http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/03/google-app-engine-for-indie-developers/
How well does it work?
From our experience, App Engine scales quite well. We’ve been linked to by a number of sites: Slashdot, Ars Technica, Digg (via Ars Technica), Reddit, and App Engine didn’t break a sweat.
The biggest test came when Lugaru was part of the MacHeist Giving Tree. When the Giving Tree was unveiled, we experienced a sudden spike that generated about 30 requests / second. While many of the other participating apps featured were immediately destroyed (even the Giving Tree itself at some points), Google kept up without breaking a sweat.
How much does it cost?
App Engine is a shining example of “software as a service”. You pay for exactly what you use, and in fact, the first chunk is free (i.e. the first 5 million page views / month, more or less). Needless to say, at Wolfire, we are not even close to exceeding our free quota and when we do, we are not going to be too concerned with forking over the 10 cents per gigabyte and other nickels and dimes Google charges based on your precise usage. Click here for the full breakdown.
Disadvantages
A common criticism of App Engine is that you become locked into the platform. This is mostly because Google’s BigTable database is unlike many other database systems, so if you make a complicated, database heavy app, it might be non-trivial to port it to another system, since you wrote it the “Google way”. The Wolfire website is simple enough that I could easily port it to another system in less than a day, but if you are working on a highly complicated web application, I can see how this might be a concern.
Also, App Engine is very young. You will probably run into minor bugs every once in a while. Lucky for you, Wolfire and a number of other early adopters have been putting App Engine through its paces and have found a number of bugs for you. Google has actually offered to come to my Wolfire office (aka my bedroom) and observe my App engine usage to help improve it. We’ll see if they are still comfortable once they learn that fact.
What do you guys use for hosting? Would you guys like to hear more about App Engine or Amazon’s web services? I have barely scratched the surface.