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Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

kevinslin.com

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Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#41

Post by nautilus12 »

smithcoin wrote: post #25

It's not much better if you end up being a GCP customer. My company has gone through 4 reps in 3 years. Every time we get a new GCP rep they just want to talk to us about "expanding our use of GCP offerings". The only thing they want to talk about is starting to use BigQuery - not my business at all. I signed up for a Google Cloud Security summit, and afterwards a sales rep reached out me. It was obvious from the sta…

I'd say your experience isn't unique to google. I think at some point we are going to hit a place where people realize the convenience of the cloud doesn't outweigh the additional cost of having a mostly predatory business partner.

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#42

Post by vincentmarle »

doomslice wrote: post #11
randlet wrote: post #2

Title should maybe be switched to "Google Cloud vs AWS Onboarding Comparison for YC companies". Not to say that isn't a useful article on its own, but it's hard to draw too many meaningful conclusions for the rest of us when the first line of the AWS bullet points is "reach out to dedicated YC email".

I was able to get 130k free GCP credits (over 3 years) just by filling out the startup forms... as a complete nobody. You don't even need an affiliate to sponsor you.

That used to be the case. They recently (last year?) changed it to make it much harder.

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#43

Post by doomslice »

aroman wrote: post #16
doomslice wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was able to get 130k free GCP credits (over 3 years) just by filling out the startup forms... as a complete nobody. You don't even need an affiliate to sponsor you.

Did you apply via https://cloud.google.com/startup ? I'm in a similar position and those credits would be lifechanging.

Yes, exactly.

The grants start out small (I think the first one was $3k) -- but then once you spend 75% of them you can apply for the next round, which for me they gave me $17k out of a possible $30k based on previous usage. After I spent around $15k for that over the next year I applied again and got $100k.

Just one note though that I already had an MVP that I was running on GCP at the time I applied (but I was within the $300 free credits that I started with so I didn't pay out of pocket).

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#44

Post by vincentmarle »

sz4kerto wrote: post #14
PaulKeeble wrote: post #4

Google's business model is to have no customer service and have customers discard-able without notice when Google chooses. Why would a business want to do business to business with Google and actually pay them at this point? They do 'free' sort of well but they are a terrible option for dependable partner whether you pay them or not.

Anecdotally we had great experience with GCP support.

GCP Support is not free though.

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#45

Post by blackoil »

recursive wrote: post #17
dpedu wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Why can't Google offer the same thing?

It wouldn't help much if they did, seeing as how that would be specific to YC. As such, it's not representative of the general experience.

Not a general experience but common for many incubators, even for some with bootstrapped companies.

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#46

Post by stevencorona »

mhh__ wrote: post #38
stevencorona wrote: post #30

I used to be a huge fan of GCP and bet on it to power my startup, and have come to greatly regret it. Recently, I needed to increase a CPU-limit quota from a small number (like 16 vCPUs to 64 vCPUs) - nothing crazy. In the past, the quota increase system was more or less automated and would only take a few minutes to process. This time, however, GCP denied my quota increase and forced me to schedule a call with a sal…

Is the call just so they have a window to upsell you?

100% upsell. Felt like sitting through a high pressure timeshare sales pitch to get the free gift at the end

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#47

Post by doomslice »

samsgro wrote: post #22
doomslice wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was able to get 130k free GCP credits (over 3 years) just by filling out the startup forms... as a complete nobody. You don't even need an affiliate to sponsor you.

How!? I am a VC backed startup, just went through the same grief described in the original linked post. I like Firebase, but the moment the utility runs out we're heading back to AWS.

Maybe things have changed since I applied - but I have not talked to a single sales person and only communicated via email with the google cloud for startups team. The process was so quick and painless that I at some point felt like I was being scammed and had to make sure I was not going to end up with a huge bill after they pulled the rug out from under me.

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#48

Post by manigandham »

smithcoin wrote: post #25

It's not much better if you end up being a GCP customer. My company has gone through 4 reps in 3 years. Every time we get a new GCP rep they just want to talk to us about "expanding our use of GCP offerings". The only thing they want to talk about is starting to use BigQuery - not my business at all. I signed up for a Google Cloud Security summit, and afterwards a sales rep reached out me. It was obvious from the sta…

Same terrible experience here with GCP sales and support, but the other options aren't much better. The reality is that unless you are in the 7 figure range, you don't get serious attention. I'm still surprised why sales is so dysfunctional but billions of quarterly profit means there's little need to change.

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#49

Post by NathanKP »

random5634 wrote: post #6
dataminded wrote: post #3

I'm not at a startup but this resonates. AWS crushes it with customer service. Google is a PITA.

As I've said elsewhere, the $29 and $99 support plans for AWS have to lose AWS money. At least a (fairly long) while ago the support was nuts through these. Total expert level / out of scope. Frankly I'd encourage them to hold scope a bit more but its obviously working for them.

AWS employee here. When I was an AWS customer I was also often surprised by the quality of the support answers. Now from the other side I can explain why: even on the cheaper support plans it isn't uncommon for difficult questions to make their way back to the relevant team and the answer you are getting was often written by an engineering manager or engineer on the team that built and operates the thing you were asking about.

Obviously there is a balancing act here to avoid slamming the engineers with too much load answering support questions, but it is not uncommon for customers to be getting answers from the people who built the thing. And on my team at least we always try to use support questions to know where we need to improve documentation with more troubleshooting steps, etc.

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#50

Post by PragmaticPulp »

musha68k wrote: post #36

From personal experience in multiple startups I can confirm that with regards to customer service and sales processes AWS is light years ahead of GCP. That said I have heard even better stories about Azure actually - apparently it is yet in another league of its own in terms of perks and actual service game.

Similar experience here.

AWS has had many years to build and polish their sales process, and it shows.

GCP felt like the engineers built a good platform and then tossed it over the wall to some old school VP of sales type people to pitch it in whatever way maximizes their commission checks.

Azure feels like a finely honed enterprise sales org that understands what they need to do as underdogs in this market.

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