Most people who need to store files usually turn to Amazon S3. The use case for this is not only for me but for anyone building technology who needs to store files.
Software Development Engineer at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
Helpful for storing data, easy deployment, and useful encryption
Pros and Cons
- "An important feature of the Amazon S3's system is that it offers encryption while the files are at rest. This is crucial in ensuring the security of the files being restored and addressing potential security risks. That's what I would emphasize."
- "The cost of the solution should be reduced."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
Amazon S3 helps to store data, such as Excel, audio, and video.
What is most valuable?
An important feature of the Amazon S3's system is that it offers encryption while the files are at rest. This is crucial in ensuring the security of the files being restored and addressing potential security risks. That's what I would emphasize.
What needs improvement?
The cost of the solution should be reduced.
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February 2026
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For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon S3 for a long time.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the stability of Amazon S3 a ten out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I rate the scalability of Amazon S3 a ten out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
I rate the support of Amazon S3 a seven out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
The implementation of Amazon S3 was easy.
What about the implementation team?
I did the implementation of the solution myself.
What was our ROI?
I have received a return on investment using Amazon S3.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price of Amazon S3 should be reduced.
I rate the price of Amazon S3 a ten out of ten.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I did not evaluate other solutions before choosing Amazon S3.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Amazon S3 a nine out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Sr Product Engineer at a real estate/law firm with 11-50 employees
Suitable for different use cases, simple implementation, and cost effective
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature of Amazon S3 is its flexibility as a solution to suit many different use cases."
- "The support is better than other cloud providers but sometimes it takes a while to have a resolution to our issues."
What is our primary use case?
We have a data warehouse and a data lake using Amazon S3. Additionally, we use it for application streaming.
We have our computer systems that have storage but we do use the cloud storage available from Amazon S3. However, it depends on the type of data we have and whether we use the cloud or not.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of Amazon S3 is its flexibility as a solution to suit many different use cases.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon S3 for approximately six years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Two third of our company use this solution.
How are customer service and support?
The support is better than other cloud providers but sometimes it takes a while to have a resolution to our issues.
I rate the support from Amazon S3 a seven out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of Amazon S3 was straightforward.
I rate the initial setup of Amazon S3 a ten out of ten.
What about the implementation team?
We have a few developers that we use for deployment.
What was our ROI?
The solution is worth the money and we have seen an ROI. However, it is not our primary goal. We are trying to optimize different areas.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Amazon S3 is a cost-effective solution compared to the others.
I rate the price of Amazon S3 a two out of ten.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Amazon S3 a nine out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Buyer's Guide
Amazon S3
February 2026
Learn what your peers think about Amazon S3. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.
DevOps Engineer at a non-profit with 11-50 employees
Object storage service that provides comprehensive security and MFA that prevents accidental deletion of data
Pros and Cons
- "The versioning of this solution for accidental deletion has been most valuable."
- "You need to fully understand the solution's best practices to get the most out of its security features."
What is our primary use case?
We use Amazon s3 to store objects like data in my environment.
How has it helped my organization?
In one of my previous environments, I was brought in to help with the challenges they were facing resulting from a data breach in the S3 bucket. What I noticed in that environment was that every user had full access into their S3 bucket, and accidentally deleted data without a trace.
They did not know how some of their data was missing. One of the first services I suggested was enforcing access control by applying IM best practices, such as granting list privilege permission to our users to avoid overpowering them. I created a single group and then applied specific permissions to that group.
All users added to that group were able to inherit the same permission and privileges. Versioning was enabled which keeps multiple variant of objects in the same bucket and also safeguards against accidental deletions. I also enabled multi-factor authentication which prevented accidental bug deletion by requiring the user who initiate the delete action to prove physical possession of an MFA device with an MFA code.
What is most valuable?
The versioning of this solution for accidental deletion has been most valuable.
What needs improvement?
You need to fully understand the solution's best practices to get the most out of its security features.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
This is a stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
This is a scalable solution.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward.
What was our ROI?
We have seen a return on investment with S3.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I would rate the pricing a nine out of ten. Pricing depends on a particular class where you want save your objects. There are different classes when it comes to storage in S3.
What other advice do I have?
I would advise others that this is a scalable solution that offers comprehensive security.
I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Hadoop Administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Offers high availability, fault tolerance and scalability
Pros and Cons
- "We can store incremental data and get high availability and fault tolerance."
- "The read drive speed is not as fast as it should be."
What is our primary use case?
We use this solution for storing the input-output of our processing. We are customers of Amazon.
What is most valuable?
Version control is great, it means we can store incremental data, and get high availability and fault tolerance. If we accidentally delete something we can recover it by using S3. It also enables the option of reverting to old files.
What needs improvement?
The read drive speed is not as fast as it should be. If we want to access data, we should be able to do it quickly.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using this solution for five years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable, there are no limitations on storage. There are around 10,000 users in the company.
How are customer service and support?
Amazon provides good documentation for this solution so we've never contacted technical support.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is easy. It just requires logging in to AWS, and it's available.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
This is a pay-as-you-use, on-demand service. It's not very expensive.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We went with S3 because of its high availability, fault tolerance and scalability. Those are the three main reasons we chose it.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
CEO - Founder / Principal Data Scientist / Principal AI Architect at a tech company with 1-10 employees
Excellent features, hearty scalability, with varied use cases that fit almost any client
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature is the automated replication of the data."
- "I would like to see the API for beginners improved because it is hard to understand."
What is our primary use case?
We are very flexible with our use cases and it fits most clients.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is the automated replication of the data. You can store things and they automatically replicate somewhere else. So if you have an issue, you have a backup, and that is very good. You can set up how often you want it backed up, and I find that extremely useful.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see the API for beginners improved because it is hard to understand. It is based on the idea of a container when most programmers just understand directories and subdirectories. For a beginner, the API is a bit confusing.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Amazon S3 for the past four years
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is definitely present from hundreds to thousands depending on the client.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have used other solutions in the past, but none of them are as scalable.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup If you have the experience is fairly simple. If you do not, then it is fairly complex.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I know it is very inexpensive compared to other solutions.
What other advice do I have?
I would basically recommend that individuals just follow the guidelines AWS as they are very good. I would rate Amazon S3 an eight on a scale of one to ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Senior Information Security Manager at a real estate/law firm with 10,001+ employees
Has good auto-scaling features
Pros and Cons
- "The solution auto-scales so it is easily scalable."
- "I would like to see an easier setup that doesn't require as much training."
What is our primary use case?
The primary use case of this solution is for storage.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of the solution is auto-scaling.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see an easier setup that doesn't require as much training.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution auto-scales so it is easily scalable.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward as long as you are familiar with the cloud services.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The cost varies based on the type of subscription you chose.
Currently, I use the solution for my phishing server and I pay $15 per month.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing the solution I evaluated DigitalOcean.
What other advice do I have?
I rate the solution nine out of ten.
I suggest if you are interested in using the solution you should also use the other services offered by Amazon such as AWS, and EC2 so you have access to everything in one place.
Auto-scaling is very costly if you don't manage to control it. You need to have good training and understanding of the solution.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Solution Architect, DevOps Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
A stable and scalable solution for deep backups
Pros and Cons
- "The solution is good and includes all the features we expect."
- "The solution's pricing should be modified to automatically expand storage based on prior usage."
What is our primary use case?
Our company uses the solution for deep CI backups. We have thousands of customers who use the solution and access our application.
What is most valuable?
The solution is good and includes all the features we expect.
What needs improvement?
The solution's pricing should be modified to automatically expand storage based on prior usage. For example, our monthly usage is very low so our storage allotment should be increased by 200%.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support is good so I rate it them a nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not previously use another solution.
How was the initial setup?
The setup is very easy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing depends on your region and is reasonable. For example, the price per gigabyte is .0025 in the South Pacific and .0023 in Europe.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We use the solution and EC2 with similar frequency depending on use case.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend the solution and rate it a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Media Operations Manager at a media company with 201-500 employees
Unlimited uploads with secure and instantaneous data movement
Pros and Cons
- "Uploads are secure and occur instantly."
- "It is difficult to retrieve files in an emergency because the public cloud has data limits for immediate downloads."
What is our primary use case?
Our company has 30 staff members who use the solution for data storage.
What is most valuable?
Uploads are secure and occur instantly.
The solution provides good data movement from Snowball to the S3 bucket.
What needs improvement?
It is difficult to retrieve files in an emergency because the public cloud has data limits for immediate downloads so they often take twelve hours. We need better, immediate control of our content.
The cloud and on-premises solutions should sync all data.
Infrastructure services could be improved to provide free education related to the solution's features. For example, developers who do not have experience building games could learn how to do so with free support.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for nine years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable and I rate it an eight out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable and there are no limits on data uploads. We upload four TB of data a day.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support can be challenging because we have to work through account managers. For urgent situations, our tech team contacts support to get assistance.
I rate support a four out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup and creating buckets are very simple.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented the solution in-house.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Not many products in the market beat the solution in terms of quality or price.
The solution charges for data downloads.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We currently use the public cloud but want to use a private cloud because there are speed issues when retrieving files in an emergency. For example, retrieving emergency video files might take twelve hours because the cloud will not allow immediate downloads. A private cloud will allow us to retrieve files immediately without a data limit.
We are in talks with GreenLake, Atlassian, and Dell to find the best solution that optimizes our cost. There is a retrieval cost associated with the public cloud so we want to optimize these costs and switch to a private cloud.
The solution offers great quality and price. We are closely evaluating the cost of other solutions to determine if it is worth it to move from a solution that works well for us.
Cost is a primary concern because we manage three petabits of data.
What other advice do I have?
I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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Updated: February 2026
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