Google Compute Engine vs. SiteGround

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Compute Engine
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Google Compute Engine is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) product from Google Cloud. It provides virtual machines with carbon-neutral infrastructure which run on the same data centers that Google itself uses.
$0.01
Hour
SiteGround
Score 9.8 out of 10
N/A
SiteGround offers website hosting, as well as managed WordPress, managed Woo Commerce, fully managed cloud services available to support a variety of services, as well as reselling.
$14.99
per month
Pricing
Google Compute EngineSiteGround
Editions & Modules
Preemptible Price - Predefined Memory
0.000892 / GB
Hour
Three-year commitment price - Predefined Memory
$0.001907 / GB
Hour
One-year commitment price - Predefined Memory
$0.002669 / GB
Hour
On-demand price - Predefined Memory
$0.004237 / GB
Hour
Preemptible Price - Predefined vCPUs
0.006655 / vCPU
Hour
Three-year commitment price - Predefined vCPUS
$0.014225 / CPU
Hour
One-year commitment price - Predefined vCPUS
$0.019915 / vCPU
Hour
On-demand price - Predefined vCPUS
$0.031611 / vCPU
Hour
StartUp 24 months
$14.99
per month
StartUp 12 months
$17.99
per month
StartUp 1 month
$24.99
per month
GrowBig 24 months
$24.99
per month
GrowBig 12 months
$29.99
per month
GrowBig 1 month
$34.99
per month
GoGeek 24 months
$39.99
per month
GoGeek 12 months
$44.99
per month
GoGeek 1 month
$49.99
per month
GoGeek 3 months
$49.99
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google Compute EngineSiteGround
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPrices vary according to region (i.e US central, east, & west time zones). Google Compute Engine also offers a discounted rate for a 1 & 3 year commitment.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google Compute EngineSiteGround
Considered Both Products
Google Compute Engine
Chose Google Compute Engine
Cloud providers offering virtual machines are quite common. I think, Google, however, is arguably one of the top players in the market, with some of the largest (if not the largest) and most advanced server farms in the world. If you're looking for reliability and cost …
Chose Google Compute Engine
Google Cloud SQL, Google Cloud Storage, Google Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and Google Cloud Deployment Manager
Chose Google Compute Engine
The perfect blend of setup flexibility, costing and trust of Google could be my answer to the comparison. This being a server backed service so, ruling out the functions. The Setup flexibility and speed set the GCE apart from Kubernetes. Compliance, regulation and the security …
Chose Google Compute Engine
We have tried using DigitalOcean droplets for some of our minor and non critical VMs. In our experience, Google Compute Engine fares well in comparison the DigitalOcean droplets as they provide better availability, better support and in general, a better experience.
Chose Google Compute Engine
As far as user-friendliness is concerned, I personally rank Google Cloud above both AWS and Azure. Their user interface makes it easy to manage, which is important.
Chose Google Compute Engine
I find Google Compute Engine to be much easier to use than Amazon's EC2 service. The console makes much more sense, permission management is much cleaner, and I'd say the other categories feel on par with EC2: performance, how fine-grained the settings are, connecting to …
Chose Google Compute Engine
The obvious and natural alternatives to GCE are AWS EC2 and Azure VMs. I would say all three are more similar than not. Picking one will most likely depend on what platform you're on already, where your running services are, and which one is more familiar to your team.
Chose Google Compute Engine
Comparabale to AWS EC2. We selected GCE because of the out-of-the-box K8 engine setup. On AWS, I find it a bit tedious.
Chose Google Compute Engine
When configuring Amazon ECS, it is a bit confusing as you are not able to find the actual issue. You need to enable Additional AppInsights to get detailed level info, which is not a concern when configuring on the Instance Level. Moreover, Azure VM does not provide an …
Chose Google Compute Engine
The Google Cloud computing engine is fair at the top because it bills customers, automatic discounting for extended use, and how fast it can be turned on. We enjoy things around setting it up very easily via APIs and CLI commands, and with the always-on recommendations from …
Chose Google Compute Engine
I have utilised Google Compute Engine in addition to Amazon EC2. Both exhibit excellent performance in terms of consumption, speed, and efficiency.My decision to adopt Google Compute Engine was solely based on how user-friendly it is. more basic UI/UX than EC2.Google's customer …
Chose Google Compute Engine
Google Compute Engine is a different animal than GKE, used for different purposes. Compares 1:1 with ECS, and is an equivalent product.
Chose Google Compute Engine
Ec2 has much more compatibility with different tech stacks than Google Compute Engine.
Chose Google Compute Engine
The price difference is not very high between them. Both of them provide good services.
Chose Google Compute Engine
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Azure VMware Solution and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Chose Google Compute Engine
Google Compute Engine provides on-demand computing resources that are easy to scale up or down according to my organization needs. This allows our business to quickly adapt to changes in demand without having to invest in additional hardware. It also offers a very competitive …
Chose Google Compute Engine
While Amazon EC2 is the best tool for developers to build an app and make it live, It has some downsides too. EC2 requires so much development while Google Compute Engine makes it easy to build an app within a days. EC2 pricing also relatively high compare to Google Compute …
Chose Google Compute Engine
GCE is available in 3 different regions whereas Ec2 is available in 11 different regions. The compute resources offered by the GCE has lower maximum capacity compared to AWS Ec2. The pricing model of GCE offers first 10 mins free and then charging in increments of 10 mins.
Both …
Chose Google Compute Engine
I prefer the Compute Engine Over these as it provides us with Better Scalability, Performance, and Reliability Security-related Issues don't arise with the Compute Engine, but yes, in terms of accessing or running, it can be improved a bit as compared to EC2 offered by AWS.
Chose Google Compute Engine
the main reason of choosing GCE is availability and user friendly UI with a very good documentation and API explanations. Great visibility over the infra and security.
Chose Google Compute Engine
The features specific to Google Compute Engine vs Amazon EC2 along with cost and availability are comparable, there may be other services within the vendor which may mean that one is more suitable for specific applications than the other one. We have used both for different …
Chose Google Compute Engine
Google was easy to start with in terms of ease of use and support access.
Chose Google Compute Engine
Google Compute Engine provides a one stop solution for all the complex features and the UI is better than Amazon's EC2 and Azure Machine learning for ease of usability.

It's always good to have an eco-system of products from Google as it's one of the most used search engine and …
Chose Google Compute Engine
AWS has become the de facto standard. Skills in Google Compute Engine and AWS are not easily transferable. Still, after getting to know Google Compute Engine well, productivity can be very high and ROI impressive. There are many additional services offered around Google Compute …
Chose Google Compute Engine
We decided to use GCE mainly for its price and good looking UI.
SiteGround
Chose SiteGround
I used Namescheap in the past. I believe Namescheap is a big company compared to SiteGround, as big as godaddy. I think because of that, you get what you expect. Good services, but maybe more costly and you have to pay for everything as extra. Email $5, SSL $10, CDN $10 etc …
Chose SiteGround
None of the other hosting companies come anywhere close to SiteGround. It's the gold standard.
Chose SiteGround
SiteGround had superior customer service and site uptime. Overall we found SiteGround, an easier provider to work with, both from a user interface and customer experience perspective. It was much easier to set up a Wordpress build using SiteGround than through iPage, and we …
Chose SiteGround
I chose SiteGround because we needed that personal touch. Other service providers we have used before have terrible customer/tech support. We chose SiteGround and we will continue to use them as our quality service provider because their technical support has been outstanding. …
Chose SiteGround
We looked at Blue Hosting, Go Daddy and Square Space. The affordability of SiteGround beat them all.
Chose SiteGround
The tech side of SiteGround Web Hosting is excellent and among the best, but I think the area where they shine the most is their customer support.
Chose SiteGround
SiteGround is more reliable and their support team is more responsive.
Chose SiteGround
Sadly, most web hosting companies are either not user-friendly or lack necessary features. No other web hosting company I've used has provided the level of reliability, features, and affordability that I've found with SiteGround with the exception of WP Engine which is a …
Chose SiteGround
WP Engine, Bluehost, Kinsta, GoDaddy and HostGator
Chose SiteGround
  • Better Add-ons: SiteGround caching, staging, etc.
  • Slightly faster than Sitegator and Godaddy,
  • Great customer service, online Chat.
Chose SiteGround
In terms of customer support in resolving tickets, I believe SiteGround is much better than others out there. Unlike Bluehost which when reached puts your call on hold and have longer waiting queues then SiteGround. They do followup to see if you are running into issues. They …
Chose SiteGround
GoDaddy and BlueHost offer grossly sub-par performance in 2017 for a price point that doesn't make sense. At least GoDaddy has great tech support - but I shouldn't have to rely on it as often as I do if all was working as it should.

inMotion was overly complex on the backend, …
Chose SiteGround
SiteGround is the BEST option if you are looking for price and have a small web project. Compared to other services who want to say the same, I never had a site go down, reach memory capacity, have my information sold off to, etc. SiteGround provides what they say they can …
Features
Google Compute EngineSiteGround
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Google Compute Engine
7.3
Ratings
10% below category average
SiteGround
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime8.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling8.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates7.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools3.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images7.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google Compute EngineSiteGround
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 8.7 out of 10
Flywheel
Flywheel
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
WP Engine
WP Engine
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
AccuWebHosting.Com
AccuWebHosting.Com
Score 9.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google Compute EngineSiteGround
Likelihood to Recommend
7.6
(0 ratings)
9.5
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.6
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.4
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.9
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google Compute EngineSiteGround
Likelihood to Recommend
It is excellent if you have any workloads that need raw computing or plan to have any state-full services running in your environment like DBs (for which you don't want to use Managed services), cache, etc. It also gives you complete control over which versions of software, OS, etc., you need, and thus, you can build anything and deploy it on GCE.
Read full review
I used other hosting providers in the past and actually I'm very happy with SiteGround mainly because of this: * very quick to setup and install my Wordpress website * sends me weekly emails about traffic, website healthscore etc * great wordpress plugins to help with SEO and optimizing
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Pros
  • A simple web-based interface that is a breeze to train new engineers to use. Our experienced engineers never have trouble finding or doing anything on GCE.
  • Sustained use and Committed use discounts mean we get top-tier VMs for an incredibly competitive price.
  • Wonderful identity and access management that gives us peace-of-mind when granting access to machines to contractors and other 3rd parties.
  • Fast VMs, lastest in hardware, and enough RAM to power even the hungriest of our services.
Read full review
  • You get a number of page views as a guide to your bandwidth, and a fixed amount of disk space on the server. So you know what you have to work with. No hazy promises of “unlimited” resources.
  • If you pay more, you’re allocated a server with fewer accounts, so there’s less chance you’ll be slowed down by your neighbors.
  • Its self-help material is pretty good — close to InMotion Hosting for knowledgebase quality.
  • SiteGround tackles slow speeds from all angles, using SSD storage, Nginx, SuperCacher, CloudFlare CDN, and HHVM.
Read full review
Cons
  • The L7 load balancer can be difficult to get set up. It's limited in its functionality, especially with the container engine.
  • It's hard to find certain objects on the web console. Often times the things I need to get to are buried in advanced menus.
  • Google's decision to only support MySQL on their relational DB service means that I have to manage Postgres instances in Compute on my own, managing everything from storage to backups.
Read full review
  • Business model and clarity about prices after the second year
  • Server Performance when it's stressed or under a big volume of traffic
  • Upgrading model. Sometimes I felt like it was mandatory to update and pay more for basic needs, even with low traffic volumes
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Likelihood to Renew
Its pretty good, easy and good performance. Also, interface is very good for starters compared to competitors. Infra as Code (IaC) using Terraform even added easiness for creation, management and deletion of compute Virtual Machines (VM). Overall, very good and very easy cloud based compute platform which simplified infrastructure, very much recommend.
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No answers on this topic
Usability
Having interacted with several cloud services, GCE stands out to me as more usable than most. The naming and locating of features is a little more intuitive than most I've interacted with, and hinting is also quite helpful. Getting staff up to speed has proven to be overall less painful than others.
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No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
Google Compute Engine works well for cloud project with lesser geographical audience. It sometimes gives error while everything is set up perfectly. We also keep on check any updates available because that's one reason of site getting down. Google Compute Engine is ultimately a top solution to build an app and publish it online within a few minutes
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No answers on this topic
Performance
The raw computer power is excellent; our applications feel snappy, pages load almos instantly for our customers and so on. The primary reason it is not a perfect 10 is that the native tools for monitoring individual VM performance can be complex, making it challenging to easily diagnose specific resource bottlenecks without significant configuration
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
  • The documentation needs to be better for intermediate users - There are first steps that one can easily follow, but after that, the documentation is often spotty or not in a form where one can follow the steps and accomplish the task. Also, the documentation and the product often go out of sync, where the commands from the documentation do not work with the current version of the product.
  • Google support was great and their presence on site was very helpful in dealing with various issues.
Read full review
Three ways to get customer support, phone, email, and chat. Chat is available 24/7 and the agents are always friendly and very helpful. In all the instances where I needed assistance chat support agents were always available to help. Wait time is minimal and on rare occasions I had to call, the agents were very helpful as well. I can not remember a time I walked away from support without my question or concern being resolved.
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Alternatives Considered
When configuring Amazon ECS, it is a bit confusing as you are not able to find the actual issue. You need to enable Additional AppInsights to get detailed level info, which is not a concern when configuring on the Instance Level. Moreover, Azure VM does not provide an in-browser option; instead, it is Azure Bastion, but for that, you have to enable a dedicated subnet, which is a bit unnecessary.
Read full review
GoDaddy and Bluehost offer grossly sub-par performance in 2017 for a price point that doesn't make sense. At least GoDaddy has great tech support - but I shouldn't have to rely on it as often as I do if all was working as it should. inMotion was overly complex on the backend, and lacked some common hosting features (easy WordPress installs for one) that are common across all other hosts. WPEngine, had great performance, and decent support, but their own proprietary backend interface was always a shift when switching between them and cpanel. Also - VERY expensive compared to SiteGround for comparable (if not lesser) service & performance.
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Scalability
It works really well with other Google Cloud services, making it easy to build scalable solutions across different teams and locations.
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • Scalability means flexibility and less upfront costs
  • Can become expensive when hard set compute requirements are clear, but things like Spot VMs can help here too, or just having your own infrastructure and scaling up with Google. This is for more advanced cases though
  • Ramp up time is long, but after that it is quick to do many things and ROI is awesome
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  • All the sites I've set up at SiteGround are performing faster than they did at their previous hosting provider. This yields a superior customer experience and higher Google/SEO rankings.
  • Their service has been rock solid, necessitating little support (which is admittedly less than ideal for my support business, but a boon for my clients bottom line) and zero downtime.
  • Easy to get new sites up and running, which speeds creation of new businesses and rapid deployment of conceptual campaigns.
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ScreenShots

Google Compute Engine Screenshots

Screenshot of How to choose the right VM
With thousands of applications, each with different requirements, which VM is right for you?Screenshot of documentation, guides, and reference architectures
Migration Center is Google Cloud's unified migration platform with features like cloud spend estimation, asset discovery, and a variety of tooling for different migration scenarios.