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 #9 in CS , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 7.2% mindshare in the category. Amazon S3 is ranked #2 in PCSS , with an average rating of 8.7, and holds a 11.6% 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 16 Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) reviews

1,072 Views
67 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon S3

Read 82 Amazon S3 reviews

3,769 Views
1,742 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

IBM SoftLayer

Read 2 IBM SoftLayer reviews

88 Views
38 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon EFS (Elastic File Sy...

Amazon S3

IBM SoftLayer

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Executive Summary

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

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June 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The platform is highly scalable."

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

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

"The initial setup was straightforward."

"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."

"The solution's technical support is good."

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

"The first valuable thing is it is scalable."

More Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) pros

"The initial setup is not difficult or overly complex. It's very straightforward and easy to implement."

"I rate the technical support from Amazon for S3 a ten out of ten."

"It allows for storing objects and files of various types."

"The most valuable features are unlimited storage, scalability, and performance."

"This solution is good at storing historical data and we were using it for other purposes."

"Amazon S3 is easily scalable and provides fantastic performance, especially in comparison to other cloud solutions like OCI and Azure."

"I find the cost-effective models particularly suitable for our needs."

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

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 main challenge with EFS is its cost, which is slightly higher compared to EBS or S3."

"EFS could be improved by including a one-click setup."

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

"Around 80 percent of the features of Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) are available on Linux and not in Windows, making it a major drawback of the product."

"The deployment is definitely not an easy process."

"I don't have notes on improvements."

"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."

"The product's stability has some shortcomings where improvements are required."

More Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) cons

"The pricing for Amazon S3 needs improvement. Another area for improvement is the file size change because it has some limitations that require more time for rendering, especially if you're not merely uploading a file, but reviewing that file, too."

"The initial setup was a bit hectic. Uploading data only allows for five GB chunks, creating challenges."

"Amazon S3 should have more frequent updates."

"The solution needs to improve test recognition."

"There's a lot of complexity."

"Amazon S3 needs to simplify the backup features."

"Technical support could have a faster response time."

"It is expensive for storing."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The price of the Amazon S3 is reasonable. There are not any licensing costs, they have a pay-as-you-use model."

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

"The tool's licensing costs are yearly. I rate it a six to seven out of ten."

"The cost of Amazon S3 is good. The pricing model is based on the usage of the solution."

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

"The pricing can be improved."

"It's worth the price considering its functionality."

More Amazon S3 pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Educational Organization

10%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

51%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

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)?

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

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...

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What needs improvement with Amazon S3?

AWS ( /products/amazon-aws-reviews ) should provide more attractive and comprehensive documentation, especially while...

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Comparisons

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

Compared 53% of the time

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

Compared 10% of the time

Google Cloud Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon S3 Glacier vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 7% of the time

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

Compared 6% of the time

More Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) Competitors

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Amazon S3

Compared 19% of the time

Google Cloud Storage vs Amazon S3

Compared 14% of the time

Oracle Cloud Object Storage vs Amazon S3

Compared 14% of the time

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Amazon S3

Compared 11% of the time

Rackspace Cloud Files vs Amazon S3

Compared 8% of the time

More Amazon S3 Competitors

Amazon AWS vs IBM SoftLayer

Compared 100% of the time

More IBM SoftLayer Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

June 2025

Download Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) product report

Buyer's Guide

Amazon S3

June 2025

Download Amazon S3 product report

Buyer's Guide

Public Cloud Storage Services

June 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: June 2025.

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