Amazon S3 Glacier vs Microsoft Azure Object 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 #9 with an average rating of 7.8. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 17.6% mindshare in PCSS, compared to Microsoft’s 2.0% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Amazon S3 Glacier

Read 38 Amazon S3 Glacier reviews

4,566 Views
3,909 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Object Storage

Read 51 Microsoft Azure Object Storage reviews

659 Views
581 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Amazon S3 Glacier

Microsoft Azure Object Storage

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 2024

Amazon S3 Glacier and Microsoft Azure Object Storage are two leading cloud storage solutions. Amazon S3 Glacier generally has the upper hand due to its cost-effectiveness and customer service, while Microsoft Azure Object Storage leads in features and integration capabilities.

Features: Amazon S3 Glacier offers cost-effective long-term data storage, easy integration with other AWS services, and robust support. Microsoft Azure Object Storage provides comprehensive data management capabilities, seamless integration with various Azure services, and an extensive feature set for complex storage needs.

Room for Improvement: Amazon S3 Glacier could benefit from improved retrieval speeds, more transparent pricing details, and enhanced user interface. Microsoft Azure Object Storage users desire simpler management tools, better documentation, and streamlined billing processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon S3 Glacier is noted for its straightforward deployment process and responsive customer support. Microsoft Azure Object Storage, while easy to deploy, gets mixed reviews regarding support, with some users finding it less responsive compared to AWS.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon S3 Glacier is recognized for low setup costs and high ROI due to usage-based pricing and minimal maintenance requirements. Microsoft Azure Object Storage, though more expensive, offers higher ROI for users needing advanced features and integration capabilities, with reported benefits justifying the additional cost for scalable, feature-rich solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon S3 Glacier vs. Microsoft Azure Object Storage Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon S3 Glacier vs. Microsoft Azure Object Storage

December 2024

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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 Object Storage

Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services

9th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 Glacier is 17.6%, up from 15.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Object Storage is 2.0%, down from 2.5% 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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PrateekMehrotra

Solutions Architect/Team Lead at Publicis Sapient

Comprehensive cloud data management with seamless scalability and robust security features

One valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Object Storage is that it provides REST API access to your data, allowing easy data consumption. Additionally, it offers encryption for data at rest and in transit as a standard feature, which enhances security. Another key feature is out-of-box storage management, removing the need for us to manage storage capacity and maintenance. Scalability and data redundancy across zones and regions are also noteworthy.

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 tool is simple to use and not very expensive."

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

"I find Amazon S3 Glacier valuable for storing various documents like purchase orders, standard documents, and drawings."

"The solution is easy to use."

"The product is easy to use."

"Amazon S3 Glacier can integrate seamlessly with other AWS services."

"The solution is great for storing data you don't usually need access to. It's also well-integrated with Amazon S3."

"The solution is stable."

More Amazon S3 Glacier pros

"Microsoft Azure Object Storage offers hassle-free usage. It is easy to configure."

"Object Storage's best features are the soft delete option and the retention period."

"Microsoft Azure Object Storage is an easy-to-use and stable solution."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the tool's price since it is not expensive."

"The metadata that the solution provides is quite valuable for us. If we need to analyze the latest data from a particular department or particular user, we can simply query through the metadata we store in Azure Object Storage and simply fetch those records which are maybe one day or one month old. this metadata storage is really handy for us."

"The solution integrates well with Microsoft Office 365 and includes important features such as SIEM, storage, SQL, and Cosmos DB."

"The file retention and object retention have been most valuable."

"It is a stable solution and serve our purposes"

More Microsoft Azure Object Storage pros

Cons

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

"The cost can be lower."

"The technical support has room for improvement."

"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 solution's pricing is too expensive and could be improved."

"Amazon S3 Glacier is a cheaper tool if you're running it on-prem, but it is expensive if deployed on the cloud."

"Amazon S3 Glacier's data retrieval time is slow compared to other AWS storage services and should be improved."

"They should increase the data limit for the free version or reduce the price."

More Amazon S3 Glacier cons

"I have no complaints about Microsoft Azure Object Storage, but maybe its market size could be more extensive, and its backup speed enhanced."

"Microsoft Azure Object Storage has had a number of failures last week due to the lack of hardware available to support the resources. However, it was only for a short time, approximately two days."

"The stability of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."

"The setup process could always be a bit easier."

"We would like it if we did not have to use another encryption solution to encrypt the storage."

"Object Storage's integration with other backup software could be improved."

"Object re-use should be improved in order to get better performance and reduce the cost."

"The solution can be quite slow."

More Microsoft Azure Object Storage cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price point at which the product is available is pretty good."

"The tool is too expensive."

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

"Amazon S3 Glacier is expensive."

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

"The product is cheap."

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

"Amazon S3 Glacier is much cheaper than competing products."

More Amazon S3 Glacier pricing and cost advice

"The tool has a pay-per-use pricing model...There is no need to pay extra money for the licensing costs since the price is based on the storage you consume."

"Microsoft Azure Object Storage requires a license. We are using a pay-as-you-go model and we have an enterprise subscription model as well."

"The cost should be reduced to make it more competitive."

"The cost is based on the amount of traffic and we paid approximately 18 lakh Rupees ($25,000 USD) last year."

"I think we pay per bit as per usage. There is a billing pattern for the subscription, and we get a monthly bill. I've seen that happen over there. I haven't seen any fixed costs. It always depends on what we're using and how much the servers are running. The breakdown appears on the bill."

"The licensing cost of Microsoft Azure Object Storage is monthly. We have two types of licenses. One is the EA enterprise license and the other is a CSP license."

"We have a separate package and pay extra for additional technical support."

"Encryption feature is an add-on."

More Microsoft Azure Object Storage pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

34%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

University

Computer Software Company

20%

Retailer

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

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 Object Storage?

The layout of Microsoft is professional.

See all answers

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

The pricing is higher than CNC. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the pricing as six to seven.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Object Storage?

The deployment process needs improvement, and it requires a lot of expertise to use and to utilize it.

See all answers

Comparisons

Google Cloud Storage Nearline vs Amazon S3 Glacier

Compared 52% 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

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Amazon S3 Glacier

Compared 8% of the time

Wasabi vs Amazon S3 Glacier

Compared 8% of the time

More Amazon S3 Glacier Competitors

Oracle Cloud Object Storage vs Microsoft Azure Object Storage

Compared 52% of the time

Amazon S3 vs Microsoft Azure Object Storage

Compared 34% of the time

Wasabi vs Microsoft Azure Object Storage

Compared 15% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Object Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon S3 Glacier

January 2025

Download Amazon S3 Glacier product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Object Storage

December 2024

Download Microsoft Azure Object Storage product report

Also Known As

Amazon Glacier

Microsoft Azure Blob Storage, Azure Object Storage, MS Azure Object Storage

Learn More

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Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Microsoft

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.

REST-based object storage for unstructured data in the cloud

Store infrequently accessed data in a low-cost cool storage tier
Store frequently accessed application data in a hot storage tier
Stream video, audio, and other media to web, mobile, or desktop applications
Power big data analytics
Access your data more securely, both over the wire and at rest

Sample Customers

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

Umbraco, Xbox, Radioshack, 343 Industries, McKesson

Buyer's Guide

Amazon S3 Glacier vs. Microsoft Azure Object Storage

December 2024

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

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