Which web platform would be best to create a web app with an android client

I'm working on an android app which would connect to a web server which would power a social network and data store inside the app. Recently we decided that we would use a landing page and pre-order page to try and try and market our app before we launch.

Right now I'm working to create the landing page and I ran into a whole host of problems. Namely, that we would need a landing/pre-order page that would tie into the social network and would run off the same set of usernames/emails (we need to honor discounts/ deals). I've spent the whole day looking at our options and I came to the conclusion that

1. Static hosts (probably) wont work for what we are doing. We would need a cloud host
2. I only have previous experience in Windows Azure but the cost is prohibitive.
3. Any host that I choose would require a significant time investment.

So I'm at a complete loss. I took a look at Amazon EC2, Google App Engine, and a few other hosts like Heroku and Linode and realized I would have to spend at least a day or two working just on learning the workings of the services to effectively use them. So the tl;dr is: I开发者_运维问答 need to pick and choose a single webhost to host a back end for an android app and my website. Which host should I pick?

EC2 may require more effort to maintain but you will be able to do what you want. It will basically give you bare bones Linux server where you can install anything you want and choose whatever implementation you need (Java, C++, Perl - name it.).

It cost some money but for the first year they give Micro instance for free. Which gives you room to grow.

I don't have much experience with Google App Engine, but as far as I understand, you will be more constrained to specific things that Google offers. It may not be a bad thing as it seems to be easier to maintain. But long term you will be locked in to it.

So weight carefully.

GAE has two big advantages for this case:

1. It's free: for the description of what you want, it does not seem that you'll be over the free quota, at leas at the beginning.
2. You can write it in java, which means reusing a lot of code in the final android app.