Amazon S3 Glacier vs Microsoft Azure Block Storage comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are both solutions in the Public Cloud Storage Services category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.7, while Microsoft is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.1. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 17.4% mindshare in PCSS, compared to Microsoft’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Amazon S3 Glacier

Read 38 Amazon S3 Glacier reviews

4,392 Views
3,736 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Block Storage

Read 63 Microsoft Azure Block Storage reviews

365 Views
300 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Amazon S3 Glacier

Microsoft Azure Block Storage

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 2024

Amazon S3 Glacier and Microsoft Azure Block Storage are both popular cloud storage solutions. Microsoft Azure Block Storage seems to be a superior product due to its features, and users feel it is worth the price.

Features: Amazon S3 Glacier is valued for its cost-effectiveness, data archiving capabilities, and long-term storage. Microsoft Azure Block Storage stands out for its high performance, integration with other Azure services, and greater flexibility and scalability.

Room for Improvement: Amazon S3 Glacier users desire faster retrieval times, better user interface, and improved integration with other platforms. Microsoft Azure Block Storage users point out the high cost, complex pricing structure, and occasional performance issues during spikes in usage.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon S3 Glacier users find the deployment process straightforward but have mixed reviews on customer service. Microsoft Azure Block Storage users report a complex setup process but commendable technical support.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon S3 Glacier is favored for its competitive setup costs and positive ROI feedback. Microsoft Azure Block Storage, despite higher setup costs, delivers good ROI due to its performance benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon S3 Glacier vs. Microsoft Azure Block Storage Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon S3 Glacier vs. Microsoft Azure Block Storage

January 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Amazon S3 Glacier

Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Microsoft Azure Block Storage

Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services

10th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 Glacier is 17.4%, up from 15.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Block Storage is 0.8%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Public Cloud Storage Services

Featured Reviews

Deepak Nagar

Manager, Strategic Alliances at Softcell Technologies Limited

A scalable, flexible, and user-friendly solution that is easy to maintain and handle

The solution's initial setup is straightforward and not complex. In the initial legacy, we used to put our servers in our data centers, look for storage, and give a path to that storage. In Amazon S3 Glacier, you can directly put your credentials for the portal login and upload your data.

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MatsHagberg Olsson2

Senior Solutions Architect at EQ2 Technology

Empowers secure data management with affordable tools and minimal hassle

The most valuable feature is that it's very affordable in comparison to competitors. The absolute best feature is the Azure Storage Explorer tool. The tool allows me to download to my device, control access, and manage data with ease. Additionally, the joint use of Azure portal further facilitates management depending on my location.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The product is easy to use."

"The biggest advantage of the product is that AWS always copies the tool internally."

"The solution’s storage management is good and dynamic. The product is highly stable. The solution is highly scalable. The customer service and support is good. The initial setup is straightforward. I recommend the solution."

"AWS Lambda is the most valuable part of the solution because it gives you a code interface for everything."

"Amazon S3 Glacier is easy to use. The platform is straightforward, and the interfaces are user-friendly and responsive. Even with a limited budget, you can train someone without an AWS certification to use it. With on-the-job training, you can ensure they understand what needs to be done to use the service."

"I like the price. If you compare Glacier to others, the prices in terms of what you store beyond retention are much lower."

"The product automatically replicates objects from a S3 bucket in one region to another bucket in a different region."

"AWS does support the ability for user controlled movement of data between regions for business continuance (BC), high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR)."

More Amazon S3 Glacier pros

"The ability to increase and scale out is really easy, allowing us to manage a large amount of data with reduced dependency on scalability issues."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Block Storage is the security and the management of user access from on-premise to the cloud."

"The setup is straightforward."

"The absolute best feature is the Azure Storage Explorer tool."

"The product offers hierarchical storage and we like the main space storage with business."

"The most important reason we use Azure Block Storage is the ability to store large files. When we were building the solution, we knew we needed to store images and video files that are 100 MBs or more. The second thing is speed when dealing with such large file sizes."

"We use this solution for backup storage on our on-premise backup."

"The ability to increase and scale out is really easy."

More Microsoft Azure Block Storage pros

Cons

"I believe the usage reporting could be simplified, particularly for billing purposes. Overall, I find Amazon S3 Glacier's reporting system somewhat confusing compared to other hyperscalers in the market."

"The product is difficult to use."

"The product takes more time to secure data when the bandwidth is low."

"I would like to see improved storage capacity and enhanced security features for better protection."

"They can improve data discovery."

"Amazon S3 Glacier could be more secure."

"Billing issues can be a nightmare. It's tough reaching the right person to get them sorted out."

"The solution’s deployment process is complex and could be improved."

More Amazon S3 Glacier cons

"Customer support could be improved, it can be difficult getting appropriate support."

"I want to see my region added to the data center. I'm in Africa, and if a data center is specifically added under Central Africa, that will reduce data latency when accessing data."

"There needs to be an improvement in overcoming certain limitations, such as adaptability to non-cloud environments."

"The solution's downside is related to its documentation, which I believe can be difficult to navigate because it is hidden between or within other pages of the product's manual."

"It has been a couple of years since I contacted support. However, at that time, it was difficult to get someone on the call even though it was an issue of high severity."

"There is a drawback or limitation to the GRS storage feature because depending on the amount of data, it could take a lot of time."

"I have used Amazon's solutions which are better than Microsoft's. However, since I have predominately Microsoft solutions it is a better choice for me to use another Microsoft solution."

"The solution’s user interface could be improved."

More Microsoft Azure Block Storage cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon S3 Glacier is not an expensive solution, and it has a pay-as-you-go pricing model."

"The product is cheap."

"The product is very cheap."

"We don't pay for licenses. We pay based on consumption data, considering how much data is stored."

"The solution is cost-effective."

"Amazon S3 Glacier has good pricing."

"Amazon S3 Glacier has a good pricing point, and you pay for what's being used."

"There is no license, you pay for what you use."

More Amazon S3 Glacier pricing and cost advice

"We pay around $300 to $400 a month for some scenarios where consumption is limited. However, going forward, we're seeing the likelihood of the cost coming to around $2,000 as consumption rises."

"Azure Block Storage is higher priced than its competitors."

"For the first 50DB, they cost around $50. It's an open solution for everybody. Anybody can go to the Microsoft website and they can get the pricing for it. But the first 50GB of data is a default rate and then it increases for the next 500GB or something like that. It is a pay as you go solution. The more you use, the more you pay. That's normally how you pay for any cloud solutions."

"I would rate Azure a three out of ten for pricing."

"I would rate the pricing as five out of ten."

"Microsoft Azure Block Storage is expensive. Its licensing costs are monthly."

"The price of Microsoft Azure Block Storage is expensive. They should provide a more efficient cost."

"The cost of procuring storage depends on the customer's license availability."

More Microsoft Azure Block Storage pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

35%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

21%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Amazon's S3 Glacier or EBS (Elastic Block Store)?

Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon's S3 Glacier or Elastic Block Store data storage software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Amazon's S3 Glacier, whi...

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What do you like most about Amazon S3 Glacier?

I like creating buckets where data can be segregated at a high level and then routing the appropriate data to each designated bucket. In terms of value, I would say that the tool gets the job done ...

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What needs improvement with Amazon S3 Glacier?

I would like to see improvements in the transfer rate as it takes quite a long time to retrieve data from Glacier compared to standard S3 storage. Additionally, improvements in configuration manage...

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Block Storage?

We use the solution to develop SaaS platforms on Azure. We utilize various Microsoft components like block storage and databases for this purpose.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Block Storage?

Pricing could be rated as eight out of ten. It is reasonable, however, it can be cheaper.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Block Storage?

At the moment, I do not have anything specific in mind for improvements. The most important thing for me is accessibility and easy provisioning to multiple servers with different vendors.

See all answers

Comparisons

Google Cloud Storage Nearline vs Amazon S3 Glacier

Compared 54% of the time

Google Cloud Storage vs Amazon S3 Glacier

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs Amazon S3 Glacier

Compared 8% of the time

Wasabi vs Amazon S3 Glacier

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Amazon S3 Glacier

Compared 7% of the time

More Amazon S3 Glacier Competitors

Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs Microsoft Azure Block Storage

Compared 80% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs Microsoft Azure Block Storage

Compared 20% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Block Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon S3 Glacier

February 2025

Download Amazon S3 Glacier product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Block Storage

January 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Block Storage product report

Also Known As

Amazon Glacier

MS Azure Block Storage

Overview

Amazon Glacier is a secure, durable, and extremely low-cost cloud storage service for data archiving and long-term backup. Customers can reliably store large or small amounts of data for as little as $0.007 per gigabyte per month, a significant savings compared to on-premises solutions. To keep costs low, Amazon Glacier is optimized for infrequently accessed data where a retrieval time of several hours is suitable.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Massively scalable cloud storage for your applications

Store and help protect your data. Get durable, highly available data storage across the globe and pay only for what you use.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

King Cpunty, Illumina, Backupify, Nearmap.com, Scribd, Baylor College of Medicine, SoundCloud

Mazda, BlinkBox, Rakuten Showtime, Xbox One, Serko, ChronoDrive

Buyer's Guide

Amazon S3 Glacier vs. Microsoft Azure Block Storage

January 2025

Free Report: Amazon S3 Glacier vs. Microsoft Azure Block Storage

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