Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs Amazon S3 vs IBM SoftLayer comparison

The compared Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) and Amazon S3 solutions aren't in the same category. Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is ranked #10 in CS , with an average rating of 7.8, and holds a 6.4% mindshare in the category. Amazon S3 is ranked #2 in PCSS , with an average rating of 8.7, and holds a 12.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Amazon S3 users who would recommend it.

Amazon EFS (Elastic File Sy...

Read 17 Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) reviews

4,416 Views
972 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon S3

Read 83 Amazon S3 reviews

2,760 Views
2,705 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

IBM SoftLayer

Read 2 IBM SoftLayer reviews

215 Views
112 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon EFS (Elastic File Sy...

Amazon S3

IBM SoftLayer

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon EFS (Elastic File System), Amazon S3, and IBM SoftLayer based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Google, NetApp, Dropbox and others in Cloud Storage.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloud Storage Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Storage

August 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 865,484 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

Cloud Storage

Public Cloud Storage Services

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Auto-scaling capabilities enhance file management while reducing downtime

The most valuable feature of Amazon EFS is its auto-scaling capability. It's really easy to configure EFS by just creating it and running a command to directly configure it with my servers. It supports unlimited use, and charges are applied based on the file usage at the end of the month. The solution offers reduced downtime and increased durability through its auto-scaling features.

Read full review

Vagner Martins

Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees

Enhanced data security with seamless integration and static website capabilities

S3 is a great service offering numerous possibilities. It allows for storing objects and files of various types. I appreciate its capability to create static websites and integrate with services like CloudFront, EC2, and DynamoDB. Despite being focused on security, I leverage features such as cryptography and integration with CloudTrail.

Read full review

reviewer1032702

Global Principal Cloud Architect at NTT DATA

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's technical support is good."

"We can run code and deploy it whenever we want."

"There are huge money savings, as we can save more than half of our costs."

"Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is secure as it is used under VPC."

"Elastic File Systems allow me to share data, provision, and manage capacity and performance in AWS."

"The first valuable thing is it is scalable."

"The solution is scalable."

"Its elasticity and flexible pricing are the most valuable. For Amazon EFS, you are charged based on the storage. It is also very fast and stable with a very simple and intuitive interface."

More Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) pros

"Some of the most valuable features are how convenient and easy to use S3 is. It's nicely integrated with AWS and is available on the AWS console."

"Amazon S3 is highly stable."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its security, as it does not provide public access."

"The scalability of Amazon S3 is good."

"The solution is good and includes all the features we expect."

"The most valuable feature is the storage."

"I don't have any problems with the solution. It's issue-free."

"The product helps to define storage type based on the requirement."

More Amazon S3 pros

"The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer."

"The stability is the solution's most valuable aspect for our organization."

Cons

"The deployment is definitely not an easy process."

"When we faced some issues, the support team took a lot of time to resolve them."

"Their response was not prompt, and it took them a while to figure out solutions. While the time to respond was good, the time to resolve was not optimal, as it took more than a week."

"Amazon EFS is more costly compared to other storage options available from AWS."

"Specifically, when it comes to the file system for the learning system, we encountered performance issues with both Azure and AWS."

"Its deployment process could be faster while installing the Python package directly into the environment."

"The platform's connectivity could be improved to be more comparable to S3 buckets, which offer better API availability."

"The user activity needs to be more connected."

More Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) cons

"It could maybe use more integration."

"The only pain point is migrating the life cycle policy because if someone is a newbie, they cannot easily create the life cycle policy."

"The upload speed for data and documents is sometimes slow."

"The major challenge is the inability to create more than ten policies."

"Amazon S3 could improve some of the features, such as indexing, or we should have more information about all the data stored in a single place. This way we can see what data resides where instead of going in different buckets, file locations manually, or searching. An index would be nice, allowing us to directly go to a location to use the date."

"Amazon S3 can improve by decreasing the overall costs."

"The UI should be more user-friendly."

"A feature that should be included is to find and provide a HIPPA compliant solution for the Presigned URL."

More Amazon S3 cons

"For us, the versioning was an issue."

"The interface is hard to use for us. It should be simplified."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's price depends on the services and the size and capacity at which it is used in a business environment."

"It has flexible pricing. You are charged based on your storage."

"I would rate the pricing 7 out of 10."

"The product charges are based on the amount of data stored."

"The solution's price is mid-ranged."

"Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) offers a pay-as-you-go model, so whenever you use its services, you need to pay."

"The main challenge with EFS is its cost, which is slightly higher compared to EBS or S3. For one GB or ten GB of data, S3 is much cheaper. EFS could cost around $30 to $50 per month for similar usage."

"The price of the Amazon S3 is low. The license model is based on what you use."

"For pricing, I would give it a six or seven out of ten."

"The license of Amazon S3 is based on volume, capacity, and time. The overall price of the solution could improve. The support has to be added if you want it at an additional cost."

"The tool's price is a little bit high, but it is reasonable."

"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is reasonably priced."

"This solution has reasonable pricing and a low cost."

"The solution is fairly priced."

"One can manage the price of the tool. The tool is worth the money if we want to store the data in Amazon S3."

More Amazon S3 pricing and cost advice

Information not available

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Storage solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

865,484 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

University

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

Which file storage system is better - Amazon EFS (elastic file storage) or Azure File Storage?

Amazon EFS is easy to set up: you can use the AWS management console, API, or command-line. Amazon EFS can grow to pe...

See all answers

What do you like most about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?

The product's initial setup phase is easy, as per the configurations.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?

We don't need to purchase it; we are just using it and paying Amazon as per the utilization. We make direct payments ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Amazon S3?

We can easily connect to the AWS resources.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon S3?

AWS pricing for Amazon S3 starts at a higher cost, particularly in the standard class. However, with lifecycle manage...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon S3?

Areas of improvement should focus more on the services of Outposts rather than the Amazon S3 portion. AWS should sell...

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 67% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 7% of the time

Google Cloud Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 6% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 5% of the time

Amazon S3 Glacier vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) Competitors

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Amazon S3

Compared 16% of the time

Google Cloud Storage vs Amazon S3

Compared 12% of the time

Oracle Cloud Object Storage vs Amazon S3

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Amazon S3

Compared 9% of the time

Rackspace Cloud Files vs Amazon S3

Compared 7% of the time

More Amazon S3 Competitors

Amazon AWS vs IBM SoftLayer

Compared 52% of the time

Oracle Cloud Software Appliance vs IBM SoftLayer

Compared 48% of the time

More IBM SoftLayer Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

August 2025

Download Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) product report

Buyer's Guide

Amazon S3

August 2025

Download Amazon S3 product report

Buyer's Guide

Public Cloud Storage Services

August 2025

Download IBM SoftLayer product report

Also Known As

No data available

S3, Simple Storage Service

CloudLayer

Overview

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) provides simple, scalable file storage for use with Amazon EC2 instances in the AWS Cloud. Amazon EFS is easy to use and offers a simple interface that allows you to create and configure file systems quickly and easily. With Amazon EFS, storage capacity is elastic, growing and shrinking automatically as you add and remove files, so your applications have the storage they need, when they need it.

When mounted to Amazon EC2 instances, an Amazon EFS file system provides a standard file system interface and file system access semantics, allowing you to seamlessly integrate Amazon EFS with your existing applications and tools. Multiple Amazon EC2 instances can access an Amazon EFS file system at the same time, allowing Amazon EFS to provide a common data source for workloads and applications running on more than one Amazon EC2 instance.

It’s designed for high availability and durability, and provides performance for a broad spectrum of workloads and applications, including Big Data and analytics, media processing workflows, content management, web serving, and home directories.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon Simple Storage Service is storage for the Internet. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

Amazon S3 has a simple web services interface that you can use to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

SoftLayer provides cloud infrastructure as a service from a growing number of data centers and network points of presence around the world. Our customers range from Web startups to global enterprises.

Products and services include bare metal and virtual servers, networking, turnkey big data solutions, private cloud solutions, and more. Our unique advantages include the industry's first Network-Within-a-Network topology for true out-of-band access, and an easy-to-use customer portal and robust API for full remote-access of all product and service management options.

IBM

Sample Customers

Arcesium, Atlassian, Seeking Alpha, Zend

Netflix, Airbnb, Thomson Reuters, Zillow, Alert Logic

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 Google, NetApp, Dropbox and others in Cloud Storage. Updated: August 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

865,484 professionals have used our research since 2012.