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Amazon S3 vs IBM SoftLayer 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon S3
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
85
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM SoftLayer
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
23rd
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 is 13.8%, up from 11.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM SoftLayer is 1.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon S313.8%
IBM SoftLayer1.4%
Other84.8%
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.
reviewer1032702 - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Principal Cloud Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Stable with excellent speed and agility
The most valuable aspect of the solution is simply to have the ability to host in a cloud form and out of the data center - the IBM big iron solution. It's the speed and the agility that really sell SoftLayer. The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer. The ability to extract act from your current location, load into your future location, with limited change, and then be able to take the transfer actions slowly and methodically after you're in your new location is the part that really makes this awesome. The stability and scalability are quite good.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Amazon S3 for me is static deployment; it doesn't charge much, and I can integrate CloudFront for DNS and routing. It is very useful and affordable."
"My organization has seen improvements in data accessibility, reduced infrastructure costs, and simplified data management through Amazon S3, resulting in a unified scalable storage layer that supports analytics, backups, and migrations seamlessly, leading to faster workflows and better decision-making."
"We can easily connect to the AWS resources."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that I mostly used the tool's free tier version, so I like the fact that its cost is very low."
"The most effective features of Amazon S3 are its robust storage capabilities wherein you can combine it with different solutions, using it as a repository for analytics, whether for video analytics or data analytics, allowing for dynamic adjustment of storage automatically without any requisition or long process."
"The multi-zone replication is great."
"The most valuable features are unlimited storage, scalability, and performance."
"The most valuable feature is the automated replication of the data."
"The stability is the solution's most valuable aspect for our organization."
"The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer."
 

Cons

"The tool helps us with data backup storage of payment files and helps us avoid issues with clients when we miss the data. For instance, in the payment file of my Google client, you can find details of one-to-one transactions like the payment information on the file header, payment ID, payment client ID, group headers, etc. We get these details into the file format of ISO which is the accepted format at JP Morgan & Chase. Once we get the file format, we process it through S3."
"There is a limitation with the data upload size, such as the five terabytes restriction. I would like to see an increase in the data upload limit, similar to DynamoDB, where there is no data limit."
"You need to fully understand the solution's best practices to get the most out of its security features."
"The naming conventions require unique global names, which can be cumbersome."
"Everything around visibility, dashboards, and all of the statistics through which the tool provides information 24 hours a day means that it is not done on a real-time basis."
"Amazon S3 needs to simplify the backup features."
"Sometimes, there is latency in getting data, especially if the file size is large. This could be improved."
"The pricing for Amazon S3 needs improvement. Another area for improvement is the file size change because it has some limitations that require more time for rendering, especially if you're not merely uploading a file, but reviewing that file, too."
"The interface is hard to use for us. It should be simplified."
"For us, the versioning was an issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's worth the price considering its functionality."
"The cost depends on the data we access."
"Amazon S3 is a cheap solution."
"I would rate the pricing a nine out of ten. Pricing depends on a particular class where you want save your objects. There are different classes when it comes to storage in S3."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is reasonably priced."
"The price of Amazon S3 could be less expensive."
"This solution has reasonable pricing and a low cost."
"The price is okay."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
University
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise39
No data available
 

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?
The only downside is the scalability limitations. I don't know if that is from AWS or my subscription.
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Also Known As

S3, Simple Storage Service
CloudLayer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Airbnb, Thomson Reuters, Zillow, Alert Logic
Whogohost Ltd., Skypicker, Infinity Computers and Communications Company, Grace Co. Ltd., Keyword, Uvionics Tech, Tennis Australia, immixGroup, Salesbox, Cxense ASA, Avnet Inc., Komsomolskaya Pravda, Seekr
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon S3 vs. IBM SoftLayer and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
884,108 professionals have used our research since 2012.