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Amazon S3

Amazon S3

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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 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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Product Details

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 SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.8.

The most common users of Amazon S3 are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Reviews and Ratings

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Reviews

(1-25 of 38)
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January 18, 2024

A true view on S3

Pankaj Choudhary | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using S3 as a images and files storage, Earlier we were using our own static ip based server but we faced to many server downs and request failed. So we moved to S3 and now we are very happy with the S3 because request failure rate has gone down. Response time is very low and returning responses very quickly.
  • 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
Where we want the quick responses and we have to manage too many files then we can use the S3, But if we are not processing the files to many times its not required to use the S3. If we want to use a file from different servers then its a very good option to store the file at a central point like S3 and use it from the different servers.
Peter Hamilton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We store user-generated content, backups, raw event data, logs, and other raw data in S3. This data is used by our product in serving content to our users, by our operations team to maintain site availability, by our analytics teams, and by our developers to debug our production systems.
  • Durability
  • Easy access
  • Interop with AWS products as well as third party vendors.
  • Finding files in large buckets.
  • Simplify permissions.
  • More transparent compression.
If you have data you may someday need but don't have immediate high volume access patterns, S3 is great.
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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Amazon S3 as an additional way to safely backup our server and user data for our entire company and all of our clients. It is a cost effective, redundant service that gives us and our clients piece of mind that their data is secured. It has a storage location in Canada as well which lets us keep our data inside the country which means our user data stays put.
  • 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
Amazon S3 is a great service to safely backup your data where redundancy is guaranteed and the cost is fair. We use Amazon S3 for data that we backup and hope we never need to access but in the case of a catastrophic or even small slip of the finger with the delete command we know our data and our client's data is safely backed up by Amazon S3.

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.
Sam Othman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We mostly use this for archiving old data that is infrequently accessed. It has been a good low-cost solution to get away from using on-prem NAS or even further back external hard disks and even CDs. It has ticked a lot of boxes for us in the sense of keeping this data safe and secure without the potential of data loss through external methods.
  • Low cost
  • Multiple tiers of storage
  • Great API
  • Not a lot of features.
  • Can be complex to set up properly.
For archiving old data that is infrequently accessed it is perfect. You can choose to let it go into cold/glacier storage which saves even further costs but at the expense of accessibility. I like that you can set access rules to automatically move it to the next storage tier after a certain amount of time that it has not been accessed.

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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
At this moment it is used at the IT department level, down the road we would like to expand this usage, but we are trying to see how we can safely enable all AWS users with security and compliance in mind. At this moment it allows us to store some temporary data for different infrastructure deployments.
  • 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.
It is great for temp infrastructure artifacts during deployment or if you are using containerized apps and Kubernetes. This would be a place to store your files. Whether those are public or private documents, it is a great location to store. Additionally, it is a great place for archives. Storing old data for a really cheap price is something that you can't get on-prem.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use S3 to store files that we offer to subscriber customers.
  • 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.
Very well suited to storing files that have a long "shelf life." Less suited if you need to move then (download or upload) multiple times because you pay for bandwidth.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In my organization, we use S3 for nearly every aspect of asset storage -- user files, user profiles, saved application states -- as well as for hosting our primary web frontends (static React.js applications). It's used by the whole organization, both extensively throughout engineering to host our software and assets, and additionally by our operations and other teams as a general purpose host for special content.

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.
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.
Joshua Dickson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) to persist large blobs of data that would be otherwise expensive or otherwise challening to store in one of our database systems. We use S3 primarily for areas of the business where it's important to easily store large pieces of data, such as images and large JSON data sets, or where it is important to share that data between multiple types of services.
  • 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 (Simple Storage Service) is particularly well-suited for cases where you have already made the decision to use Amazon's cloud software resources and need to add the option of storing files for use from one or more services. Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is also a good choice for its native integration with Amazon's CDN, Cloudfront. In general, using Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) will make less sense if you are already using other services from another vendor, such as Azure.
Grant Shellborn | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Used across our organization it is the primary data store now for our files rather than Windows file service.
  • Lost cost
  • Easy access from our AWS services
  • Works well serving files to our users
  • A simple file management interface would be welcome.
If you use AWS then Amazon S3 is a great file store service.
Ramindu Deshapriya | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is the quintessential large storage solution used by our organization alongside cloud applications. We use it for storing static files to serve through applications, storing application logs, storing large file, serving static websites through AWS CloudFront, storing machine learning models to be used by AWS Lambda functions, and many more use cases. Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is used across applications for many client solutions we have developed on AWS.
  • 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
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is well suited for large, unstructured data storage and for querying that data using a range of integrations (e.g., AWS Redshift and AWS Athena). It works very well serving static files associated with applications as well (e.g., file uploads, images, etc.). However, Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) does not serve well as a remote file system or snap-mounted storage for compute engines or VMs.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Amazon S3 storage to archive and store all of our data. S3 is being utilized by our entire organization and enables all of our satellite offices and remote users to access company data from a centralized geo-redundant location without the added cost of building out of our infrastructure.
  • 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.
I would highly recommend S3 if you can dedicate IT staff to properly manage and monitor S3. For a small organization that is not able to dedicate the staff that is required, S3 could become expensive.
Bryan McAnulty | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a digital product design and development company. When we build a new web or mobile app, the service we choose to use for application and database hosting may vary, but for serving static assets like images and other file downloads, we are always using Amazon S3. S3 combined with Amazon Cloudfront lets us serve static assets to our users and customers without having to worry about performance.
  • 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).
Amazon S3 is a great choice to store frequently accessed image and media assets that might be needed as part of your website, web app or mobile application. There is also Amazon's "Glacier" storage option which is a storage class that is meant for data that isn't frequently accessed, and which can be stored at a significantly lower cost.

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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
S3 is a great cost effective static file storage tool that can be accessed from anywhere. We store all kinds of static files in S3 ranging from application data to configuration files to code and automation scripts. S3's access is controlled by IAM roles which allow for strict and tight control over which users are allowed to access which files.
  • 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.
If you have static files that are not frequently updated, then S3 is an extremely efficient and cheap place to store those files. Even if you aren't doing anything else in AWS, using S3 from outside of AWS is just as easy as using it from within AWS on an EC2 instance. Just upload your static files and access them whenever you need them.
Evan Laird | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Amazon S3 is used in our mobile applications inorder to have users upload images to the cloud and bring them back to their device. So when users upload an image, it gets sent to Amazon S3 and when an image is shown on the screen we are also pulling it from the same place lowering the load on our apps. It's used as storage for images only.
  • Easy to upload and download
  • Simple to pull into applications
  • Fast load times for images and files
  • Better user interface and user experience
Amazon S3 is a perfect storage place for files and images for applications. Generally if you are less tech savy and just looking for simple cloud storage that doesn't need any automation or programming to send files to the cloud, it's best to go with a standard Dropbox or Google Drive. Also if your apps run off of Amazon Cloud or other services, it's nice to all have in one place.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized

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.
S3 is perfect for object storage. This means it cannot be used as a boot volume. It is good for serving files and storage backups. There are several price tiers and service levels. It takes several decisions to strike the right balance between what you are using it for and what is an acceptable cost level.
Apurv Doshi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We mostly use S3 for storage of compliance documents, cloud formation scripts, heavy media files and other materials which need to preserve but used infrequently. We also host some of the static webpages which are just a navigator to the documents.
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.
When any organization wants to take advantage of the AWS ecosystem, S3 is the most basic service. As a standalone service, one can use it just for storage. However, with the orchestration of other AWS services, it makes true value.
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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Amazon S3 for hosting all of our backups, our Apache Spark output files (in lieu of HDFS), our Snowflake external stages, our static website, etc. Additionally, we migrate our logs there for historical purposes. As far as file storage goes, it is able to meet all of our needs with little-to-no downtime.
  • 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
S3 is suitable for static websites, Big Data (Spark or Hadoop) file system, in lieu of HDFS, and backups. S3 is not suitable for a file system replacement, frequent updates, or storing files that require renames.
Willian Molinari | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Amazon S3 is used to store all assets from our users. We store profile pictures, message attachments, and other user-related assets. We currently use Heroku to serve the application and it requires an external storage for these kinds of assets. We chose Amazon S3 because it's the most well known and trusted service for this.
  • 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
I like the service in general. It was simple to integrate to our application since it's very common for developers to use it and there are many libraries to help with that. The service works well as expected.
September 02, 2019

Amazon S3 Review

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Storage of audio files for distribution using Cloudfront content delivery network.
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.
1. If you are building an infrastructure within AWS, S3 is a good fit for object type storage and other integrations.
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.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The most popular IaaS service out there, Amazon S3 offers good infrastructure, speeds, API support, command line interface and also a great user interface for web access. We are using AWS services to support our business and hosting all the datasets on S3. S3 is typically used to upload and download content, and storing application-specific data. Also, this cloud-based service is HIPAA compliance, so we can store sensitive dataset without any compliance issues and security concerns. Enterprises can keep data secure, processes compliant and teams on the same page.
  • 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.
Amazon S3 is a storage infrastructure under the umbrella of AWS. If you host any service that requires a quick and secure data transfer then S3 is the best solution. Also, in the case of multiprogramming language applications, S3 is the best option regarding compatibility with multiple programming languages. But if your requirement is just to store the dataset by manual effort and you want to share with others without the frequent requirement of data uploads and downloads, then Google Drive is better solution compare to S3.
Bob Smith | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Amazon S3 is a foundational element used throughout our organization. It is used by applications to store documents, archive phone calls, store/share files, retain backups, transfer files to/from customers, etc.

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 is simple to use and easy to adopt. There is a myriad of tools which leverage S3 and it is becoming more fully integrated as an extenion to many store devices which find a need to integrate with the cloud. As storage goes, it can sometimes be slow, but it is robust and stable.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Amazon S3 is being used as a way for us to securely and reliably store our company's website and data. We use it to host a numerous amount of exceptionally critical data. In terms of data hosting, there simply isn't any better alternative. Amazon S3 helps us to manage and store our data in such a simple, user-friendly way that has become exceptionally beneficial to our business model.
  • 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.
S3 is one of those few solutions that work for everyone at any range. From small startups to corporate giants, S3 has something to offer all businesses with its infinite scalability and absolutely brilliant pay structure. Coming from the personal experience of having experienced both the small and big company aspect, S3 is your best bet for any and all cloud storage needs.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My organization is using Amazon S3 to host all of our assets for each of our products. It is primarily being used by the engineering teams but is being used across the organization as well. Our marketing team also uses it for image assets for email marketing as well as custom image uploads for our route tiles on our site.
  • 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
If you're looking to host a wide array of assets, including large images, then S3 is your best bet. It is challenging to get used to initially as the web interface isn't the most intuitive to a beginner but if you're hosting for multiple products, it is worth it. Also makes integration with other AWS products easy.
Andrew Raines | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use S3 for the storage of all our of static web assets (images, videos, audio, etc), user-uploaded data, internal log files, and backups. In addition to the storage uses, we also use the static website hosting feature for some of our web-based services. This is a particularly cost-effective way of getting a website online - either a small and simple HTML-based site or a complex single-page web application.
  • 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.
Wherever you need to store things, S3 is pretty much the answer. Also, if you want to host simple websites without the cost or headache of scaling your own services, the static web hosting may be the answer you're looking for.
Akmal Muqeeth | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Amazon s3 throughout the company to solve different problems and use cases. We have used s3 to store images, as a data back up, to host static web pages and even as an intermediary between SQS and SNS to store event files. Most recently, we have used S3 to power our applications view history.
  • 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
The beauty of S3 is that it provides a generic storage solution which can be customized to cater to many business needs. Its a definite fit for any application level storage like images, data files, pdf etc. On an architectural level, since it plays well with other AWS services, it can be used very well in conjunction with SQS, SNS and Lambda.
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