Fewer Software Options Than AWS
If you were to do a side-by-side comparison with Amazon Web Services and the Google Cloud platform, you would find that the Google Cloud platform is severely lacking. Amazon Web Services offers far more options and service packages then the Google Cloud platform.
Not for the Novice
The Google Cloud platform is not for the novice. I’m mentioning this here because it is a potential negative and will turn people away – even though Google has done this intentionally. To compete with the biggest players in the IAAS playing field, you would get your best usage from the service if you have a background in IT administration.
Bottom Line
When you compare Google Cloud platform to all of its competitors, it ranks right about the same with Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS. If the virtual machine of my choice were based on the Linux kernel, I would certainly choose the Google Cloud Platform for its compatibility. Likewise, I would choose the Microsoft Azure platform if Windows was my VM of choice. Both are excellent services and rated side-by-side, Google Cloud platform outranks Microsoft Azure.
- Excellent Performance
- Bills in Minute-Level Increments
- Excellent Internal Data Center Networking
- Easy-to-use Big Data analysis with BigQuery
- Only Three Data Centers
- Fewer Software Options Than AWS
- Not for the Novice
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Update Log
- July 24, 2024: Added video and a summary of Google Cloud translated for non-technical business leaders. Edited throughout.
- July 2024: Added example pricing for Compute Engine
- 2020: Minor updates throughout
