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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
5.8
Organizations find Amazon S3 cost-effective, scalable, and productivity-boosting, with economic advantages and reduced overhead costs.
Sentiment score
7.4
Azure NetApp Files boosts performance, eases deployment, reduces downtime, and optimizes costs, despite higher initial expenses than on-premises.
Moving infrequently accessed data to cheaper classes like Glacier is beneficial for long-term storage at a lower cost.
Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
I have seen a return on investment, and the ROI that we observed in our organization includes reducing manpower by 20% and achieving zero downtime for storage expansion, which improves overall productivity.
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Amazon S3 has a reasonable price as you pay a flat price to use it.
Senior Data & AI Engineer at Imprint
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
Amazon S3 support is professional and responsive, with high user ratings, despite occasional delays and cost concerns.
Sentiment score
7.4
Azure NetApp Files receives mixed feedback on support, praised for integration and ease, but some users seek more specialized assistance.
I rate the technical support from Amazon for S3 a ten out of ten.
CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited
The customer support for Amazon S3 is very good; they are responsive and knowledgeable, providing quick resolutions, clear documentation, and proactive guidance during migrations or performance tuning.
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
An engineer is assigned based on the severity of the issue.
DevOps Engineer at Olla Systems Limited
They have top-notch people.
Cloud/Data/Database Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Amazon S3 provides scalable, cost-effective storage with strong security, widely used across industries for data management.
Sentiment score
7.6
Azure NetApp Files is scalable, flexible, and cost-effective for large setups, but pricing concerns exist for smaller setups.
Data placed in an S3 bucket is replicated across availability zones in a region, ensuring scalability and availability.
Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
The level of scalability allows storage to automatically scale on demand, without the need for manual intervention.
AWS Consultant at Virtual University
The scalability of Amazon S3 is excellent as it handles unlimited data and seamlessly supports growth without manual provisioning or performance degradation.
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon S3 is praised for high stability, performance, and 99.99% uptime with minor latency but noted security concerns.
Sentiment score
8.4
Azure NetApp Files is rated highly for stability due to its reliability and consistency under increased workloads and migrations.
There is zero latency or downtime.
AWS Consultant at Virtual University
Transitioning between S3 storage classes, like moving data from the standard class to Glacier or Glacier Deep Archive, has been challenging.
Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Amazon S3 is highly stable.
DevOps Engineer at Olla Systems Limited
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon S3 users desire enhanced dashboards, better security, improved performance, simplified configurations, intuitive interfaces, and more competitive pricing.
Azure NetApp Files needs improved features, cost efficiency, easier deployment, regional integration, and strengthened security to meet user demands.
An improvement could be associating the naming with personal accounts, allowing more familiar or desired names without conflicting with global conventions.
DevOps Engineer at Stellar Tech
The practice of protecting data could be more streamlined or mandatory.
Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
I would like to see an increase in the data upload limit, similar to DynamoDB, where there is no data limit.
AWS Consultant at Virtual University
I would like for them to have more compression so that it can avoid using more storage.
Cloud/Data/Database Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Amazon S3 offers cost-effective storage with pay-as-you-go pricing, but retrieval and advanced features can be expensive.
Azure NetApp Files pricing is premium yet justified by features like management, scalability, and flexible licensing options.
I've used the free tier and haven't been charged yet.
DevOps Engineer at Stellar Tech
S3 offers multiple classes, allowing you to move data to cheaper classes for cost savings.
Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Since using Amazon S3, storage costs have reduced by around 35% to 40% through lifecycle tiering.
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It is expensive, especially with NetApp Ultra Storage.
Cloud/Data/Database Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Amazon S3 offers scalability, high availability, security, and cost-effective data management, appreciated for performance, reliability, and global accessibility.
Azure NetApp Files enhances performance, scalability, and management with integrated features for backup, recovery, and seamless Azure integration.
Its stability and scalability are also impressive, as it allows for increased storage space according to demand.
DevOps Engineer at Stellar Tech
I appreciate its capability to create static websites and integrate with services like CloudFront, EC2, and DynamoDB.
Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Security measures like encryption, access controls, and the block public access feature are also important.
AWS Consultant at Virtual University
The most valuable feature is that the sixty-terabyte database snapshot can be done in less than two to three minutes.
Cloud/Data/Database Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon S3
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Azure NetApp Files
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (7th), Cloud Storage (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 is 13.2%, up from 11.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure NetApp Files is 6.3%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon S313.2%
Azure NetApp Files6.3%
Other80.5%
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2774889 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has reduced storage costs and improved data management through automated lifecycle and seamless service integration
The best features that Amazon S3 offers are high durability and availability with virtually unlimited storage, lifecycle management for automated tiering and cost control, versioning to retain and recover data changes, and integration with services such as Glue, Athena, EMR, Lambda, along with strong security via IAM roles, bucket policies, and encryption. These features help by ensuring data is always available, securely stored, and easily accessible for pipelines. Lifecycle policies reduce manual cleanup, versioning safeguards against accidental deletions, and integrations allow us to directly run analytics or trigger workflows without moving data around. Amazon S3 event notifications help automate tasks such as triggering ETL jobs or Lambda functions on new data arrivals, and features such as cross-region replication ensure data redundancy and compliance, while fine-grained access control makes it easy to manage permissions across teams securely. My organization has seen improvements in data accessibility, reduced infrastructure costs, and simplified data management through Amazon S3. We now have a unified scalable storage layer that supports analytics, backups, and migrations seamlessly, leading to faster workflows and better decision-making.
AjayKumar13 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud/Data/Database Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees
Fast, reliable, and helps meet our SLAs
The most valuable feature is that the sixty-terabyte database snapshot can be done in less than two to three minutes. It is faster. It is quicker. It is reliable. You don't need to take the snapshot. Snapshots are compressed. It doesn't take storage from the back end. It takes three minutes to do sixty terabytes of the database. You don't have to go to the tape and store it outside, which takes hours and hours. It also uses a lot less of the storage. It's very easy to restore or copy the snapshots to other locations for disaster recovery. There are a lot of benefits. In terms of the snapshot's rapid restore capability, we were testing the load of performance testing, and we needed to rebuild the DR site. If I need to rebuild the DR for a standby database, it takes sixty terabytes to copy onto the another site, which will take at least a day. Now, the snapshot is easy. We just copy the snapshots, and then we do the cross-region application. The snapshots came along with that, and that's where we were able to build the DR site within a few hours rather than days. All together, instead of a four-day process, instead of a day.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise39
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise13
 

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?
Since using Amazon S3, storage costs have reduced by around 35% to 40% through lifecycle tiering, data availability improved to 99.9% which minimizes downtime, ETL processing time decreased by appr...
What needs improvement with Amazon S3?
Amazon S3 can be improved with more intuitive cost visualization tools with forecasting capabilities, faster restore times from Glacier tiers, better real-time monitoring of data access patterns, a...
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 ...
 

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: December 2025.
879,768 professionals have used our research since 2012.