What users are saying about
Amazon S3
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring#question3' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener noreferrer'>Customer Verified: Read more.</a>
Top Rated
242 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener noreferrer'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 9 out of 100
Based on 242 reviews and ratings
Top Rated
139 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener noreferrer'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8.5 out of 100
Based on 139 reviews and ratings
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon S3
I've used S3 continuously for projects large and small for over 10 years. It's just such a common and essential tool in software development. Hosting assets/images, or providing file upload abilities to users, come up very often throughout software, and S3 is hands-down the best place to serve and store files. It's flexible enough that you can use client libraries to perform direct uploads rather than writing your own handlers, etc. S3 is a tool that immediately has value for file hosting and storage, and then extends as far as you need it to for all manner of asset management.

Verified User
Employee in Information Technology
Computer Software Company, 11-50 employeesHeroku Platform
Heroku is very well suited for startups looking to get a server stack up and running quickly. There is little to no overhead when managing your instances. However, you'll need a background in basic DevOps or system management to make sure everything is set up correctly. In addition, it's easy to accidentally go crazy on pricing. Make sure you're only creating the server instances you need to run the base application and set up an auto-scaler plugin to handle peaks.

Verified User
C-Level Executive in Corporate
Financial Services Company, 11-50 employeesFeature Rating Comparison
Platform-as-a-Service
Amazon S3
—
Heroku Platform
8.6
Ease of building user interfaces
Amazon S3
—
Heroku Platform
8.7
Scalability
Amazon S3
—
Heroku Platform
9.6
Platform management overhead
Amazon S3
—
Heroku Platform
8.2
Workflow engine capability
Amazon S3
—
Heroku Platform
8.4
Platform access control
Amazon S3
—
Heroku Platform
8.2
Services-enabled integration
Amazon S3
—
Heroku Platform
9.0
Development environment creation
Amazon S3
—
Heroku Platform
9.1
Development environment replication
Amazon S3
—
Heroku Platform
8.9
Issue monitoring and notification
Amazon S3
—
Heroku Platform
7.8
Issue recovery
Amazon S3
—
Heroku Platform
8.4
Upgrades and platform fixes
Amazon S3
—
Heroku Platform
8.7
Pros
Amazon S3
- Highly available and redundant; we do not worry about the service having downtime
- Simple usage from multiple different frameworks using Amazon's SDKs, or roll your own
- A large number of bucket policies and security adjustments to tailor usage to customer needs
- Regional support for storing assets in particular locations around the world
Head of Engineering
Jock MKTComputer Software, 11-50 employees
Heroku Platform
- Heroku has a very simple deployment model, making it easy to get your application up-and-running with minimal effort. We can focus on our efforts the unique aspects of our application.
- The robust add-on marketplace makes it easy to try out new approaches with minimal effort and investment -- and when we settle on a solution, we can easily scale it.
- Heroku's support is quite good -- their staff is quite technical and willing to get into the weeds to diagnose even complicated problems.

Verified User
C-Level Executive in Other
Consumer Services Company, 1-10 employeesCons
Amazon S3
- No support for object versions retention: There can be a retention policy(days or number) for object versions that are stored in S3 so that we don't have to worry about paying extra for all the old versions of an object in the bucket.
- No feature for replication within a region: Currently AWS does not support replication within a region. Also, having to enable versioning for buckets in which you need replication makes it even more costly.
- Confusing pricing: The pricing model of S3 can be a little confusing for a new customer with questions regarding data transfer from other AWS services, between buckets or data transfer to the outside world.

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Health, Wellness and Fitness Company, 201-500 employeesHeroku Platform
- Large price jumps between certain resource tiers (2x Dyno for $50 per month versus Performance Dyno for $250). Free Postgres next jumps to $50 per month.
- Marketing/Branding to non-technical stakeholders. As the years pass, I've had to fight more to convince stakeholders on the value of Heroku over AWS.
- Improve Buildpack documentation. This is one area where Heroku's documentation is fairly confusing.
Co-Creator
Flights MachineLeisure, Travel & Tourism, 1-10 employees
Likelihood to Renew
Amazon S3
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 9.5
Based on 6 answers
Heroku is easy to use, services a ton of functions for you out of the box, and provides a means to get a software product off the ground and managed quickly and easily. The tools provide allows a small to medium size org to move very quickly. The CLI tools provided make managing an entire technical infrastructure simple.
Software Engineer
ShiptInternet, 51-200 employees
Usability
Amazon S3
Amazon S3 7.1
Based on 6 answers
The AWS S3 API is translated into every language you can think of, and is very powerful. However, the split of features into the AWS CLI -> S3 and AWS CLI -> S3API causes some confusion when dealing with complex uploading and metadata.
Lead Frontend Engineer
MaisonetteApparel & Fashion, 11-50 employees
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 9.1
Based on 17 answers
Easy to use web based console and easy to use command line tools; deployment is done directly from a GIT repository. What more could you ask for?The one thing that keeps me from giving it a 10 is that custom build packs are almost incomprehensible. We used one for a while because we needed cairo graphics processing. Fortunately, I was able to figure out a different way to do what we needed so that we could get off the custom build pack.
Chief Technology Officer
TrustRadiusComputer Software, 1-10 employees
Reliability and Availability
Amazon S3
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 8.0
Based on 2 answers
Heroku availability correlates pretty strongly to AWS US EAST availability. We had a couple of times where there was a Heroku-specific issue but not for the last 7-8 months.
Chief Technology Officer
TrustRadiusComputer Software, 1-10 employees
Performance
Amazon S3
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 9.0
Based on 2 answers
The only issue that I ever have is that about 1 out of 20 deployments (git push) will hang and need to be cancelled and done again.
Chief Technology Officer
TrustRadiusComputer Software, 1-10 employees
Support Rating
Amazon S3
Amazon S3 8.9
Based on 21 answers
Overall, Amazon S3 has worked out great for our organization. It has enabled us to build out a centralized storage solutions for fraction of the cost that a on-prem solution would have required. If properly managed S3 is a great asset to any organization. There a few small things that need improvement like the UI and storage monitoring but over it's been great.

Verified User
C-Level Executive in Information Technology
Media Production Company, 51-200 employeesHeroku Platform
Heroku Platform 8.6
Based on 38 answers
I've used it for many years without facing any major problem. It's not hard at all to get used to it, it's documentation is outstanding and simple. We are close to 2020 and I don't think most of the existing companies or startups should still face old problems such as wasting time deploying code and calculate computing resources.

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Information Technology and Services Company, 1-10 employeesImplementation Rating
Amazon S3
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 9.0
Based on 6 answers
Be ready to pay a bit more than expected in the beginning if you're migrating from a big server. The application is probably not ready for the change and you have to keep improving it with time.
It's also important to consider that you can't save anything to the disc as it will be lost when your application restarts, so you have to think about using something like S3.
Backend Engineer
DoistInternet, 11-50 employees
Alternatives Considered
Amazon S3
Overall, we found that Amazon S3 provided a lot of backend features Google Cloud Storage (GCS) simply couldn't compare to. GCS was way more expensive and really did not live up to it. In terms of setup, Google Cloud Storage may have Amazon S3 beat, however, as it is more of a pseudo advanced version of Google Drive, that was not a hard feat for it to achieve. Overall, evaluating GCS, in comparison to S3, was an utter disappointment.

Verified User
Employee in Marketing
Retail Company, 11-50 employeesHeroku Platform
Heroku is the more expensive option for hosting compared to some of the cloud platforms we investigated, but it's worth it for us because of the plug-and-play nature of Heroku deployment. We can be up and running in a few minutes and know with precision how much it will cost us each month to run the application, unlike Amazon Web Services where you have to go to great pains to configure it correctly or else you might end up with a shocking monthly bill. Overall, spending the time to configure Amazon Web Services or one of its competitors is likely the more affordable and powerful choice, because you have control over so many specifics of the configuration. But it also requires the burden of continuing to maintain and update your AWS instance, whereas with Heroku they take care of security fixes and platform upgrades. It's a great service and we are happy to pay the extra cost for the value-adds Heroku provides.
Web & Mobile Developer
Bluefire ProductionsComputer Software, 11-50 employees
Return on Investment
Amazon S3
- It practically eliminated some real heavy storage servers from our premises and reduced maintenance cost.
- The excellent durability and reliability make sure the return of money you invested in.
- If the objects which are not active or stale, one needs to remove them. Those objects keep adding cost to each billing cycle. If you are handling a really big infrastructure, sometimes this creates quite a huge bill for preserving un-necessary objects/documents.
Senior Solutions Architect
InfostretchInformation Technology and Services, 1001-5000 employees
Heroku Platform
- Heroku allowed us to get up and running fast. Deployment was really easy and connecting to our codebase was, too. The deployment integration with GitHub is pretty slick.
- The add-ons provisioning is so simple and the documentation is so thorough that, at least at first, it means you don't have to hire a dedicated devops person to manage this stuff.
- Heroku has tools that allow the collaborators (those with access to the Heroku dashboard) to be able to quickly and easily do triage from just about anywhere, including your smartphone.
VP of Engineering, Senior Web Developer
UnspecifiedComputer Software, 1-10 employees
Pricing Details
Amazon S3
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Amazon S3 Editions & Modules
—
Additional Pricing Details
—Heroku Platform
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Heroku Platform Editions & Modules
Edition
Production | $25.001 |
---|---|
Advanced | $250.001 |
- Per Month