

Google Compute Engine vs Amazon EC2 vs Heroku - bjhoops1

What are the best IAAS options today?  Pricing, features, flexibility, ease of use, etc.<p>I am looking at launching a multi-node Node web app with a NoSQL backend and am trying to get a better feel for the space
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fbuilesv
Heroku and EC2/CE are different services:

Heroku is a platform that takes care of all the "plumbing" for you, you do a
`git push` and your application is instantly running on their servers. They
take care of installing all their dependencies and you never have to worry
about setting up firewalls, front-end proxies, web servers or anything like
that. If you need more capacity you just move a slider and you're done.

With EC2/CE you're doing all the stuff I just described in the last paragraph
by hand [0]. It's cheaper and way more flexible but they usually require you
to know how all that stuff works. By the way, Heroku runs on EC2, they just
abstract all the nasty details for you.

PS: Google Compute Engine is on Limited Preview right now. If you're planning
to offer a service that you care about you should consider this.

[0] In theory you can get AMIs that do install all of this for you but you'll
usually end up SSHing into the machines and configuring everything to whatever
you need.

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Mitt
Also have a look at ProfitBricks: <https://www.profitbricks.com/>

