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Amazon S3 vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

 

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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.2
Amazon S3's cost-effectiveness and scalability lead to ROI through cost savings, improved operations, and enhanced data management capabilities.
Sentiment score
6.5
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP delivers cost savings, increased efficiency, and improved performance, reducing storage, maintenance, and power expenses.
Moving infrequently accessed data to cheaper classes like Glacier is beneficial for long-term storage at a lower cost.
Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
I have seen a return on investment, and the ROI that we observed in our organization includes reducing manpower by 20% and achieving zero downtime for storage expansion, which improves overall productivity.
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Amazon S3 has a reasonable price as you pay a flat price to use it.
Senior Data & AI Engineer at Imprint
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Amazon S3's customer service is rated highly for responsiveness and expertise, though some users report delayed response times.
Sentiment score
7.0
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP customer service is praised for expertise and responsiveness, with room for improvement in initial support.
I rate the technical support from Amazon for S3 a ten out of ten.
CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited
The customer support for Amazon S3 is very good; they are responsive and knowledgeable, providing quick resolutions, clear documentation, and proactive guidance during migrations or performance tuning.
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
An engineer is assigned based on the severity of the issue.
DevOps Engineer at Olla Systems Limited
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Amazon S3 offers efficient storage scalability, auto-scaling features, and unlimited data storage, making it a favored choice despite costs.
Sentiment score
7.2
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP offers scalable growth, dynamic expansion, and flexibility, though large environments face data size limitations.
Data placed in an S3 bucket is replicated across availability zones in a region, ensuring scalability and availability.
Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
The level of scalability allows storage to automatically scale on demand, without the need for manual intervention.
AWS Consultant at Virtual University
The scalability of Amazon S3 is excellent as it handles unlimited data and seamlessly supports growth without manual provisioning or performance degradation.
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It wouldn't help with outages either; the scaling is manual, and there are no processes we've used to automate that for unexpected scenarios.
Principal Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Amazon S3 is highly stable and reliable, offering 99.99% availability, supporting seamless business operations with minimal downtime.
Sentiment score
7.7
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP offers high stability and reliability, with users valuing performance and responsive support despite occasional minor issues.
There is zero latency or downtime.
AWS Consultant at Virtual University
Transitioning between S3 storage classes, like moving data from the standard class to Glacier or Glacier Deep Archive, has been challenging.
Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Amazon S3 is highly stable.
DevOps Engineer at Olla Systems Limited
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon S3 users seek improved UI, security, cost efficiency, faster speeds, better integration, and more customization and storage options.
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP users seek improved scalability, integration, ease of use, and features like security, monitoring, and cloud compatibility.
An improvement could be associating the naming with personal accounts, allowing more familiar or desired names without conflicting with global conventions.
DevOps Engineer at Stellar Tech
The practice of protecting data could be more streamlined or mandatory.
Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
I would like to see an increase in the data upload limit, similar to DynamoDB, where there is no data limit.
AWS Consultant at Virtual University
My opinion is that support is generally very good. There are instances where they take longer to respond or resolve issues, especially when customers have urgent needs, but ultimately, resolution is achieved.
Technical Specialist at Softcell Technologies Limited
It would be nice to see technology supporting the Elastic Fabric Adapter on Amazon AWS, therefore getting RDMA technology for more low-latency connections.
Principal Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Setup Cost

Amazon S3 is scalable and cost-effective, but data transfer fees and licensing can impact overall expenses for enterprises.
Enterprise users enjoy NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP for its features despite higher costs, with discounts available for extended commitments.
I've used the free tier and haven't been charged yet.
DevOps Engineer at Stellar Tech
S3 offers multiple classes, allowing you to move data to cheaper classes for cost savings.
Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Since using Amazon S3, storage costs have reduced by around 35% to 40% through lifecycle tiering.
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Amazon S3 is praised for scalability, security, ease of use, AWS integration, and comprehensive data management features.
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP offers reliable, flexible data protection, seamless integration, and optimized storage across diverse cloud environments.
Its stability and scalability are also impressive, as it allows for increased storage space according to demand.
DevOps Engineer at Stellar Tech
I appreciate its capability to create static websites and integrate with services like CloudFront, EC2, and DynamoDB.
Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Security measures like encryption, access controls, and the block public access feature are also important.
AWS Consultant at Virtual University
The granular ability to divide up the performance and the amount of storage you want is really fantastic.
Principal Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon S3
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
11th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (3rd), Cloud Storage (9th), Cloud Backup (27th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 is 15.8%, up from 12.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is 6.2%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon S315.8%
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP6.2%
Other78.0%
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2774889 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has reduced storage costs and improved data management through automated lifecycle and seamless service integration
The best features that Amazon S3 offers are high durability and availability with virtually unlimited storage, lifecycle management for automated tiering and cost control, versioning to retain and recover data changes, and integration with services such as Glue, Athena, EMR, Lambda, along with strong security via IAM roles, bucket policies, and encryption. These features help by ensuring data is always available, securely stored, and easily accessible for pipelines. Lifecycle policies reduce manual cleanup, versioning safeguards against accidental deletions, and integrations allow us to directly run analytics or trigger workflows without moving data around. Amazon S3 event notifications help automate tasks such as triggering ETL jobs or Lambda functions on new data arrivals, and features such as cross-region replication ensure data redundancy and compliance, while fine-grained access control makes it easy to manage permissions across teams securely. My organization has seen improvements in data accessibility, reduced infrastructure costs, and simplified data management through Amazon S3. We now have a unified scalable storage layer that supports analytics, backups, and migrations seamlessly, leading to faster workflows and better decision-making.
SB
Principal Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Offers performance control and cloud integration while supporting data management with granular flexibility
The scalability of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is interesting. We have thought about it, but we haven't used it. I think the scalability is something you scale up rather than respond to peak demand. It wouldn't help with outages either; the scaling is manual, and there are no processes we've used to automate that for unexpected scenarios. We like the scalability; it's enough for what we're planning to use, but we haven't used any advanced features. The standard platform is NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, which is their cloud service. In fact, that's probably the most experience I have with NetApp. I've experienced it on-premise, but kind of secondhand.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Public Cloud Storage Services solutions are best for your needs.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise39
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise53
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon S3?
Since using Amazon S3, storage costs have reduced by around 35% to 40% through lifecycle tiering, data availability improved to 99.9% which minimizes downtime, ETL processing time decreased by appr...
What needs improvement with Amazon S3?
I would appreciate Amazon expanding the available documentation to keep it as modern and up-to-date as possible.
What is your primary use case for Amazon S3?
I use Amazon S3 for storing images, uploading files like PDFs or PNGs, and other documents and images. I use Amazon S3's lifecycle management features for changing storage classes when the data nee...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is actually quite reasonable in price compared to other native cloud storage options. For example, a customer using 100 TB of AWS storage would not benefit from deduplica...
What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?
It would be nice to see technology supporting the Elastic Fabric Adapter on Amazon AWS, therefore getting RDMA technology for more low-latency connections.
What is your primary use case for NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?
I use NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP mostly in customer companies.
 

Also Known As

S3, Simple Storage Service
ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Airbnb, Thomson Reuters, Zillow, Alert Logic
1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon S3 vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.