Amazon Drive (discontinued) vs. Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Drive (discontinued)
Score 5.1 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Drive allows users to aggregate all of their digital content, including photos and videos, in one place. The Cloud Drive is build in to Amazon devices. Users have secure access from any computer, or via their free mobile apps. Amazon Drive offers a free 3-month trial, and pricing packages based on what type of storage users seek. For $11.99/yr, users can store unlimited photos plus 5GB of videos and other files. For $59.99/yr, users can upgrade to unlimited everything (photos, videos,…
$1.99
per month
Amazon S3
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Amazon S3 is a cloud-based object storage service from Amazon Web Services. It's key features are storage management and monitoring, access management and security, data querying, and data transfer.N/A
Pricing
Amazon Drive (discontinued)Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
Editions & Modules
100 GB
$1.99
per month
1 TB
$6.99
per month
2 TB
$11.99
per month
3 TB
$179.97
per year
4 TB
$239.96
per year
5 TB
$299.95
per year
6 TB
$359.94
per year
7 TB
$419.93
per year
8 TB
$479.92
per year
9 TB
$539.91
per year
10 TB
$599.90
per year
20 TB
1,199.80
per year
30 TB
1,799.70
per year
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon Drive (discontinued)Amazon S3
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Drive (discontinued)Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
Features
Amazon Drive (discontinued)Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Drive (discontinued)
8.4
Ratings
0% below category average
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
-
Ratings
Versioning9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Video files7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Audio files8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Document collaboration9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Access control9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
File search8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Device sync8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Cloud Storage Security & Administration
Comparison of Cloud Storage Security & Administration features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Drive (discontinued)
8.3
Ratings
4% below category average
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
-
Ratings
User and role management8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
File organization9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Device management8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Cloud Storage Platform
Comparison of Cloud Storage Platform features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Drive (discontinued)
8.7
Ratings
2% above category average
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
-
Ratings
Performance9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Reliability8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Storage Reports9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Center Backup
Comparison of Data Center Backup features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Drive (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
9.0
Ratings
8% above category average
Universal recovery00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Instant recovery00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Recovery verification00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Business application protection00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Multiple backup destinations00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Incremental backup identification00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Backup to the cloud00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Deduplication and file compression00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Snapshots00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Flexible deployment00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Management dashboard00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Platform support00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Retention options00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Encryption00 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Enterprise Backup
Comparison of Enterprise Backup features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Drive (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
8.8
Ratings
7% above category average
Continuous data protection00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Replication00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Operational reporting and analytics00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Malware protection00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Multi-location capabilities00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Ransomware Recovery00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon Drive (discontinued)Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
Small Businesses
SugarSync
SugarSync
Score 5.8 out of 10
Cove Data Protection
Cove Data Protection
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Druva Security Cloud
Druva Security Cloud
Score 9.7 out of 10
Druva Security Cloud
Druva Security Cloud
Score 9.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Druva Security Cloud
Druva Security Cloud
Score 9.7 out of 10
Druva Security Cloud
Druva Security Cloud
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon Drive (discontinued)Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.2
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
6.0
(0 ratings)
7.6
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.7
(0 ratings)
9.8
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Drive (discontinued)Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon Drive can be helpful in a variety of scenarios. It works best as a cloud back up - a place to store files, photos, and videos that are important and need to be safeguarded. I would not recommend it for collaborative document management and feel that there are other platforms better suited for that need. Amazon Drive can be programmed to upload specific folders from your desktop computer automatically. This is very helpful and takes the guesswork out of protecting your documents.
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For archiving old data that is infrequently accessed it is perfect. You can choose to let it go into cold/glacier storage which saves even further costs but at the expense of accessibility. I like that you can set access rules to automatically move it to the next storage tier after a certain amount of time that it has not been accessed. I also use it a lot with PHP via the API. We have some custom in-house applications that have a fair amount of data uploaded into them. S3 has been a perfect solution to store these files, taking the load off web servers and never having issues with running out of storage.
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Pros
  • Worldwide accessibility, including from China's great firewall.
  • Highly flexible with different server options: Aurora, MariaDB, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server.
  • Lengthy free trial lets you really dive deeply and explore the solutions offering and all that Amazon has to provide you with.
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  • Reliable and secure way to store objects in cloud: Storing any type of file(text, pdf, doc, csv, etc) is very easy with S3. Fetching this stored content as and when you require is also pretty easy and can be done using both the console and AWS CLI. Appropriate permissions can be set up for buckets using IAM roles/policies.
  • Versioning in buckets: S3 gives you a very handy feature to store multiple versions of objects stored in a bucket.
  • Lifecycle policies: You can set up lifecycle policies in S3 that can move your older objects to IA or Glacier. This setup is very easy and can be done within minutes for a bucket.
  • Replication: The cross-region replication that S3 provides is wonderful. Beware of the inter-regional data transfer costs though.
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Cons
  • Less storage than Google Drive, Google offers 15GB of free space - vs. Amazon's 5GB.
  • Also, unlike with Google Drive, you can't back up your work with Amazon Drive ( I also use Google Drive, since I have a Gmail account).
  • A lot more expensive than Google Drive, which is 1.99/month...but they are more in line with Dropbox pricing.
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  • The biggest problem is to rename the bucket. There is no direct way to do it. One need to copy entire content to the different bucket with intended bucket name and then remove the old bucket. Sometimes it creates issues.
  • There is no direct way to upload .zip file and extract it to inside the bucket.
  • While uploading large files, sometimes you will find a drop of upload speed. I observe it so many times and while checking my internet speed, I find it absolutely perfect. So there must have something wrong on the AWS side.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
Due to princing, availability and scalability.
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Usability
The system is very easy to use and it's use of apps for almost all devices and hardware makes it even easier to manage and store photos and documents. I highly recommend this as an easy to use solution for novices!
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The UI could have some improvements (better filters) and there is a lack of some useful functionality, such as renaming an existing bucket: the latter is much needed in the context of rapidly evolving companies. Overall though, Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is easy to use and to onboard people and tools to, thanks to its various APIs and flexibility.
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Performance
It is safe but has little added value.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Overall great software to use for file share, storage, and collaboration. Its security is great and the user management is spot on. The only thing that makes me dock it a point is that the device management as a subset of user management is kind of clunky. It hasn't been an issue yet, but it could compromise security in the future. Overall, would recommend
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It depends on your tier within Amazon on how great of support you get. For us we have a dedicated Point of Contact that is great in taking in what we need and discussing it with the S3 team. The best thing is features we need or suggest have a good chance of landing on their roadmap.
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Alternatives Considered
If you compare based on functionality and user-friendliness, other services like Google Drive and Dropbox are better options. However, if you are simply looking for somewhere to securely and reliably host your digital files, Amazon Cloud Drive is a great option. Adding to that the fact that Amazon Cloud Drive is far more cost effective over time and comes with Amazon's well-known reliability and professional support, you'll find you have all the reasons you need to select it as your go-to for cloud storage.
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S3 is the most mature simple storage service on the web. It has direct competitors from Google and Azure, as well as a bunch of other competitors that focus on different aspects. For example, Backblaze specializes on file backups, and while s3 can also be used for that, Backblaze provides a better price point in exchange for more focused functionality. S3 really shines in that it performs simple things astonishingly well, while also being flexible enough to stretch itself to other situations (data lakes, file mounts, backup/restores systems, web hosting, etc.).
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Return on Investment
  • Being free, everything ACD gives is profit. In this service, I have saved files for years and I find the storage very complete and secure. I think it is possible to earn even more if other services are included in the cloud, such as Microsoft Office 360 does it with OneDrive.
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  • Allows us to store large amounts of raw traffic from data providers to allow us to view data our systems received at particular times, in order to reconstruct inputs in case of errors
  • Is capable of storing very large amounts of data cheaply without material impact to our business
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ScreenShots