In any comparison on "cheapest way to run a linux box somewhere" I would expect AWS to lose. AWS is a platform, not a server rental service. You start to see value when you build to the platform.
(work on Google Cloud but don't get paid to post here)
Let me know if there are any others that you feel strongly about?
It'd be great if you can share how to best spin up a managed Postgres instance.
I'm using GKE and it has been working like a charm so far.
I do not remember to have read about Google equivalent of EFS yet. This can make it relatively easy to migrate legacy apps to cloud.
And as the other comment says above, familiarity. We have around 20 programmers at our company who are comfortable managing deployments on AWS. We had to spend a lot of time and money on their training. Google hasn't given the 10x reason for us to switch.
I don't want some 3rd party to manage Postgres. I want something seemless like RDS.
> in many ways far ahead of competition
Yep. In my experience, when Google Cloud does something, they do it right.
While KS is probably more important for EU customers, the KS-VPS line has three regions to choose from: Gravelines (Northern France), Strasbourg (Eastern France) or Beauharnois (North-America). You can also DIY your own cloud with https://www.ovh.ie/vps/vps-cloud.xml, though I've never tested this.
Personal point: I may be very old-fashioned, but after using GCE and AWS for various tasks, I still prefer the transparency of pre-committed billing. E.g., I don't know if this changed by now, but I ran into dozens of inexplicable administration errors with GCE, to the point where I couldn't manage my own projects anymore. Plus, after creating billing details, I couldn't detach my credit card from the platform. The only way around that was to disable all projects, but that still left me with an uneasy feeling.
I don't have automatic billing setup for KS/OHV. I get billing reminders 30/15/7 days before each cycle and authorize each payment.
Essentially a VPS provider is someone who rents you a server instance on a much larger server running other instances of other people's servers. You are in complete control of your server instance. You have to manage all the application installations, firewalls, security, etc.
A GoDaddy or Bluehost is someone who gives you folder space on a server. They have the web server, database, and any other application all setup for you already. Typically those types of providers only allow you to serve static content, or certain scripting languages (mostly PHP).
It depends what stack you wrote your web apps with for which provider you should go with. With a VPS, Linode is going to be cheaper than Digital Ocean, which in turn is cheaper than AWS when you compare specs to specs. If you're app is a simple PHP app that talks to a database, you could probably host it way cheaper on GoDaddy or Bluehost. You just wouldn't have very much control over all the different versions of the DB/PHP, etc. that you might want.
If you want to compare for prices, just search for "VPS with hourly billing" and you should find some alternatives to DO which may be worth considering.
And if you want to dig deeper, I have written a book [1] which I hope can clear the confusion and give you a better idea of what hosting you need for your apps.
The thing is, the AWS pricing strategy is global and most services are built on top of instances.