IBM Cloud Object Storage vs MinIO comparison

IBM and MinIO are both solutions in the File and Object Storage category. IBM is ranked #12 with an average rating of 9.3, while MinIO is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.0. IBM holds a 1.1% mindshare in FaOS, compared to MinIO’s 18.5% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of MinIO users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

IBM Cloud Object Storage and MinIO are key players in the cloud storage sector, aiming to offer excellent scalability and security. While IBM Cloud Object Storage provides strong support and economical pricing, MinIO stands out with advanced features and superior performance.

Features: IBM Cloud Object Storage delivers enhanced data protection, scalability, and integration capabilities, suitable for large enterprises needing comprehensive solutions. MinIO offers high-performance capabilities, robust API support, and simplicity, benefiting high-demand use cases. IBM stands out for its significant security features, while MinIO's lightweight architecture is admired for efficiency.

Room for Improvement: IBM Cloud Object Storage could improve in offering more flexible API options and optimizing performance for smaller deployments. Additionally, enhancing data retrieval speeds could be beneficial. MinIO can focus on expanding its structured support services, enhancing integration with legacy systems, and improving deployment scalability in large enterprise environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Cloud Object Storage offers a streamlined deployment process with extensive customer support, facilitating integration into existing IT setups. MinIO offers straightforward deployment with significant community support and comprehensive documentation, appealing to those seeking an easy setup.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Cloud Object Storage involves a higher initial cost but provides competitive long-term ROI through its enterprise-grade solutions and extensive support. MinIO offers a cost-effective solution with minimal initial investment, attracting businesses prioritizing agility and cost efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Cloud Object Storage vs. MinIO Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cloud Object Storage vs. MinIO

June 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

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.8%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Cloud Object Storage is 1.1%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MinIO is 18.5%, down from 23.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

File and Object Storage

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

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Steve Qualls

Senior Storage Engineer at Q & Q IT Consulting

Offers the ease with which you can move data between on-premises storage and the cloud and then retrieve it back on-premises when necessary

IBM Cloud Object Storage supports big data and analytics workflows. However, I usually have to refer to my documentation for that. Cloud environments are part of almost every project I've been involved in over the last few years, but I rely heavily on documentation whenever I need to do anything in the cloud. I know the basics, but the technical details always need refreshing. I create the drawings or diagrams of how the on-premises and cloud environments interact. So, visual representations are helpful. I'll diagram the on-premises environment, the cloud environment, and any appliances in between and then work from there. The integration capabilities simplified our data workflows. Like, the integration itself is pretty easy. The access appliances create the connection between both environments.

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Abdelrahim-Ahmad

Data Scientist at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees

Provides good object storage functionalities

MinIO should provide an easier subscription model for companies that don't have a huge amount of data. Our company has a maximum of 100 terabytes of data. The solution should provide more bugging tools in the open-source version to encourage people to buy the support services. It's not an easy decision. If I go to the management and tell them that I need to buy a service, there should be an easier subscription model for companies that don't have huge amounts of data. For me, getting a subscription for 15,000 a year for a system already in production might be a bit hard. I think MinIO supports a minimum of one petabyte or 100 terabytes of data. Since we don't have such huge amounts of data, buying a subscription for the solution is a bit difficult. Hence, we're only using the open-source version for now. If MinIO becomes really crucial for our business, we could ask the management to get a subscription.

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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 tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."

"The main feature I have found to be product replication."

"The most valuable features of FlashBlade include its replication capabilities, reports, and easy allocation. Everything is user-friendly."

"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."

"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

"I would rate this solution an eight plus. It has has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."

"Approximately 40% to 50% of my time is saved using Pure Storage FlashBlade compared to different products."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The capability to replicate data in different locations is valuable since it enables customers to have a cluster over various sites."

"Overall, I rate IBM Cloud Object Storage a ten out of ten."

"One of Cloud Object Storage's best features is infinite capacity. This is one of the main advantages if you don't want to use your own storage. You also have the ability to write only, write once, and read many. It's like tape storage but software-based. This feature is essential for financial institutions that require that kind of protection if you write backup or data there."

"IBM Cloud Object Storage integrates well."

"The most valuable feature I like is when you connect it via CLI plug-in...It is a stable solution."

"IBM has the most number of additional services, this is the main advantage."

"The standout feature of IBM Cloud Object Storage is its top-notch security, making it ideal for sensitive applications like mobile financial transactions."

"The integration itself is pretty easy. The access appliances create the connection between both environments."

"It performs efficiently compared to other solutions."

"Nice web interface, easy to use, with a low memory footprint."

"The most valuable feature of MinIO is its ease of use, replication, and active directory. All the capabilities are in this solution."

"Reliable erasure coding."

"Good interface and a good approach to development and testing environments."

"The most valuable feature is the ease of management and administration."

"The ability to spawn a MinIO Tenant on demand and shut it down right after is most valuable."

"The container installation features are good. The S3 feature provisions the storage buckets making it easy. It allows me to spin up the public buckets with open-source technology."

More MinIO pros

Cons

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."

"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."

"In terms of scalability, it doesn't expand out quite as robustly as some of the others, but it covers 90% of the market in what it does."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."

"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"One improvement could be incorporating a feature similar to Dropbox's version history. This would allow users to track modifications made to files over time, which is particularly important for maintaining a record of changes. While the free version might not include this feature, it could be included in the paid version to provide added value to clients. Additionally, having a version history feature that allows users to access modifications made to files over the past three months could be beneficial."

"One area where IBM Cloud Object Storage could potentially improve is in modernizing its underlying codebase."

"IBM Cloud storage is not cheap, but it could be."

"The performance could be better. It isn't bad, but everything is network-based, so you have a performance penalty on the network. You can never achieve the same performance as hardware. That's the disadvantage of cloud storage solutions in general. Cloud performance is one of the main issues clients have."

"IBM has limited cloud storage."

"Sometimes technical support lacks a comprehensive understanding of the entire solution, only focusing on the product they support."

"Room for improvement depends on customer needs. Some customers prefer pure Object Storage using the S3 protocol, while others use a gateway in front of the storage grid to enable CIFS or NFS."

"The performance could improve in IBM Cloud Object Storage. The throughput or objects per second can have degradation."

More IBM Cloud Object Storage cons

"There should be the ability to expand the size after it has already been deployed. Currently, you cannot do that. It doesn't support an increase in size. Each time we spawn a new MinIO, we need to track the particular MinIO instance or tenant that has the file. Therefore, we had to create a multi-tenant solution that tracks the MinIO that has our artifacts. It isn't in one single instance. It should have better multi-tenancy support."

"The Distributed User Interface (DUI) needs some work. It's hard to view a large set of data on the DUI. It's an issue with the DUI's performance."

"MinIO could use a time patch on it. It could also use better documentation for some languages like Python."

"The MinIO dashboard is minimal as there are only a couple of features inside the dashboard for a basic user. I would like this to be more robust with more click-around features."

"The monitoring capability is really bad and needs to be improved."

"The solution lacks documentation."

"Lacks documentation for non-Kubernetes users."

"The product's security is open by default, without any SSL."

More MinIO cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"The price is a little high."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"Pricing is not cheap."

"Like most cloud providers, IBM likely charges based on storage capacity, typically per gigabyte or terabyte. Their pricing is competitive when compared to AWS or Microsoft."

"You have the option of a monthly or yearly license. Most customers choose the monthly option. I understand what you would like to say. IBM also lets you choose among four types of Cloud Object Storage. The difference is usage, performance, etc. Of course, high-performance storage is more expensive, while low-performance storage is for cold data, and it's really cheap."

"IBM Cloud is cheaper than AWS. If you want to scale your cloud infrastructure, it can be bought at almost the same price."

"We use the solution's open-source version."

"MinIO is a free open-source solution."

"We use the solution's open-source version."

"My company hasn't tried the version of the solution where we need to pay to use it."

"This is an open-source solution but I am using the licensed version."

"This solution is open source so it is free."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

24%

Computer Software Company

16%

Educational Organization

12%

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...

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What do you like most about IBM Cloud Object Storage?

The integration itself is pretty easy. The access appliances create the connection between both environments.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Cloud Object Storage?

In general, Object Storage should be a cheaper solution.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Cloud Object Storage?

The interface can feel clunky and outdated compared to AWS S3 or Azure Blob Storage. While scalable, latency can be...

See all answers

How does Red Hat Ceph Storage compare with MiniO?

Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This ...

See all answers

What do you like most about MinIO?

I like that if you have a problem, you can buy the home server. It is stable and robust.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MinIO?

We use the solution's open-source version.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

Dell ECS vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 5% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Dell ECS vs IBM Cloud Object Storage

Compared 27% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Cloud Object Storage

Compared 19% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Cloud Object Storage

Compared 10% of the time

Scality RING vs IBM Cloud Object Storage

Compared 7% of the time

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs IBM Cloud Object Storage

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM Cloud Object Storage Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs MinIO

Compared 52% of the time

NetApp StorageGRID vs MinIO

Compared 8% of the time

Dell ECS vs MinIO

Compared 5% of the time

Cloudian HyperStore vs MinIO

Compared 5% of the time

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs MinIO

Compared 1% of the time

More MinIO Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

June 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cloud Object Storage

July 2025

Download IBM Cloud Object Storage product report

Buyer's Guide

MinIO

June 2025

Download MinIO product report

Also Known As

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Overview

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

IBM Cloud Object Storage is a web-scale platform that stores unstructured data - from petabyte to exabyte - with reliability, security, availability and disaster recovery without replication.

IBM

MinIO is an open-source object storage system. It is designed to efficiently store and retrieve unstructured data, such as photos, videos, and backups. MinIO can be used as a standalone object storage server or as part of a larger system, such as a data lake or a private cloud, and can be deployed on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment, making it a flexible storage solution for a variety of use cases.

MinIO’s features include erasure coding, bitrot protection, and checksum validation, which help ensure data integrity and reliability. The solution’s multi-tenancy support makes it ideal for multi-user environments. MinIO’s edge computing tools enable data storage and processing closer to users' locations, reducing latency and improving performance. MinIO can easily scale to accommodate storage and power demands, making it ideal for use in large-scale, data-intensive environments.

MinIO Benefits and Features:

MinIO offers several key benefits and features for organizations looking for a scalable and high-performing object storage solution:

Scalability: Horizontally scale to increase storage space and processing power as your needs grow.

High performance: MinIO’s edge computing and low latency provide fast data access.

Seamless integrations: MinIO is compatible with the Amazon S3 API, which enables integration with third-party systems and tools.

Data integrity: Security features, such as erasure coding, bitrot protection, and checksum validation, ensure data integrity and reliability.

Reduced costs: MinIO is an open-source solution, making it a cost-effective option for organizations looking for a scalable object storage solution.

Support: MinIO’s large open-source community of developers and users provides a wide range of resources and an active support network

Multi-tenancy: Multi-tenancy support makes MinIO suitable for use in multi-user environments.

Easy deployment: MinIO is easy to deploy and can run on a variety of platforms, including on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment.

Access control: Role-based access control, enabling you to control access to data based on users permissions.

Event notifications: Automate workflows based on changes to objects in your storage.

Cross-region replication: Duplicate data between different regions for disaster recovery and data backup.

Intuitive interface: MinIO’s user-friendly dashboard can be accessed via any browser and can be used to perform multiple object operations including object creation and management.

Reviews from Real Users

MinIO stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its flexibility, integration options, and performance.

Süleyman Fazıl Y., a senior software engineer at a tech services company, writes, “The most valuable features are that MinIO is open, it works on-premise, and is compatible with the Amazon industry which is great for finding compatible libraries in many languages which is very good for developers.”

Rebecca S., CTO at NIASE, says, “MinIO is much improved over the prior solution, updates are simple to apply, and we anticipate that future capacity requirements will be easier to meet. Our customers are using this solution to retrieve tens of thousands of objects (documents and files) per hour, and MinIO seems to be able to keep up with it.”

MinIO

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Bitly, Dreamstime, Prime Research

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cloud Object Storage vs. MinIO

June 2025

Free Report: IBM Cloud Object Storage vs. MinIO

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