Overview
What is Amazon S3?
Amazon S3 is a cloud-based object storage service from Amazon Web Services. It's key features are storage management and monitoring, access management and security, data querying, and data transfer.
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) Review
10+ years of experience with Amazon S3
Storage, yes, but simple. Not for everyone.
It's simple. That's the point.
Amazon S3 offers a cost effective, redundant storage solution to put your mind at ease!
Great for archive data & web apps via API
Amazon S3 - Storage as far as the eye can see; and then further
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) - A Highly Economical, Simple and Easy-to-Use Data Store with Amazing Features
best storage to use comfortably
Simple to use but errors may lead to wrong conclusions
We are happy with AWS S3
S3 is the best choice for asset hosting, from client assets through to your entire website frontend.
Review of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
S3 stores any kind of object you want!
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What is Amazon S3?
Amazon S3 is a cloud-based object storage service from Amazon Web Services. It's key features are storage management and monitoring, access management and security, data querying, and data transfer.
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What is Amazon S3?
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is a cloud-based object storage service from Amazon Web Services. It offers scalability, data availability, security, and performance. It provides great utility for storage management and monitoring, access management and security, data querying, and data transfer.
It is suitable for businesses or organizations of any size to store and protect any amount of data for a range of use cases, such as websites, mobile applications, backup and restore, archive, enterprise applications, IoT devices, and big data analytics. Amazon S3 provides management features for organizing data and configuring access controls to meet business, organizational, and compliance requirements.
Amazon S3 Technical Details
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
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Mobile Application | No |
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(331)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 38)A true view on S3
- Image and files uploading is very quick.
- Image loading is very fast no lack of images.
- Provides in cache memory for the quick responses
- Costing is too much, They can reduce the cost
- Configuration at the AWS portal is little bit difficult for beginners they can improve.
- Library to use the S3 can be lighter
It's simple. That's the point.
- Durability
- Easy access
- Interop with AWS products as well as third party vendors.
- Finding files in large buckets.
- Simplify permissions.
- More transparent compression.
Serving images and static content via s3 works very well and provides smoke performance (and can be coupled with CloudFront for distribution if necessary). Do not treat s3 like a general-purpose key-value store. Do not try to coordinate or create consensus using s3.
Amazon S3 offers a cost effective, redundant storage solution to put your mind at ease!
- Cost effective
- Easy setup
- Setup and forget
- Multiple data centres
- Free first year!
- Bills in local currency
- Can set a budget
- Global unique bucket names
- Costs vary per region
- Costs could balloon
Transferring data into Amazon S3 is free but transferring data out has an associated, albeit low, cost per GB. This needs to be kept in mind if you plan on transferring out a lot of data frequently. There may be other cost effective options although Amazon S3 prices are really low per GB. Transferring 150TB would cost approximately $50 per month.
Great for archive data & web apps via API
- Low cost
- Multiple tiers of storage
- Great API
- Not a lot of features.
- Can be complex to set up properly.
I also use it a lot with PHP via the API. We have some custom in-house applications that have a fair amount of data uploaded into them. S3 has been a perfect solution to store these files, taking the load off web servers and never having issues with running out of storage.
Simple to use but errors may lead to wrong conclusions
- Easy to upload.
- Easy to access.
- Simple web interface.
- Too many options for regular user.
- Doesn't check centrally set policies and creates errors that do not represent the problem.
We are happy with AWS S3
- Scales automatically.
- Is always available.
- Is cost effective with different storage tiers.
- Slow access.
- Difficult to manage files on large repositories.
- Users are locked on it as migration to other services isn't easy or cheap.
S3 is the best choice for asset hosting, from client assets through to your entire website frontend.
It solves the business problem of exposing any sort of asset to external users, as well as serves as a complete website hosting and deployment service stack for static websites.
- Fantastic developer API, including AWS command line and library utilities.
- Strong integration with the AWS ecosystem, especially with regards to access permissions.
- It's astoundingly stable- you can trust it'll stay online and available for anywhere in the world.
- Its static website hosting feature is a hidden gem-- it provides perhaps the cheapest, most stable, most high-performing static web hosting available in PaaS.
- The whole AWS ecosystem has a lot of confusing and unintuitive configuration options, and S3 is no exception. Thankfully it's so broadly used that you can reliably find solutions on external sites like StackOverflow.
- Getting IAM permissions just right for Static Website hosting require a little trial and error since S3 defaults to security instead of open access.
- While S3's file type inference is decent, some new file types (such as .wasm) aren't inferred correctly, so you have to configure their MIME types after uploading them in order for them to serve correctly.
Review of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
- 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
- Web console can be very confusing and challenging to use, especially for new users
- Bucket policies are very flexible, but the composability of the security rules can be very confusing to get right, often leading to security rules in use on buckets other than what you believe they are
Amazon S3 lives up to the name simple storage service
- Lost cost
- Easy access from our AWS services
- Works well serving files to our users
- A simple file management interface would be welcome.
- Quick access for large file storage
- Emulating a file system through S3FS
- Versioning objects within buckets
- Fine-grained access control
- Serving as backend file storage for many types of applications running on AWS
- Needs more convenience functions for managing files
- Could provide more integrations with traditional relational databases
- Could use even more granular access controls, for example on the object/prefix level
Great for any organization at a reasonable cost
- Centralized location for all your organizations data.
- Great 3rd party API and integration.
- Cost effective if properly monitored and maintained.
- Ease to use and set-up.
- Permissions can become complex.
- UI needs to be updated and looks dated.
- Tech support should be improved.
Perfect solution for web and mobile application asset and media storage
- Ensures web and application servers don't get bogged down from serving static assets.
- Works with popular frameworks for easy integration in applications to allow user uploading of additional assets.
- Integrates easily with Amazon Cloudfront as a CDN.
- Very little configuration needed to get started.
- The website UI, while easy to use by even less technical staff, but certain options such as allowing public read for new uploads by default instead of manual selection, requires a bit more technical knowledge. (That said there is generally a custom UI built for users to upload files anyway so in our situation this isn't important).
At the moment there is really no reason for us to choose a different service for this use case. The popularity of S3 means that any new developers working with us are already familiar with how to work with it.
S3 is a great static file hosting service
- Price - S3 is very cheap
- Ease of use - It is an extremely simple service with basic upload, download, and list commands accessible via the web, APIs, and CLIs.
- Security - S3's integration with IAM makes security easy and powerful.
- Advanced searches - Searching within S3 for files can be a very painful process and very slow.
- Dangerous - rogue users can do a lot of damage if you have important data stored in S3
- The web interface can be difficult to use for inexperienced users.
Amazon S3 - It's truly a Simple Storage Service
- Easy to upload and download
- Simple to pull into applications
- Fast load times for images and files
- Better user interface and user experience
S3 is cost effective, works well, and provides many service levels.
We are using S3 for storing compliance generated by various internal tools. The reports are not frequently accessed but we have legal guidelines for retention. We also use s3 to host static web interfaces with links to the document. It makes really easy to access the documents anywhere. We also use s3 to store various inputs to other AWS services such as AWS Sagemaker.
- S3 provides a cost-effective, reliable, and durable way to store objects.
- S3 can store files from almost any system with its great SDK and API.
- S3 provides multiple tiers of storage which make it cost-effective based on usage.
- I would like to see better control within the s3 bucket policies. It is hard to decide whether to use a bucket ACL or policy.
- I would like to see the ability to lock down list permissions and still see it in the AWS console.
Amazon S3: An Easy and Efficient Cloud Storage Option
One of the other most prominent use which we do with S3 is to transfer large files. With strict IMA policies, we can make sure of proper access to these files. While we use other AWS services like EC2 to host machine for any computation purpose, we need to store interim results and final results. We store these results to S3 and kill the EC2 instance.
Also, we have scripts written for transferring S3 objects (not used for more than 2 years) to Glacier to minimize cost factor.
- Excellent support of Identity and access management makes sure that your objects are used by the intended audience only.
- Entire service is accessible through commands and API. It makes integration and orchestration of S3 services really easy and automated.
- S3 has quite good reliability and durability to make sure all requests are successfully fulfilled and your objects are always safe.
- This service and UI interface is easy to understand. It takes almost no learning curve to consume this service.
- The amount of flexibility it provides, I find it really cost-effective.
- The biggest problem is to rename the bucket. There is no direct way to do it. One need to copy entire content to the different bucket with intended bucket name and then remove the old bucket. Sometimes it creates issues.
- There is no direct way to upload .zip file and extract it to inside the bucket.
- While uploading large files, sometimes you will find a drop of upload speed. I observe it so many times and while checking my internet speed, I find it absolutely perfect. So there must have something wrong on the AWS side.
If a product needs to support a geographically well-distributed client, S3 edge locations and regions help extremely well. User need not worry about content sync up or replication at all. This makes S3 extremely useful for static content storage.
If the infrastructure need is really small and usage is limited, this service is not for you.
Easiest blob storage out there
- S3 is very good with uptime
- S3 is elastic and infinitely scalable
- S3 is user-friendly
- S3 is not good if you need to copy files a lot; it can be slow
- S3 is not a replacement for a file system. It is blob storage, so things like updates and renames are impossible
- S3 requires globally unique bucket names, which can be a challenge
A great service if you don't want to store your files locally.
- A lot of libraries to make it easy to use it
- A good price for the service
- Fine grained permissions
- Hard to use UI. Amazon likes to make things complicated in the UI
- Vendor lock-in. When you start using products by Amazon, you usually get a vendor lock-in, as everything is there. It's not bad per se, but it's important to think about it
Amazon S3 Review
Restoration of databases from file to RDS.
- It's good for working with files across the entire AWS ecosystem.
- It's good as a fast to set up source of large amounts of storage as needed for projects.
- It's good as a storage location for third party devices and services that need a place to store data, backups, etc.
- It is only object based storage. You can upload and download files. It is not like having a randomly accessible hard drive that you can host a live database on. There may be uses where S3 acting more like a randomly accessible hard drive would be useful.
- Integration between other areas of the AWS ecosystem can be a bit difficult to set up and use. For example, file-based SQL server restores into RDS instances.
- Some of the more complex functions need to be done by remote command line.
2. If you require a content delivery network like AWS Cloudfront, S3 will be where your data is actually stored.
3. If you have third party products that are designed to work with S3 cloud storage.
Amazon S3 : Fast, Secure and Simple Cloud Storage
- Data management and storage
- Quick upload, download and move on EC2 instance
- Security and HIPAA compliance
- Folder sharing with multi level permission
- APIs and libraries to access data through any programming language
- Searching for the document is very hard, it allows only prefix to search the files.
- Also, downloads require more than one click which irritates frequent users.
- Price compared to service is a little bit high, still not a major concern.
It allows us to set metadata which also allows files to clean up after itself, which prevents our organization from storing information longer than needed which is wonderful (and keeps us only paying for what we really need to store). S3 is our go-to for any cloud storage needs as well as a location to host static content distributed through Cloudfront and provide public access to files as needed.
- It has a good command line interface making it easy to use from anywhere
- It has a well-built SDK across many languages allowing applications to integrate
- You only pay for what you use, so there is no need to upgrade/downgrade storage capacity
- S3 allows objects to store metadata allowing some very useful options (such as object expiration)
- You can now use it to also see the metadata within your objects, such as images/videos metadata (location, duration, capture date, etc)
- IAM allows you to control access to S3 to set proper permissions
- It could be useful to have reports showing file usage/aging
- It would be nice to be ale to query S3 without the need to look at each and every object
Amazon S3 - The Best Data Storage Decision You'll Ever Make
- S3 provides possibly the most easily scalable cloud storage service on the planet. It feels as though it's been custom build from day 1 with company growth in mind - something any healthy business will surely appreciate.
- The intricate system of S3 servers across the globe is a great feature for anyone conducting any sort of international business. You get to choose where your data is stored and, as we all know from bounce rates, every millisecond of load time can be the difference between making or losing a sale.
- Pulling data is another feature we use quite often and it honestly works flawlessly every single time we have to pull anything.
- It's genuinely hard to fault S3 so I'll have to resort to nitpicking but their main interface is quite bland, still super easy to use and navigate, just bland.
- Contacting their support can be quite cumbersome as every ticket is sent through the always cumbersome Amazon hierarchy of internal bureaucracy (similar to Seller Central) but it's not the worst system in the world by any means.
- At this point, I'm almost out of critiques - after all, it's what huge digital entertainment companies like Netflix rely on to make a living. That being said, there's always room for improvement and perhaps creating more servers around the world would decrease their minimal send and retrieval times.
Amazon S3 is the best in class asset hosting solution
- Allows for ease of setting up multiple buckets to keep your assets organized
- Gives you the option of keeping your images public or private - good for keeping your image storage organized with what you want to exposed/not exposed to users
- Allows for easy integration with other AWS products
- Web interface is not the most intuitive at first. Takes some time getting used to
- Private assets being displayed could end up breaking your site if you're unaware that you need to set them public
- S3 is overall an expensive option for a smaller company
Top Marks for S3 Storage and Websites
- Storage! You can store as much as you like in whatever format and structure you like.
- Pay as you go - you only pay for what you use, so your storage costs scale up and down with your storage and access patterns. No more having to provision space ahead of time or having wasted space floating around. It's also fairly inexpensive.
- Static website hosting - really simple and easy to get going with, but surprisingly powerful. You can do everything from simple static websites to full Single Page Applications (assuming its all Javascript).
- It isn't the cheapest out there for storage, but I think still represents good value for money. You do also have a large array of storage options which can lower the cost if you are willing to reduce reliability/robustness.
- You can't use HTTPS off the bat with S3, so you almost always need to put CloudFront (or similar CDN) in front of it. Whilst this isn't a problem, it means it isn't quite as quick and straightforward to get going with as perhaps some other services.
- Whilst generally very low latency, we have observed occasional latency spikes whilst retrieving objects. Assuming you are running a CDN in front of S3 (which you should) then this becomes less problematic, but it probably isn't the best choice if you absolutely must guarantee low latency.
Amazon S3 is a versatile storage solution for any business use-case
- High availability - we have never had any problems with S3 being down.
- Simple, easy to use interface
- Very affordable for the versatile storage solution it provides
- I would like an in console file viewer instead of having to download the file to see its content
- Speed of download has increased a lot in the past year, though still a room for improvement
- Apart from storage, a few transactions are charged as well