The State of Cloud Hosting
How Rackspace, AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Stack Up (Including Cost Comparison)
There are many cloud hosting services out there. When it comes to recommendations for clients you want to be on the safe side. Thus, we usually go with Rackspace which has been very reliable and worked well for us. Recently we were asked to present more options and I looked into the Big 4. Here is what I found…
We compared Rackspace, Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. All 4 services are very comparable with regards to their service offering. Looking into performance, uptime, and scope of offering, all 4 seem to render different results year over year because they are constantly being changed and refined. Thus, it is very difficult to point to specific pros and cons for each. Whether one provider works better or not for you really depends on what you want to do with it.
To make this more relatable, I came up with a typical website hosting use case:
— Website for an internationally operating company (B2B focus)
— Expected traffic between 10,000 and 50,000 pageviews per month
— Peak traffic during early business hours in Europe and East Coast
— Technology stack is LAMP with WordPress
For a site like this, we suggest a load balanced 2 server scenario, with either 2 dedicated SQL server boxes or connected to a cloud DB service (which all 4 providers offer).
The architecture would look like this:
You could either load-balance this across 2 different locations (e.g. spin-off a server in Chicago and Sydney on Rackspace) or just keep it in the US entirely and add a robust CDN.
Rackspace
We have been Rackspace customers for years and usually deploy all of our own products on the Rackspace cloud. For this particular use case, Rackspace stacks up well but there are some limitations.
Pros:
- Very user-friendly back-end, easy to deploy and scale servers and load-balancers
- Great customer service (response time usually under 2 minutes, very knowledgeable engineers)
Cons:
- If you need a UK server location you need to open RS UK account (billing in GBP)
- Doesn’t integrate with as many 3rd-party (marketplace) solutions
Overall I would still go with Rackspace if you need excellent service and a US server location works for you.
Amazon AWS
Amazon is by far the biggest cloud service provider (10 x more than the next 14 combined). The backend can be a bit overwhelming but it has improved much and is more user-friendly than it used to be.
Pros:
- Service offering and marketplace for 3rd party solutions is gigantic
- True global solution
- Infinitely scalable with affordable entry point thus often used by web app/ SaaS start-ups
Cons:
- Customer service has limited number of tiers: if the $100 p.m service won’t do, the next level is $15,000 p.m.
- Pricing can be a bit confusing
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft played catch-up for a couple of years but is clearly there now. The Azure offering is impressive and easy to use. Despite a lot of people’s perception, Microsoft totally supports Open Source and you find all types of technology stacks on Azure. Their own cloud DB service is based on MS SQL, though, but there are big data/ No-SQL options.
Pros:
- Modern user interface, easy to use
- Huge marketplace for 3rd party solutions
Cons:
- Performance and uptime reports have been all over the place, clearly a lot of work in progress
- More expensive than RS and AWS
Google Cloud Platform
Google started with it’s App Engine, which supported just their own programming language when they launched it. Now, Google Cloud Platform has evolved to a full-service cloud offering, inc. 3rd party marketplace. The backend is fantastic to work with albeit it’s tough to get a sense of costs as there are dozens of variables and it’s almost impossible to predict what you end up paying (on the upside Google guarantees to always charge the lowest price possible so you never overpay for unused services).
Pros:
- Modern user interface, easy to use
- Guaranteed fair pricing, never overpay
Cons:
- Service offering is more limited than competitor’s
- Seems more expensive (but then it’s hard to tell until you actually host something)
Cost Overview
This cost overview is for the use case as described above. Again, there are often discounts for longer commitments which aren’t reflected here.
Conclusion
The Big 4 are all good solutions for a medium sized business hosting solutions. Rackspace is the winner in my opinion if you need a solid, US-based solution. Unless you need stellar customer support which seems very costly, AWS seems to be the best choice for a global, scalable solution. For heavy Microsoft technology users, Azure is your best choice, of course. As for Google, I am sure they are great, too, just more complex to evaluate as most online reviews are outdated.
