Amazon S3 Glacier vs IBM SoftLayer vs Microsoft Azure Object Storage comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM are both solutions in the Public Cloud Storage Services category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8, while IBM is ranked #23. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 10.9% mindshare in PCSS, compared to IBM’s 1.4% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Amazon S3 Glacier

Read 43 Amazon S3 Glacier reviews

3,246 Views
3,051 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

IBM SoftLayer

Read 2 IBM SoftLayer reviews

364 Views
262 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Object Storage

Read 57 Microsoft Azure Object Storage reviews

1,237 Views
1,212 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Amazon S3 Glacier

IBM SoftLayer

Microsoft Azure Object Storage

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon S3 Glacier, IBM SoftLayer, and Microsoft Azure Object Storage based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, Nutanix and others in Public Cloud Storage Services.

To learn more, read our detailed Public Cloud Storage Services Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Public Cloud Storage Services

March 2026

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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

As of April 2026, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 Glacier is 10.9%, down from 17.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM SoftLayer is 1.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Object Storage is 3.3%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Public Cloud Storage Services Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Amazon S3 Glacier	10.9%
Microsoft Azure Object Storage	3.3%
IBM SoftLayer	1.4%
Other	84.4%

Public Cloud Storage Services

Featured Reviews

Pat Fogarty

Project Engineer at Astellas Pharma US

Archiving data has reduced storage costs and provides reliable long‑term retention

We have not really come across any downsides for us. It is possible that the retrieval of data may be expensive, which could be an issue, but we have not experienced that in fairness. Integration with our policies would be beneficial. We have policies for our systems where we delete data after a certain number of years, and having integration with Amazon S3 Glacier would be good. Having a guarantee that Amazon S3 Glacier would persist for the amount of time that we require in our archives would be valuable. In other words, Amazon would need to commit to support for the period we need. We could be talking about 20 years or longer. We cannot always move to the next version because we need to maintain old systems and legacy systems in order to maintain archives. A guarantee around support would be a good thing to have.

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reviewer1032702

Global Principal Cloud Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

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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Animesh.Kumar

Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions

Customer improves data management with enhanced storage and enjoys challenge of optimizing performance

Microsoft Azure Object Storage can be improved in terms of performance. When using Data Lakes for analytics and frequently pulling data from our source database to Microsoft Azure Blob Storage, there should be faster methods to download large data from Microsoft Azure Storage Blob to different locations. I did not receive much support in addressing this issue.

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

"It is the most feature-rich platform."

"Amazon S3 Glacier is a highly stable solution."

"The main advantage of Glacier is its low cost. It is incredibly cheaper than other storage options, especially for objects you don't access frequently. Glacier would add value if you have a staging area for objects you only need to access occasionally. Since we have data in terabytes between S3 buckets, we can significantly reduce our storage and cost footprint by using Glacier."

"We like that the price is cheaper."

"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 in a simpler manner."

"The biggest advantage of the product is that AWS always copies the tool internally."

"The deployment process was straightforward."

"The tool is simple to use and not very expensive."

More Amazon S3 Glacier pros

"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."

"The solution is highly stable."

"The ability to extract 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."

"Technical support has been excellent."

"The file retention and object retention have been most valuable."

"Technical support is excellent."

"Azure cloud services are quite an easy solution with many tools to operate, such as the CLI, software development kit, and the portal."

"The idea of being able to hold a backup outside of our premises just in case of a disaster allows for the possibility of an easy data recovery process."

"The product has good accessibility."

"The key feature for us is the possibility to have a copy of our data and machines outside of our premises just in case of a disaster."

"The most valuable feature is the API because it is very flexible."

More Microsoft Azure Object Storage pros

Cons

"The product needs to improve cloud security."

"Their pricing structure is always a big topic. It's so difficult to understand."

"However, improvement is needed in pricing and support systems."

"I would like to see improved storage capacity and enhanced security features for better protection."

"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 response times could be faster. When you are with Amazon and use Glacier, you expect a response time between four to seven hours to retrieve the data."

"The learning curve is very high."

"The tool could be made cheaper."

More Amazon S3 Glacier cons

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

"For us, the versioning was an issue."

"Microsoft Azure Object Storage has had a number of failures last week due to the lack of hardware available to support the resources. However, it was only for a short time, approximately two days."

"The improvement needed for Microsoft Azure Object Storage is to reduce the transactional charges, as these read and write operation charges are higher."

"The cost of this solution is high compared to others, although there are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"Microsoft Azure Object Storage is somewhat stable, but some improvements need to be applied. I can remember, it was down one time. We have faced a lot of issues since our application is tightly coupled with storage."

"The tool doesn't offer Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft AI."

"They could improve AI and ML-based modules. They should add more modules based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Pricing is a little bit tricky with Microsoft Azure. They do provide the estimates, but it is not easy to guess the exact amount that we will be billed after a month or two because it is based on usage. This is a little confusing."

"I would like to see a reduction in pricing so that they can be more competitive."

"Object Storage's integration with other backup software could be improved."

More Microsoft Azure Object Storage cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon S3 Glacier is very cheap, but the cost becomes a concern when you have a very large amount of data."

"We pay a monthly licensing fee for Amazon S3 Glacier."

"The product is very cheap."

"The pricing must be improved."

"The product is cheap."

"There is no license, you pay for what you use."

"We don't pay for licenses. We pay based on consumption data, considering how much data is stored."

"Amazon S3 Glacier has a good pricing point, and you pay for what's being used."

More Amazon S3 Glacier pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"The pricing is competitive."

"The licensing cost of Microsoft Azure Object Storage is monthly. We have two types of licenses. One is the EA enterprise license and the other is a CSP license."

"Encryption feature is an add-on."

"The pricing can be improved. There is an yearly licensing cost for the solution. There are some reserve instances that are additional to the licensing cost."

"I think we pay per bit as per usage. There is a billing pattern for the subscription, and we get a monthly bill. I've seen that happen over there. I haven't seen any fixed costs. It always depends on what we're using and how much the servers are running. The breakdown appears on the bill."

"I'm not aware of the licensing cost, as my customer handles it. In Taiwan, it's reasonably priced."

"It has a pay-as-you-go model. So, you are only paying for what you store. It's an attractive model. You don't pay for a set; you pay for what you actually use."

"Additional costs depend on the data and complexity of the project."

More Microsoft Azure Object Storage pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

11%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

University

No data available

Marketing Services Firm

18%

Construction Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	25
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	15

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	23
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	21

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 so...

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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 de...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon S3 Glacier?

We have not really come across any downsides for us. It is possible that the retrieval of data may be expensive, whic...

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What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Object Storage?

The layout of Microsoft is professional.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Object Storage?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Microsoft Azure Object Storage is very good.

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What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Object Storage?

The customer support for Microsoft Azure Object Storage is not good. If a good engineer is assigned, then it function...

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Comparisons

Google Cloud Storage Nearline vs Amazon S3 Glacier

Compared 34% of the time

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Amazon S3 Glacier

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon S3 vs Amazon S3 Glacier

Compared 9% of the time

Google Cloud Storage vs Amazon S3 Glacier

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Azure Block Storage vs Amazon S3 Glacier

Compared 4% of the time

More Amazon S3 Glacier Competitors

Oracle Cloud Software Appliance vs IBM SoftLayer

Compared 22% of the time

Amazon S3 vs IBM SoftLayer

Compared 22% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 vs IBM SoftLayer

Compared 16% of the time

Amazon AWS vs IBM SoftLayer

Compared 14% of the time

More IBM SoftLayer Competitors

Amazon S3 vs Microsoft Azure Object Storage

Compared 31% of the time

Oracle Cloud Object Storage vs Microsoft Azure Object Storage

Compared 17% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud vs Microsoft Azure Object Storage

Compared 16% of the time

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs Microsoft Azure Object Storage

Compared 10% of the time

AT&T Cloud Storage vs Microsoft Azure Object Storage

Compared 7% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Object Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon S3 Glacier

March 2026

Download Amazon S3 Glacier product report

Buyer's Guide

Public Cloud Storage Services

March 2026

Download IBM SoftLayer product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Object Storage

March 2026

Download Microsoft Azure Object Storage product report

Also Known As

Amazon Glacier

CloudLayer

Microsoft Azure Blob Storage, Azure Object Storage, MS Azure Object Storage

Overview

Amazon Glacier is a secure, durable, and extremely low-cost cloud storage service for data archiving and long-term backup. Customers can reliably store large or small amounts of data for as little as $0.007 per gigabyte per month, a significant savings compared to on-premises solutions. To keep costs low, Amazon Glacier is optimized for infrequently accessed data where a retrieval time of several hours is suitable.

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

REST-based object storage for unstructured data in the cloud

Store infrequently accessed data in a low-cost cool storage tier
Store frequently accessed application data in a hot storage tier
Stream video, audio, and other media to web, mobile, or desktop applications
Power big data analytics
Access your data more securely, both over the wire and at rest

Microsoft

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

Umbraco, Xbox, Radioshack, 343 Industries, McKesson

Buyer's Guide

Public Cloud Storage Services

March 2026

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