Amazon S3 vs SFTP To Go

Google Drive

OneDrive

Google Workspace

Google Drive is a cloud storage and backup platform to access files, docs, photos & more, store them in a safe place, and collaborate with other people

OneDrive is a secure access, sharing, and file storage solution which enables users to store and share photos, videos, documents, and more at anytime, via any device.

Google Workspace is a suite of applications from Google which offers a number of tools to communicate and collaborate with colleagues, store files, and manage data from all devices.

Software Developer

First of all support teams return time to the email based cases in resolution center is quite slow and we can not get directly support without subscribing to the pro support plan.

Amazon provides great customer support as well so if you have any issues with their services they will help you really fast.

Amazon S3 is a simple storage service that helps developers and IT teams store, backup, archive and retrieve data from anywhere across the web. It allows administrators to store data in buckets, append tags to objects, configure access controls for several clients, conduct high-volume data analysis, gain insights into storage usage and gauge trends based on activities.

Access Controls/Permissions

Authentication

Compliance Management

Data Migration

Data Replication

Data Storage Management

Encryption

File Sharing

File Transfer

Monitoring

Version Control

By industry, Amazon S3 reviewers are most commonly professionals in computer software (17%). The most frequent use case cited is cloud storage (100% of reviewers).

Users and use cases

Most reviewers indicate that Amazon S3 offers strong value for money due to its pay-as-you-go pricing, free tier, and flexible storage classes. Some reviewers report that confusing billing and unpredictable costs can be drawbacks, especially for large-scale usage.

Value for money

Amazon S3 is a cloud storage program offering key features such as data storage management, access controls/permissions, file transfer, encryption, data migration, and version control, among others.

Amazon S3

Web-based

Google Cloud Storage

Dropbox Business

Google Cloud

pCloud Business

Zoho WorkDrive

Tiger Bridge

Basic

Complex and unintuitive user interface

40% of reviewers feel negative about Amazon S3’s user interface. Users report that the interface is overly complex, making navigation and management difficult, especially for those without technical expertise. Reviewers indicate that the UI often requires additional training or reliance on third-party tools to perform basic tasks. Some users say the design feels outdated and not user-friendly, which can lead to frustration and inefficiency. They find that non-technical users in particular struggle with the interface, impacting overall accessibility and ease of use.

Flexible and robust API integration

97% of reviewers feel positive about Amazon S3’s API capabilities. Users think the extensive and well-documented APIs make it easy to integrate S3 with a wide range of programming languages, frameworks, and third-party applications. Reviewers appreciate that the API supports both simple and advanced use cases, allowing for automation, orchestration, and seamless connectivity with other AWS services. They say the availability of SDKs, CLI tools, and comprehensive guides streamlines development and management tasks, making programmatic access straightforward and reliable for various business needs.

Reliable and configurable data security

AWS Solution Architecture

Amazon S3 is a reliable, scalable, and secure storage solution that integrates well with AWS services. While it offers great performance and durability, costs and permission management can sometimes be challenging.

DevOps Engineer

As storage, it is secure and economical, or it can handle processing that requires high performance, and detailed selection and configuration are possible.

96% of reviewers feel positive about Amazon S3’s secure storage. Users say they value the robust security features, including encryption, fine-grained access controls, and multi-level permissions, which provide confidence that their data is safe and protected. Reviewers indicate that the service’s reliability, scalability, and compliance with security standards are important for both backup and active storage. They appreciate the flexibility to adjust security settings as needed and highlight peace of mind knowing their files are durable, accessible, and protected from unauthorized access.

IT Team Lead

It provides a platform that, using extended functionality (APIs, SSH, web console, etc) provides a plethora of various mediums for interfacing with files (or, 'objects') in this respect.

Cloud Engineer

One of the main drawbacks of Amazon S3 is its pricing complexity, especially with variable costs for storage classes, requests, and data transfer that can be hard to predict.

Software engineer

Integration with other AWS services like Lambda, CloudFront, and Athena is seamless, which makes building data pipelines and serverless architectures much easier.

What I like most about Amazon S3 is its virtually unlimited scalability and high durability, which make it reliable for storing massive amounts of data.

It’s highly dependable and integrates well across the AWS ecosystem. Once you understand the pricing model and set up proper governance, it becomes an incredibly powerful and cost-effective solution.

A final note to mention that trying to specifically find an easy readable guide on best practices is a bit like finding a needle in a haystack - difficult and likely to be difficult to extrapolate for your use case (especially when integrating it with more AWS solutions).

Senior Product Manager

It's great for storing, sharing and dumping large and datasets, which is vital for our workflow.

Features like versioning, lifecycle policies, and fine-grained IAM permissions add a lot of flexibility.

Data Engineering

It's ability to store variety of data types (structured, semi-structured and unstructured) as well as the ease at which it can store and retrieve any size of data makes it a fantastic tool for big data engineering.

Senior Technical Operations Specialist

There's plenty of documentation, and the UI is approachable for those less technically inclined (we have folks with workflows that involve moving around some S3 data, but not getting much deeper than that, and being able to easily copy/move folders using the UI makes more sense than trying to teach CLI commands).

It is perfect for our cloud storage needs, it is scalable, and we only pay for what we use.

It is also easy to set up S3 buckets for our clients to deliver them large datasets.

Also, sometimesI'm not too keen to be locked into the Amazon ecosystem, as we are at the mercy of their pricing models.

Network Administrator

S3 is an object storage service, not a file system, so it does not support block-level storage.

Delivery Manager

S3 integration with cloud watch this feature is limited analytics must say and IAM feature i am not clear about .

Software Engineer

searching for and downloading files from s3 involves a lot of clicking on the UI, and files are hard to find if you have a lot of data.

Official

Some sort of stuff is not suitable of some of the things that I really want to explore.sometimes there's also an error

Research analyst

It is the ideal option for simple data management because it is the industry standard and connects easily with the majority of data analytics tools.

Review

It makes storing and accessing data really easy without worrying about infrastructure or maintenance.

I must say the scaling when we need and provide event notification related to that .

Medical Assistant

My overall experience with Amazon S3 was good,I truly have no complaints and feel like they have a great product that allows applications to be able to store data in buckets.

Overall, it is a key cloud storage platform for our company.

Onboarding

Uploading and finding files is a breeze, and knowing my stuff is safe and always accessible gives me peace of mind. Plus, the ability to scale up without breaking a sweat is a game-changer. But hey, let's talk about the elephant in the room - the pricing.

Senior Analyst

The service can be well integrated with 3rd party applications by defining the adequate scope of API.

Owner

It is an excellent backup for all my data, specially for my videos.

shipment

The service is designed to handle large amounts of data and deliver it quickly without any interruptions or delays.

Senior Data Scientist

Amazon S3 is the heart of our cloud architecture, providing all the buckets we need to read/write data, both from production and sand environment.

Amazon S3 is extremely reliable and scalable.

The best part i liked about S3 was its Durability and the unlimited storage feature provided by the S3

Assistant Professor

I really like the free-tier offer by Amazon which provides a 12-months free S3 storage with a capacity of 5 GB and over 20000 access requests.

It is durable, secure, and an industry standard.

HR Recruiter

Amazon S3 offers a comprehensive suite of data management tools that simplify organizing, securing, and analyzing your data.

I used Amazon S3 as a storage service in a Snowflake environment.

My overall experience says that we are using S3 for huge time and it helps our data to be protected and stored properly. Plus it helps with integration with Postman too.

I wish I could see a preview of objects stored in the buckets without having to download them

It can also be challenging to find out how many resources you've used, although you can request a resource increase if needed. If you store your data on your MacBook but are considering moving your data to the cloud, it’s normal to be worried about common cloud computing concerns.

The bucketing system and file structure are easy to navigate, and the UI is intuitive.

AWS S3 supports all data format, while some of them (parquet and iceberg) are highly recommended for storing huge tables.

Amazon S3 is one of the amazing storage service I have used as a data engineer.

Content creator

My overall experience was great it's so easy to browse and work with I found a platform where I can engage on perfectly

graphic design

The accessibility features and scalability, affordability, and reliability.

It's a great product that's always available and is the gold standard for object storage in the cloud.

Easy to navigate, nothing to lose a perfect amazon

Unfortunately, one of the main disadvantages of Amazon S3 is that AWS limits resources by location, so some areas may have fewer resources than others.

I used Amazon S3 in testing the storage of sensor data from a test-bed home automation application.

Student

The free plan contains little storage, so you don't have many opportunities to test the app to convince yourself to sign up for a larger plan.

Its unlimited scalability, high durability, and availability make it an excellent choice for storing and accessing data of any size.

Internship

I am happy that Amazon web service have come to the fore of managing data and I can easily transfer completed projects to clients using the Amazon S3.

Overall, I found Amazon S3 to be a highly efficient and dependable cloud storage service.

Cloud Storage

Data Storage

Pricing

Cloud Integrations

Scalability

Website Navigation

Integrations

Features

Documentation and Developer Support

Small Business

Large Enterprises

Mid-size Business

Freelancers

Amazon Web Services

IT Director

Additionally, email notification rules do not always function consistently, requiring manual verification instead of relying fully on alerts.

Service Manager

The service offers a very low storage allowance compared to other providers, and it quickly became a problem as my data grew.

I get fast responses any time I have a technical question.

Lea UI Developer

Their support team has gone above and beyond to help us out and ensure we succeed in our goal!

SFTP To Go is a secure, simple, fully managed cloud storage solution offering SFTP, FTPS, S3, and HTTPS file transfer. Trusted by 1,000+ companies, it ensures compliance with HIPAA, GDPR, and SOC 2.

Activity Tracking

Alerts/Notifications

Archiving & Retention

Audit Trail

Collaboration Tools

Document Management

File Management

HIPAA Compliant

Password Management

Real-Time Notifications

Secure Data Storage

Secure Login

Third-Party Integrations

Two-Factor Authentication

User Management

SFTP To Go

Firmex Virtual Data Room

Cerberus FTP Server

Progress ShareFile

Enterprise Business Analyst

We utilize the SFTP for pharmaceutical claims, and I grab the new document each week, but there is not way to sort newest document to oldest or anything like that, which makes finding each document a little trickier.

Vice President, Engineering

it's a super easy cloud based SFTP server, built on buckets that are also accessible programatically, and webhook integration to aid in automation.

IT Support Technician

For smaller teams with limited storage and transfer needs, the pricing can be manageable, but it becomes more difficult to justify as storage, users, or data transfer requirements increase.

Director of Technology

I love the webhooks feature, and the ability to provision access credentials for specific subdirectories.

Website Support Manager

The intuitive UI, secure file transfers, and automation capabilities make it a perfect fit for both technical and non-technical users.

We've been using SFTP To Go for a little over a year to support file-based integrations with a variety of applications that we use to good success.  

Data Scientist

SFTP To Go made it simple to securely connect and retrieve files from a remote server without dealing with complex configuration.

Sr Infrastructure and network engineer

good support for dumb quesitons and quick setup and now i have an sftp point for several of my services!

AWS DevOps Engineer

If I had to point out something, I would say the pricing tiers could be a bit more flexible for smaller or hobby projects.

The integrations worked well, file transfers were fast, and the support team responded quickly when I had a small question.

Tax Preparer, Owner

My favorite feature with SFTP To Go was it's accessibility across multiple platforms. Whether it was accessing the server on a new/temporary computer or integrating with a trusted desktop client (which is my preference).

I mainly needed a secure place to exchange files with clients, and SFTP To Go made that painless.

Customer Success Manager

At times I ran into an error that the link had expired, despite being set to not expire.

Founder

not many things I can say are a con for sftp to go but If I had to id say that maybe it does take a while to load

Vice President of IT

This has been a great addition, we no longer need to manage our own Filezilla Server and expose our server to the public network.

System Engineer

At 1st we were concerned a little since it was cheaper than competition however those concerns were quickly proven false as it does everything we asked.

The main aspect I liked least about SFTP To Go is the pricing. While the platform itself is reliable, easy to use, and quick to set up, the cost feels a bit high for the features provided.

Best thing about SFTPToGo is reliability of its UI and back-end.

Ease of use was huge, prior to using SFTP To Go we needed to have an entire IT team help set up SFTP folders for us.

VP of Operations

With very little IT expertise, I was able to setup the files and credentials within one day to start being able to receive file transfer.

VP Of Technology

The SFTP to Go plugin allowed seamless integration enabling secure file transfers using SFTP.

Systems Analyst

Because the platform feels relatively new some features are still a little lacking but nothing overly glaring.

Engineering Team Lead

What we're using the service for does not require ~100% uptime.   If it disconnects for a brief second, our automations reconnect seamlessly.

We use SFTP to GO for daily file exchange between clients and vendors and, to date, we have had no issues.  

Amazon S3 vs SFTP To Go Comparison (2026)

Amazon S3

SFTP To Go

Overview

Video & Screenshots

Pricing

User reviews

Key features

Integrations

Alternatives