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Amazon S3 Glacier vs IBM SoftLayer 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon S3 Glacier
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM SoftLayer
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
22nd
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 Glacier is 15.7%, down from 16.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM SoftLayer is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

ArunDhwaj - PeerSpot reviewer
Versatile data storage improves security and supports increasing data volumes
Amazon S3 Glacier offers robust security features and practically infinite storage, where we can store all kinds of media swiftly. It supports various data types, including semi-structured and raw formats. These features facilitate log management and data dumping since the service is versatile enough to handle large volumes of data and provide necessary security.
reviewer1032702 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool is simple to use and not very expensive."
"AWS Lambda is the most valuable part of the solution because it gives you a code interface for everything."
"Its auto-scaling capabilities allow us to add data continuously without needing to pre-provision storage."
"We like that the price is cheaper."
"The most valuable feature of Glacier is its storage capability and cost benefit."
"The product automatically replicates objects from a S3 bucket in one region to another bucket in a different region."
"The deployment process was straightforward."
"The reliability of storage is the main benefit."
"The stability is the solution's most valuable aspect for our organization."
"The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer."
 

Cons

"The technical support has room for improvement."
"The pricing is a bit expensive. There is room for improvement in costs."
"Technical support needs improvement. Previously, even though we had premium and enterprise support, the response time would be quicker if we ran into issues, but now it is slowed down. The analytical dashboard feature, like the CloudOps dashboard, should be included in the next release of the Amazon S3 Glacier."
"Their pricing structure is always a big topic. It's so difficult to understand."
"The cost of retrieval in Glacier is quite high."
"I would like to see improvements in the transfer rate as it takes quite a long time to retrieve data from Glacier compared to standard S3 storage."
"The cost can be lower."
"I would like to see the retrieval time reduced."
"The interface is hard to use for us. It should be simplified."
"For us, the versioning was an issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon S3 Glacier is a little expensive solution."
"Amazon S3 Glacier is very cheap, but the cost becomes a concern when you have a very large amount of data."
"Amazon S3 Glacier has a good pricing point, and you pay for what's being used."
"I've operated with Amazon S3 Glacier in two modes. Firstly, there's the trial mode, where I experimented with the platform, learned its functionalities, and applied it to my work. Secondly, there's the corporate account mode, where my team handles the operations, and I receive billing reports."
"The price point at which the product is available is pretty good."
"There is no license, you pay for what you use."
"The tool is too expensive."
"Amazon S3 Glacier is much cheaper than competing products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 S3 Glacier?
I like creating buckets where data can be segregated at a high level and then routing the appropriate data to each designated bucket. In terms of value, I would say that the tool gets the job done ...
What needs improvement with Amazon S3 Glacier?
I am not sure about improvements; so far it has been good for me. The pricing is on the higher side. I have not mentioned any features as the product is good. Pricing is my concern; this is the onl...
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Also Known As

Amazon Glacier
CloudLayer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

King Cpunty, Illumina, Backupify, Nearmap.com, Scribd, Baylor College of Medicine, SoundCloud
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 Amazon S3 Glacier vs. IBM SoftLayer and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.