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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
19th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 Glacier is 11.3%, down from 13.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM SoftLayer is 2.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon S3 Glacier11.3%
IBM SoftLayer2.0%
Other86.7%
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

"The pricing is low, and it's dedicated to archiving is valuable to us."
"AWS does support the ability for user controlled movement of data between regions for business continuance (BC), high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR)."
"Amazon S3 Glacier is a highly stable solution."
"The deployment process was straightforward."
"We get free credits from Amazon, and we like the overall stability. We haven't had to rely heavily on their customer success teams, which is a good sign."
"The solution is great for storing data you don't usually need access to. It's also well-integrated with Amazon S3."
"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."
"Amazon S3 Glacier is a stable and scalable solution."
"The stability is the solution's most valuable aspect for our organization."
"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 ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer."
"The solution is highly stable."
 

Cons

"The product is difficult to use."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"They can improve data discovery."
"Amazon S3 Glacier's data retrieval time is slow compared to other AWS storage services and should be improved."
"The response times could be faster. When you are with Amazon and use Glacier, you expect a response time between four to seven hours to retrieve the data."
"The cost can be lower."
"I would like to see the retrieval time reduced. You have to wait a day to get your data."
"Technical support needs improvement. Previously, even though we had premium and enterprise support, the response time would be quicker if we ran into issues, but now it is slowed down. The analytical dashboard feature, like the CloudOps dashboard, should be included in the next release of the Amazon S3 Glacier."
"The interface is hard to use for us. It should be simplified."
"For us, the versioning was an issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon S3 Glacier is a cost-effective solution for archiving."
"I've operated with Amazon S3 Glacier in two modes. Firstly, there's the trial mode, where I experimented with the platform, learned its functionalities, and applied it to my work. Secondly, there's the corporate account mode, where my team handles the operations, and I receive billing reports."
"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."
"The price point at which the product is available is pretty good."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"The pricing must be improved."
"Amazon S3 Glacier is much cheaper than competing products."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
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.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.