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Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) pros and cons

Vendor: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

4.1 out of 5

18 reviews
100% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) offers elasticity and flexible pricing, making it attractive for cost management. It allows handling fluctuating workloads without pre-provisioned storage, ensuring scalability. While stable and secure under AWS management, it connects poorly with Windows Server and is complex to set up. Despite offering unlimited storage and significant cost savings, the high rates compared to EBS or S3 and limited API availability constrain its adoption.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Amazon EFS offers elasticity and flexible pricing based on storage usage, making it an attractive option for cost management.

The scalability of Amazon EFS allows users to handle fluctuating workloads without the need for pre-provisioned storage, seamlessly accommodating growth.

Amazon EFS is extremely stable and secure, benefiting from AWS management and operation under VPC conditions.

There are significant cost savings associated with using Amazon EFS, as companies can save more than half of their storage costs.

Amazon EFS provides a serverless solution with unlimited storage, enhancing data management capabilities for users.

CONS

Amazon EFS connects poorly with Windows Server instances, limiting feature availability compared to Linux.

Deployment process of Python package into environment could be faster.

Platform's connectivity lacks compared to S3 buckets which offer better API availability.

EFS setup requires prior experience and technical skills, lacking simplicity and ease of use.

The cost of Amazon EFS is high compared to EBS or S3, with expensive data transfer rates.

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) Pros review quotes

VA

Amaratunga Arachchige Vimukthi Amaratunga

Regional Manager at Aspire Lifestyles

Jun 4, 2025

There are huge money savings, as we can save more than half of our costs.

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Subject Matter Expert at Bureau veritas

Jul 29, 2025

The automatic scaling functionality has helped manage fluctuating workloads because when we have 10 gigs of data and a customer needs to put even 10 times the data, no action is required as it will grow automatically.

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reviewer2784675

Sr. Technical Account Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 4, 2025

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is an excellent service that provides a serverless solution with unlimited storage and easy configuration.

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Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

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Learn what your peers think about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2026.

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MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Dec 30, 2024

Amazon EFS is extremely stable, as it is managed by AWS.

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AWS Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Dec 2, 2024

Amazon EFS offers the flexibility of scaling as needed without requiring pre-provisioned storage.

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Mahender Nirwan

Software developer at TAIGLE LLC

Aug 12, 2024

The platform is highly scalable.

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Data Engineer at Softtech Cloud Technologies

Dec 10, 2024

Elastic File Systems allow me to share data, provision, and manage capacity and performance in AWS.

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Head of Engineering - Data and Machine Learning at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 6, 2025

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is secure as it is used under VPC.

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Senior Power BI Developer at RP tech India

May 8, 2024

The product's initial setup phase is easy, as per the configurations.

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DevOps Developer at AFORV Private Limited

Mar 6, 2024

The most beneficial feature of the product for data storage stems from the fact that it serves as a shared file storage.

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Show 8 more reviews (out of 18)

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) Cons review quotes

VA

Amaratunga Arachchige Vimukthi Amaratunga

Regional Manager at Aspire Lifestyles

Jun 4, 2025

Their response was not prompt, and it took them a while to figure out solutions. While the time to respond was good, the time to resolve was not optimal, as it took more than a week.

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Subject Matter Expert at Bureau veritas

Jul 29, 2025

What should be improved in Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is the costing, as it should be reduced, but that depends on Amazon.

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reviewer2784675

Sr. Technical Account Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 4, 2025

A notable limitation of Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is that it does not support Windows.

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Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Free Report: Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2026.

893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.

MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Dec 30, 2024

EFS could be improved by including a one-click setup.

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AWS Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Dec 2, 2024

The initial setup requires prior experience and technical skills.

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Mahender Nirwan

Software developer at TAIGLE LLC

Aug 12, 2024

The platform's connectivity could be improved to be more comparable to S3 buckets, which offer better API availability.

Read full review

Data Engineer at Softtech Cloud Technologies

Dec 10, 2024

There are challenges related to AWS, such as ensuring proper security measures with IMS code and encryption.

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Head of Engineering - Data and Machine Learning at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 6, 2025

I don't have notes on improvements.

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Senior Power BI Developer at RP tech India

May 8, 2024

The product's stability has some shortcomings where improvements are required.

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DevOps Developer at AFORV Private Limited

Mar 6, 2024

The lack of transparency in the costs attached to the product is an area of concern where improvements are required.

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Show 8 more reviews (out of 18)

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Product Categories

Product Categories

File and Object Storage

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

MinIO vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Nasuni vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Dropbox Business - Enterprise vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Google Cloud Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Scality RING vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

NetApp StorageGRID vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Everpure Evergreen One vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Zadara vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Azure NetApp Files vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Google Drive Enterprise vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Amazon FSx vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

See all alternatives

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