Amazon S3 vs Azure Storage vs Google Cloud Storage

Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

Amazon S3

52.3K
39.1K
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Azure Storage

1K
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Google Cloud Storage

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Amazon S3 vs Azure Storage vs Google Cloud Storage: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Key differences between Amazon S3, Azure Storage, and Google Cloud Storage:

1. **Storage Options**: Amazon S3 allows users to choose between different storage classes based on access frequency, while Azure Storage offers Blob Storage with options like hot, cool, and archive tiers for data optimization. Google Cloud Storage provides Multi-Regional, Regional, Nearline, and Coldline storage classes for cost-effective data management.

2. **Pricing Structure**: Amazon S3 charges separately for storage, requests, and data transfer, with pricing varying across regions. Azure Storage offers a more granular pricing model, including charges for storage, data retrieval, transactions, and redundancy options. Google Cloud Storage has a simplified pricing structure with data storage and network egress fees.

3. **Encryption and Security Features**: Amazon S3 supports server-side encryption, client-side encryption, and integration with AWS Key Management Service for enhanced security. Azure Storage provides encryption at rest, in transit, and options for managing encryption keys through Azure Key Vault. Google Cloud Storage offers server-side encryption with Google-managed or customer-supplied keys for securing data.

4. **Integration with Other Services**: Amazon S3 integrates seamlessly with other AWS services like AWS Lambda, Glacier, and IAM for automated workflows and access control. Azure Storage integrates well with Azure functions, Azure Data Lake, and Active Directory for enhanced functionalities. Google Cloud Storage can be easily integrated with Google BigQuery, Compute Engine, and Cloud Functions for streamlined data processing and analysis.

5. **Data Transfer Speed and Availability**: Amazon S3 ensures high availability and reliability with its global infrastructure, offering consistent performance for data transfers. Azure Storage guarantees low latency and high throughput for data operations through its scalable platform and global network. Google Cloud Storage offers parallel uploads and downloads for improved data transfer speeds and high availability with its multi-region and dual-region options.

6. **Management Tools and Monitoring Capabilities**: Amazon S3 provides a user-friendly console, SDKs, and third-party tools for managing storage resources efficiently. Azure Storage offers Azure Portal, PowerShell, and Azure CLI for monitoring and managing storage accounts effectively. Google Cloud Storage provides Cloud Console, gsutil tool, and integration with Stackdriver for monitoring storage usage and performance metrics.

In Summary, Amazon S3, Azure Storage, and Google Cloud Storage differ in storage options, pricing structures, encryption/security features, integration capabilities, data transfer speeds, and management tools/monitoring capabilities.
Advice on Amazon S3, Azure Storage, and Google Cloud Storage

Hello! I have a mobile app with nearly 100k MAU, and I want to add a cloud file storage service to my app.

My app will allow users to store their image, video, and audio files and retrieve them to their device when necessary.

I have already decided to use PHP & Laravel as my backend, and I use Contabo VPS. Now, I need an object storage service for my app, and my options are:

  • Amazon S3 : It sounds to me like the best option but the most expensive. Closest to my users (MENA Region) for other services, I will have to go to Europe. Not sure how important this is?

  • DigitalOcean Spaces : Seems like my best option for price/service, but I am still not sure

  • Wasabi: the best price (6 USD/MONTH/TB) and free bandwidth, but I am not sure if it fits my needs as I want to allow my users to preview audio and video files. They don't recommend their service for streaming videos.

  • Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage: Good price but not sure about them.

  • There is also the self-hosted s3 compatible option, but I am not sure about that.

Any thoughts will be helpful. Also, if you think I should post in a different sub, please tell me.

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Replies (2)
Michira Griffins
Software Developer at Codeshares Ltd · | 1 upvotes · 112.7K views

If pricing is the issue i'd suggest you use digital ocean, but if its not use amazon was digital oceans API is s3 compatible

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Recommends
on
Cloudways Cloudways

Hello Mohammad, I am using : Cloudways >> AWS >> Bahrain for last 2 years. This is best I consider out of my 10 year research on Laravel hosting.

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Decisions about Amazon S3, Azure Storage, and Google Cloud Storage

Minio is a free and open source object storage system. It can be self-hosted and is S3 compatible. During the early stage it would save cost and allow us to move to a different object storage when we scale up. It is also fast and easy to set up. This is very useful during development since it can be run on localhost.

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We choose Backblaze B2 because it makes more sense for storing static assets.

We admire Backblaze's customer service & transparency, plus, we trust them to maintain fair business practices - including not raising prices in the future.

Lower storage costs means we can keep more data for longer, and lower bandwidth means cache misses don't cost a ton.

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Gabriel Pa

We offer our customer HIPAA compliant storage. After analyzing the market, we decided to go with Google Storage. The Nodejs API is ok, still not ES6 and can be very confusing to use. For each new customer, we created a different bucket so they can have individual data and not have to worry about data loss. After 1000+ customers we started seeing many problems with the creation of new buckets, with saving or retrieving a new file. Many false positive: the Promise returned ok, but in reality, it failed.

That's why we switched to S3 that just works.

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Pros of Amazon S3
Pros of Azure Storage
Pros of Google Cloud Storage
  • 590
    Reliable
  • 492
    Scalable
  • 456
    Cheap
  • 329
    Simple & easy
  • 83
    Many sdks
  • 30
    Logical
  • 13
    Easy Setup
  • 11
    REST API
  • 11
    1000+ POPs
  • 6
    Secure
  • 4
    Plug and play
  • 4
    Easy
  • 3
    Web UI for uploading files
  • 2
    Faster on response
  • 2
    Flexible
  • 2
    GDPR ready
  • 1
    Easy to use
  • 1
    Plug-gable
  • 1
    Easy integration with CloudFront
  • 24
    All-in-one storage solution
  • 15
    Pay only for data used regardless of disk size
  • 9
    Shared drive mapping
  • 2
    Cost-effective
  • 2
    Cheapest hot and cloud storage
  • 28
    Scalable
  • 19
    Cheap
  • 14
    Reliable
  • 9
    Easy
  • 3
    Chealp
  • 1
    More praticlal and easy

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Cons of Amazon S3
Cons of Azure Storage
Cons of Google Cloud Storage
  • 7
    Permissions take some time to get right
  • 6
    Requires a credit card
  • 6
    Takes time/work to organize buckets & folders properly
  • 3
    Complex to set up
  • 2
    Direct support is not provided by Azure storage
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    What companies use Amazon S3?
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    What tools integrate with Azure Storage?
    What tools integrate with Google Cloud Storage?

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    What are some alternatives to Amazon S3, Azure Storage, and Google Cloud Storage?
    Amazon Glacier
    In order to keep costs low, Amazon Glacier is optimized for data that is infrequently accessed and for which retrieval times of several hours are suitable. With Amazon Glacier, customers can reliably store large or small amounts of data for as little as $0.01 per gigabyte per month, a significant savings compared to on-premises solutions.
    Amazon EBS
    Amazon EBS volumes are network-attached, and persist independently from the life of an instance. Amazon EBS provides highly available, highly reliable, predictable storage volumes that can be attached to a running Amazon EC2 instance and exposed as a device within the instance. Amazon EBS is particularly suited for applications that require a database, file system, or access to raw block level storage.
    Amazon EC2
    It is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.
    Google Drive
    Keep photos, stories, designs, drawings, recordings, videos, and more. Your first 15 GB of storage are free with a Google Account. Your files in Drive can be reached from any smartphone, tablet, or computer.
    Microsoft Azure
    Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any language, tool or framework. And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment.
    See all alternatives