Alternative for Google AppEngine?

Question

I recently had to realize a project on Google AppEngine. At the beginning I was sceptic. But there a some really nice approaches on Appengine:

• No server setup. Eve

Answer 1

I think Heroku is a great alternative.

It can run most of GAE existing apps, since it supports django, but also:

• It supports Ruby (w or w/o Rails), Java (w or w/o Spring), Node.js, Clojure,...
• It has a strong CLI support (git push for publishing, creation of apps, scaling, log, ps,...)
• It supports MySql and PostgreSQL (and, so on, MongoDB, Amazon RDS, etc.)
• It has a free tier for 750 hours a month (~1 machine always up) for every app.
• It has a collection of addons for providing cloud services as a resources for the apps
• It has an add-on program to develop your own add-ons.

Really, it is a good alternative.

If you want your application is not binded to GAE, the best approach is to use well-known langs and well-known persistence providers. Ruby+PostgreSQL, for instance, could be a combination very portable. Django as well, but w/o BigTable...