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Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs Dropbox comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 17, 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
8.2
Amazon EBS offers 20-25% ROI, enhancing scalability, durability, and cost-efficiency, eliminating permanent hard disk investments.
Sentiment score
6.3
Users appreciate Dropbox's low-cost features, though quantifying ROI is challenging; benefits include accessibility, security, and reduced complaints.
As a cloud storage option, it is flexible and cost-effective, eliminating the need for a permanent investment in hard disks.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Amazon EBS support is satisfactory, with varied response times; paid plans enhance service, but complexities and costs can arise.
Sentiment score
2.7
Dropbox support is mixed; positives include 24/7 availability, negatives involve slow email responses and licensing issue assistance.
Enterprise support provides access to AWS developers 24/7.
They provide instant and chat support, addressing concerns in a timely manner.
Once subscribed, the support team is very responsive, connecting remotely to assist with troubleshooting.
Dropbox offers 24-hour support, both through chat and limited hour calls.
We provide the support ourselves and do not have any support straight from Dropbox.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Amazon EBS offers scalable, cost-efficient storage for database-heavy environments, praised for ease of scaling but requires some manual adjustments.
Sentiment score
7.2
Dropbox is scalable for various business sizes, offering flexible plans, but may vary in effectiveness at enterprise levels.
Amazon EBS is easy to scale up or down as needed.
Vertical scaling can be achieved by adding additional volumes whenever the created storage is insufficient.
All cloud solutions permit scalability, and this is an important feature.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Amazon EBS offers reliable performance and scalability, with users rating its stability highly and benefiting from AWS infrastructure.
Sentiment score
8.1
Users consider Dropbox stable and reliable, despite occasional syncing delays and reliance on internet connectivity for uploads.
AWS provides infrastructure stability like data centers, ensuring high stability.
I have never had problems with its stability.
If the server is stable, then EBS is stable.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EBS requires improved performance, easier scalability, enhanced security, and better cost management for optimal user experience and increased utilization.
Dropbox needs better storage, pricing, security, interface, and integration to enhance user experience and remain competitive.
Regarding EBS, if an instance is terminated, the volume is also deleted, which leads to data loss.
I would like EBS to have no limitations, similar to stream-like block storage, which can accommodate an unlimited amount of sales.
Deployment is not easy as it requires server downtime to map newly created volumes, impacting operations during additional volume additions.
Sharing documents with other people in the same division or department and being able to work without downloading the file would be ideal.
One area of improvement would be to allow multiple users to edit a file simultaneously and see edits in real time, similar to OneDrive.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EBS pricing is cost-effective for small businesses but can become expensive with additional features and storage size.
Enterprise users find Dropbox pricing competitive, though opinions vary on cost-effectiveness and desire for better discounts and management.
For SSD IOPS, you only pay $0.125 per gigabyte.
The pay-for-what-you-use model justifies the amount paid, with no extra or hidden charges.
Users are charged only for the data used, not for the allocated volume.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EBS provides scalable, reliable, and affordable storage with strong EC2 integration, supporting diverse workloads with various performance options.
Dropbox offers user-friendly, secure storage with seamless syncing, easy sharing, scalability, and strong compatibility across all devices and environments.
Amazon EBS is also scalable and provides high availability.
EBS provides vertical scaling options to add additional volumes when more storage is required.
Amazon EBS allows seamless changes to the instance type without affecting application availability.
It also features an admin console where we can easily manage users, see which user has access to which content, and how much space they are consuming.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EBS (Elastic Block S...
Ranking in Cloud Storage
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dropbox
Ranking in Cloud Storage
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
Content Collaboration Platforms (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Storage category, the mindshare of Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) is 2.5%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dropbox is 5.4%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Storage
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Diverse features and affordability drive effective resource management
Amazon EBS offers diverse features. It can be used for multi-purpose storage, supporting single, multiple, or heavy loads. It has different types for various use cases, allowing me to choose based on my specific requirements. The primary advantage of Amazon EBS is affordability compared to other solutions like EFS or FSX. It acts as a hard drive for servers, making it essential for operation.
Edgar  Paez - PeerSpot reviewer
Work from anywhere and backup easily while being practical
I recommend Dropbox, yet not for all of the features it has. I am a basic user. In a personal mode, we have about 100 employees, and maybe 20 of them use Dropbox as a personal backup system. ShareFile is more secure than Dropbox. Five years ago, ShareFile was qualified as having better security control, access privilege management, and version control recovery, among many features that we were using for private documentation. Overall, I would rate Dropbox an eight out of ten.
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859,687 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
50%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Computer Software Company
5%
Construction Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
The durability and snapshot capabilities are good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
The cost of Amazon EBS storage is high. I rate the price as eight out of ten. It is expensive to store a lot yet provides significant cost-efficiency as I pay only for the storage time required.
What do you like most about Dropbox?
For me, the biggest thing is version history. I can easily go back and view older versions.
What needs improvement with Dropbox?
One area of improvement would be to allow multiple users to edit a file simultaneously and see edits in real time, similar to OneDrive. In Dropbox, once a file is opened on one system, it locks the...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bazaar Voice, Crowd Strike, Adobe, Gamevil, Hess, CopperEgg, TotalJobs Group, SuperCell, Dropcam, Unilever
Vita Coco, BCBGMAXAZRIA Group, Centric Project, Kayak, FourSquare, Asana, Huge Adversting , USA Gymnastics, Appen, Valliant, Radio Lab
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs. Dropbox and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,687 professionals have used our research since 2012.