Amazon S3 vs IBM SoftLayer comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM are both solutions in the Public Cloud Storage Services category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.8, while IBM is ranked #23. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 14.1% mindshare in PCSS, compared to IBM’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Amazon S3

Read 83 Amazon S3 reviews

2,775 Views
2,720 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

IBM SoftLayer

Read 2 IBM SoftLayer reviews

223 Views
134 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon S3

IBM SoftLayer

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 2024

Both IBM SoftLayer and Amazon S3 are comprehensive cloud storage solutions, competing vigorously in the cloud storage market. Many users prefer Amazon S3 due to its extensive feature set and performance metrics.

Features: IBM SoftLayer offers robust scalability, security features, and flexible storage options. Amazon S3 provides high availability, diverse storage classes, and advanced data management tools.

Room for Improvement: IBM SoftLayer needs better documentation, more intuitive management tools, and better user experiences. Amazon S3 would benefit from simplified pricing, enhanced user support, and better clarity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM SoftLayer has a straightforward deployment process and more personalized customer service. Amazon S3 offers efficient deployment, detailed documentation, and broad support but less personalized customer service.

Pricing and ROI: IBM SoftLayer provides competitive setup costs, flexible pricing models, and favorable ROI. Amazon S3 has higher initial setup costs but offers superior ROI through scalable storage solutions and extensive features.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon S3 vs. IBM SoftLayer Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon S3 vs. IBM SoftLayer

September 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

Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services

2nd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 is 14.1%, up from 11.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM SoftLayer is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Public Cloud Storage Services Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Amazon S3	14.1%
IBM SoftLayer	0.6%
Other	85.3%

Public Cloud Storage Services

Featured Reviews

Roberto Costa

Senior Data & AI Engineer at Imprint

Have used multiple features effectively and find the pricing reasonable

What I appreciate most about Amazon S3 is the tiering of the objects; with the tiering, we can determine if an object won't be accessed frequently and send it to cold storage or a Glacier storage unit, which greatly lowers AWS costs. The inventory feature, called S3 Inventory, is a cool feature as well. The object access point is another notable feature. Amazon S3 has many useful features; I can simply host my website, which has to be a static web page, but even so, it's beneficial to put my code inside of Amazon S3 as a static website that people worldwide can access. I have worked with many petabytes of data stored in Amazon S3, and I have never had any performance issues, stability issues, or anything similar.

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reviewer1032702

Global Principal Cloud Architect at NTT DATA

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The storage factor and data extraction are faster because we can use Redshift for extraction."

"The most valuable features of Amazon S3 are its storage capabilities, security, and integration."

"One of the benefits is being a global service, so it can be accessed from anywhere."

"We find the archival capabilities of this solution quite valuable, because we can have set policies of exactly when, and what to archive."

"Amazon S3 is reliable."

"The most valuable features are unlimited storage, scalability, and performance."

"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."

"I find the cost-effective models particularly suitable for our needs."

More Amazon S3 pros

"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

"Sometimes it's difficult to set it up, such as when naming your bucket. The naming conventions require unique global names, which can be cumbersome."

"Amazon S3's unit of measure for expansion should be smaller."

"They could always increase object storage ability."

"The only pain point is migrating the life cycle policy because if someone is a newbie, they cannot easily create the life cycle policy."

"An encryption mechanism and storage optimization could be added."

"The initial setup was a bit hectic. Uploading data only allows for five GB chunks, creating challenges."

"The naming conventions require unique global names, which can be cumbersome."

"The solution's data transfer speed could be improved."

More Amazon S3 cons

"The interface is hard to use for us. It should be simplified."

"For us, the versioning was an issue."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Amazon S3 is competitive with other solutions."

"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."

"The solution is cost-effective because it is based on a pay-as-you-go model, where I can purchase and use it according to my needs."

"Not many products in the market beat the solution in terms of quality or price."

"The tool is not too expensive considering the various pros."

"The solution is very inexpensive at 50 cents per gigabyte, per month."

"The cost of Amazon S3 is good. The pricing model is based on the usage of the solution."

"There is a license to use Amazon S3."

More Amazon S3 pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

University

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	33
Midsize Enterprise	17
Large Enterprise	38

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon S3?

We can easily connect to the AWS resources.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon S3?

AWS pricing for Amazon S3 starts at a higher cost, particularly in the standard class. However, with lifecycle management policies, costs can be optimized over time. On a scale from one to ten, I w...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon S3?

That is a hard question; I cannot think of any improvements right now because all the necessary features are already included in Amazon S3. One aspect I would mention is the naming in Amazon S3. If...

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Comparisons

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Amazon S3

Compared 15% of the time

Google Cloud Storage vs Amazon S3

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Amazon S3

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Cloud Object Storage vs Amazon S3

Compared 9% of the time

Rackspace Cloud Files vs Amazon S3

Compared 7% of the time

More Amazon S3 Competitors

Oracle Cloud Software Appliance vs IBM SoftLayer

Compared 56% of the time

Amazon AWS vs IBM SoftLayer

Compared 44% of the time

More IBM SoftLayer Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon S3

October 2025

Download Amazon S3 product report

Buyer's Guide

Public Cloud Storage Services

September 2025

Download IBM SoftLayer product report

Also Known As

S3, Simple Storage Service

CloudLayer

Overview

Amazon Simple Storage Service is storage for the Internet. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

Amazon S3 has a simple web services interface that you can use to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

SoftLayer provides cloud infrastructure as a service from a growing number of data centers and network points of presence around the world. Our customers range from Web startups to global enterprises.

Products and services include bare metal and virtual servers, networking, turnkey big data solutions, private cloud solutions, and more. Our unique advantages include the industry's first Network-Within-a-Network topology for true out-of-band access, and an easy-to-use customer portal and robust API for full remote-access of all product and service management options.

IBM

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

Buyer's Guide

Amazon S3 vs. IBM SoftLayer

September 2025

Free Report: Amazon S3 vs. IBM SoftLayer

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