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Amazon S3 Glacier vs IBM SoftLayer comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon S3 Glacier
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM SoftLayer
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
20th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 Glacier is 10.6%, down from 14.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM SoftLayer is 1.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon S3 Glacier10.6%
IBM SoftLayer1.9%
Other87.5%
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

PF
Project Engineer at Astellas Pharma US
Archiving data has reduced storage costs and provides reliable long‑term retention
We have not really come across any downsides for us. It is possible that the retrieval of data may be expensive, which could be an issue, but we have not experienced that in fairness. Integration with our policies would be beneficial. We have policies for our systems where we delete data after a certain number of years, and having integration with Amazon S3 Glacier would be good. Having a guarantee that Amazon S3 Glacier would persist for the amount of time that we require in our archives would be valuable. In other words, Amazon would need to commit to support for the period we need. We could be talking about 20 years or longer. We cannot always move to the next version because we need to maintain old systems and legacy systems in order to maintain archives. A guarantee around support would be a good thing to have.
reviewer1032702 - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Principal Cloud Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Stable with excellent speed and agility
The most valuable aspect of the solution is simply to have the ability to host in a cloud form and out of the data center - the IBM big iron solution. It's the speed and the agility that really sell SoftLayer. The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer. The ability to extract act from your current location, load into your future location, with limited change, and then be able to take the transfer actions slowly and methodically after you're in your new location is the part that really makes this awesome. The stability and scalability are quite good.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Amazon S3 Glacier is easy to use. The platform is straightforward, and the interfaces are user-friendly and responsive. Even with a limited budget, you can train someone without an AWS certification to use it. With on-the-job training, you can ensure they understand what needs to be done to use the service."
"AWS Lambda is the most valuable part of the solution because it gives you a code interface for everything."
"I like the price. If you compare Glacier to others, the prices in terms of what you store beyond retention are much lower."
"The product automatically replicates objects from a S3 bucket in one region to another bucket in a different region."
"It is a very comprehensive tool."
"I like creating buckets where data can be segregated at a high level and then routing the appropriate data to each designated bucket. In terms of value, I would say that the tool gets the job done in a simpler manner."
"Data retrieval, security, compliance, and storage archiving are the most valuable features of Amazon S3 Glacier."
"In terms of features, no other cloud solutions or private installations come close to its capabilities."
"The solution is highly stable."
"The ability to extract from your current location, load into your future location with limited change, and then be able to take the transfer actions slowly and methodically after you're in your new location is the part that really makes this awesome."
"The stability is the solution's most valuable aspect for our organization."
"The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer."
 

Cons

"I am unsure if the product provides good integration capabilities. From an improvement perspective, I want the tool to provide easier integration features."
"However, when you want to retrieve the data, it is a little bit time consuming because it specifies to retrieve the data it is going to take time, so you must make sure you log store the data which you will be accessing or which you will need very frequently."
"Access to Glacier is via API or AWS console so getting things into and out of it can be a challenge."
"The product is difficult to use."
"The solution's dashboard is a bit complicated and could be improved."
"The tool could be made cheaper."
"Amazon S3 Glacier is a cheaper tool if you're running it on-prem, but it is expensive if deployed on the cloud."
"There is room for improvement in handling GDPR compliance better. GDPR is about personal data protection and retention. It would be great if S3 Glacier could handle compliance items related to this, especially with upcoming legislation like the California law, which restricts data storage time and allows users to request data deletion."
"For us, the versioning was an issue."
"The interface is hard to use for us. It should be simplified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Customers prefer Amazon S3 Glacier because it is a cheap and pay-as-you-go solution."
"Amazon S3 Glacier is very cheap, but the cost becomes a concern when you have a very large amount of data."
"Amazon S3 Glacier has good pricing."
"The product is very cheap."
"Amazon S3 Glacier has a good pricing point, and you pay for what's being used."
"The pricing must be improved."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"We don't pay for licenses. We pay based on consumption data, considering how much data is stored."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise17
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Amazon's S3 Glacier or EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon's S3 Glacier or Elastic Block Store data storage software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Amazon's S3 Glacier, whi...
What needs improvement with Amazon S3 Glacier?
We have not really come across any downsides for us. It is possible that the retrieval of data may be expensive, which could be an issue, but we have not experienced that in fairness. Integration w...
What is your primary use case for Amazon S3 Glacier?
We were using Amazon S3 Glacier, and I have experience with this solution. We had an S3 bucket that we were using about a year ago. We just started using Amazon S3 Glacier, and overall, I have been...
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Also Known As

Amazon Glacier
CloudLayer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

King Cpunty, Illumina, Backupify, Nearmap.com, Scribd, Baylor College of Medicine, SoundCloud
Whogohost Ltd., Skypicker, Infinity Computers and Communications Company, Grace Co. Ltd., Keyword, Uvionics Tech, Tennis Australia, immixGroup, Salesbox, Cxense ASA, Avnet Inc., Komsomolskaya Pravda, Seekr
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon S3 Glacier vs. IBM SoftLayer and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.