Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Amazon S3 vs Azure NetApp Files comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.0
Amazon S3 offers scalability, cost savings, and data integrity, enabling positive returns and efficient database management for users.
Sentiment score
7.2
Azure NetApp Files improved performance by 30%, reduced costs, increased efficiency, but some users found unclear ROI early on.
Moving infrequently accessed data to cheaper classes like Glacier is beneficial for long-term storage at a lower cost.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.2
Amazon S3 support is generally well-rated for its professionalism, despite some delay reports, with extensive documentation aiding management.
Sentiment score
7.3
Azure NetApp Files support is praised for responsiveness, though effectiveness varies, with some users relying on internal teams.
An engineer is assigned based on the severity of the issue.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Amazon S3 offers scalable, flexible storage with strong security, though learning curve and costs may concern some users across sectors.
Sentiment score
7.6
Azure NetApp Files is highly rated for scalability, flexibility, automation, and minimal maintenance, with some size and availability concerns.
Data placed in an S3 bucket is replicated across availability zones in a region, ensuring scalability and availability.
Amazon S3's automatic scaling has benefited me, as I don't need to plan storage requirements.
Amazon S3 is easily scalable and performs better compared to other cloud storage solutions.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Amazon S3 is highly reliable for large companies, though users note minor issues with data management and security configuration.
Sentiment score
8.4
Users highly rate Azure NetApp Files for its stability and reliability, consistently handling increased loads without issues during migrations.
Amazon S3 is highly stable.
Transitioning between S3 storage classes, like moving data from the standard class to Glacier or Glacier Deep Archive, has been challenging.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon S3's interface challenges user experience with complexity, security, performance, and pricing issues, needing improved management and integration features.
Azure NetApp Files needs innovation, better versioning, cost optimization, simpler deployment, better support, and enhanced disaster recovery and replication.
The practice of protecting data could be more streamlined or mandatory.
An improvement could be associating the naming with personal accounts, allowing more familiar or desired names without conflicting with global conventions.
In terms of security, I struggled with setting permissions and access control initially.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon S3's pay-as-you-go pricing is cost-effective but may increase with data retrievals and higher usage scenarios.
Azure NetApp Files offers flexible pricing with pay-as-you-go and subscription models, but may seem expensive for small deployments.
I've used the free tier and haven't been charged yet.
S3 offers multiple classes, allowing you to move data to cheaper classes for cost savings.
It is somewhat justified due to the benefits, but there is room for reconsideration.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon S3 excels in availability, scalability, security, cost-effectiveness, and ease of use, making it ideal for data storage.
Azure NetApp Files provides flexible, secure, high-performance storage with fast provisioning, scaling, snapshots, SQL backups, and high availability.
I appreciate its capability to create static websites and integrate with services like CloudFront, EC2, and DynamoDB.
Its stability and scalability are also impressive, as it allows for increased storage space according to demand.
Amazon S3 is easily scalable and provides fantastic performance, especially in comparison to other cloud solutions like OCI and Azure.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon S3
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Azure NetApp Files
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (3rd), Cloud Storage (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 is 11.6%, down from 14.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure NetApp Files is 7.1%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

Vagner Martins - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced data security with seamless integration and static website capabilities
S3 is a great service offering numerous possibilities. It allows for storing objects and files of various types. I appreciate its capability to create static websites and integrate with services like CloudFront, EC2, and DynamoDB. Despite being focused on security, I leverage features such as cryptography and integration with CloudTrail.
We can expand our storage on-the-fly without the need to reprovision
Ease of provisioning: It's very easy to consume the product. We are not doing this manually. We are doing this programmatically, but it's very easy and seamless for us to consume it. It's like any other Azure component. It's very good and well-integrated into the ecosystem of Azure. There is tight integration. We didn't need to learn anything new. It feels like we know everything already, although under the hood, the product is something totally different. However, it seemed very easy for us. It's elastic, so it scales with our demands. We can start small, then with the addition of customer loads, we can expand on-the-fly without the need to reprovision something. The performance is quite good, so it's almost on par with the make of SSD storage. It provides a quick, scalable storage solution. We were looking for a supported solution. We didn't want to experiment. We didn't want to look for open source, though we did look into open source initially before we bumped into NetApp. We figured out that adding yet another unknown into our system was not going to bring us benefit. It would be another problem that we would need to tackle. So, we said, "Okay, let's look for a supported solution," and NetApp was one of them. Then, we turned to NetApp.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Public Cloud Storage Services solutions are best for your needs.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
77%
Computer Software Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
3%
Manufacturing Company
2%
Educational Organization
35%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon S3?
We can easily connect to the AWS resources.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon S3?
S3 offers multiple classes, allowing you to move data to cheaper classes for cost savings. AWS provides solutions to monitor your budget.
What needs improvement with Amazon S3?
In terms of security, I struggled with setting permissions and access control initially.
How does Azure NetApp Files compare to NetApp ONTAP?
Azure NetApp Files is a Microsoft Azure file storage service built on NetApp technology. The platform combines the file capabilities of Azure and NetApp to move critical file-based applications to ...
What do you like most about Azure NetApp Files?
The availability is good, meaning downtime or network issues rarely occur. The system also offers flexibility, allowing for increases in data volume, IOPS, and other capabilities without requiring ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure NetApp Files?
The solution's competitors like Oracle or Amazon are not cheap either. I think we're paying two million dollars for Azure NetApp Files. On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is exp...
 

Also Known As

S3, Simple Storage Service
NetApp ANF, ANF
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Airbnb, Thomson Reuters, Zillow, Alert Logic
SAP, Restaurant Magic
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon S3 vs. Azure NetApp Files and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.