Google apps engine vs virtual/dedicated server

Question

Hi I roll out some site on google apps engine but I'm not really happy about it for this reason:

• django is not fully supported so no administration etc.
• using django patch etc. sometimes give me some problem when new release on gae is out
• a registering domain (with go daddy) and add it to google apps engine (no redirection) seems take too times for display page
• waste times to avoid some restrictions eg no sql, query number limited etc.
• little scare because I've no great traffic but is rising up so I can predict how much really cost

so my question is for your experience is better a slicehost style server (some dedicated server cost $50 and give you 1,5TB ) or other or google apps engine is economic and pro.

just for getting idea my site is yappiedo.com and sometimes seems slow other Idea and suggerstions are welcome

thanks

Answer 1

And the answer is: depends.

Answer 2

In grab bag format:

• As long as you have a model for making money off your visitors, you do not need to be scared about rising costs. See this blog for what happens when this guy was hit with major traffic. The costs are reasonable (for him at least) and any other non-GAE solution would have died a screaming death, costing him many thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• You are not working on a traditional relational system. You need to design your application to work with GAE's strengths, not to fight GAE's weaknesses. If you spend all your time working around datastore limitations, take your data model back to the drawing board and make one that plays well with GAE. De-normalization is usually the key word.
• There are significant slowdowns associated with starting an instance of your application the first time. These go away when your app is hit often enough that it stays in memory
• The should be no difference between hitting *.appspot.com and a properly setup google apps domain. Check your DNS configuration.