How about Google App Engine for startups? They give a free tier, which I presume is free for life as long as the web application stays within quota.
Ofcourse there is lock-in, there is no free lunch anywhere! But it should be ok for startups with no capital, who just want to figure out their business model. Once the idea is validated, they can always learn from the experience, and rewrite the application if platform absolutely needs to be changed.
Disclaimer: I don't get paid by Google for writing this, though I am trying to do something with google app engine (python) and that may lead to some bias on my side :-)
I don't think it's the same. BizSpark is the equivalent of Google given you free access to their entire Cloud Platform, e.g. Compute Engine, App Engine, Cloud SQL, free upgrades of OS X and free copies of of IntelliJ IDEA... for three years.
Agreed. It is not a fair comparison, BizSpark probably provides a lot more.
But for a startup with only developers and zero capital, App Engine still provides a great platform to get started. And also, there is no need to apply and get accepted, everyone gets the free quota.
Let me change my initial comment - for those who didn't get into BizSpark and who have run out of their free AWS quota can consider Google App Engine for their experiments :-)
One thing that Azure and EC2 gives that Google App Engine does not is root access to VMs. Modifying my models with respect to the App Engine doesn't really seem like a good idea. Maybe I am too lazy to do that, but I just don't want to leave something that gives me a whole new machine on the cloud!
While you can't get root on App Engine, you can get root on a Google Compute Engine instance, and you can use Cloud SQL for a standard data backend. You don't have to use a keystore deal like the old days anymore (pre-2011).
Ofcourse there is lock-in, there is no free lunch anywhere! But it should be ok for startups with no capital, who just want to figure out their business model. Once the idea is validated, they can always learn from the experience, and rewrite the application if platform absolutely needs to be changed.
Disclaimer: I don't get paid by Google for writing this, though I am trying to do something with google app engine (python) and that may lead to some bias on my side :-)