Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) vs. Google Drive

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
Google Drive
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Google Drive is a cloud file storage, synchronization, and collaboration platform and service, that features Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides for document editing and presentation.
$6
per month
Pricing
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)Google Drive
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Basic
$6.00
per month
Business
$12.00
per month
Enterprise
Contact Vendor for Quote
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon S3Google Drive
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsDiscounts are available for students, educators, and non profit organizations.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)Google Drive
Considered Both Products
Amazon S3
Chose Amazon S3
Amazon S3 has so much other functionality than it's competitors with so many more use cases. We use One Drive, Drop Box, Teams, Google Drive and other products for basic file sharing while working with partners and clients but that's kind of the extent of those products. S3 …
Chose Amazon S3
I haven't been personally involved in the decision to use S3, but in comparison to Dropbox or Google Drive, this offers a less robust UI to modify things, while being a cheaper storage mechanism over the rest.
Chose Amazon S3
More robust and feature rich. Also more cost effective. However, the other options do lend themselves to be better at user friendliness. But if your technological and willing to look up help in the support knowledgebase you will do just fine and get a better product at …
Chose Amazon S3
All other alternatives are also good but as our infrastructure was on AWS, Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) was a better choice due to its better integration with other AWS services. It was serving the purpose in an economical way. All of our needs were being fulfilled by …
Chose Amazon S3
Amazon S3 provides a variety of tools for uploading short and large objects to the cloud. AWS S3 is a key-value store, one of the major categories of NoSQL databases used for accumulating voluminous, mutating, unstructured, or semistructured data. S3 object retrieval is fast. …
Chose Amazon S3
The main differences are that S3 files can be accessed publicly without having an account on the service so it is suitable for website assets, but the other services have desktop hard drive syncing applications so they are more suitable for sharing files to other staff in the …
Chose Amazon S3
AWS probably has the most difficult UI to learn but it's the far better service.
Google is probably second but it has storage limitations and there are some security concerns (still a good tool for collaboration)
The Microsoft products are the worst IMO. They're slow and have the …
Chose Amazon S3
Amazon S3 compared to all of these has the worst user interface. Drive and Dropbox as everyone knows is simpler and used for shared work files with a user-friendly interface. Google Cloud Storage and Amazon S3 are both in the same boat for large application files and great for …
Chose Amazon S3
Whether you want to use AWS or not is generally the reason why you would want to use S3. Its feature set and price point are comparable to others (B2/ Drive), but you get the access to AWS. If I had all the time in the world, I would go the B2 route, but the integrations are …
Chose Amazon S3
S3 is sort of the de-facto standard for cloud-based storage right now, so it's hard to have a great basis of comparison. Google's drive and cloud offerings are fairly similar in functionality, although I would say the AWS management console is a lot easier to interact with than …
Google Drive

No answer on this topic

Features
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)Google Drive
Data Center Backup
Comparison of Data Center Backup features of Product A and Product B
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
9.0
Ratings
8% above category average
Google Drive
-
Ratings
Universal recovery9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Instant recovery7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Recovery verification8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Business application protection8.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple backup destinations9.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Incremental backup identification9.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Backup to the cloud9.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Deduplication and file compression8.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Snapshots9.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Flexible deployment9.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Management dashboard8.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform support8.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Retention options10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Encryption9.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Enterprise Backup
Comparison of Enterprise Backup features of Product A and Product B
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
8.8
Ratings
7% above category average
Google Drive
-
Ratings
Continuous data protection9.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Replication9.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Operational reporting and analytics8.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Malware protection8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-location capabilities9.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Ransomware Recovery8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
-
Ratings
Google Drive
7.7
Ratings
9% below category average
Versioning00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Video files00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Audio files00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Document collaboration00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Access control00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
File search00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Device sync00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Cloud Storage Security & Administration
Comparison of Cloud Storage Security & Administration features of Product A and Product B
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
-
Ratings
Google Drive
8.1
Ratings
7% below category average
User and role management00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
File organization00 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Device management00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Cloud Storage Platform
Comparison of Cloud Storage Platform features of Product A and Product B
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
-
Ratings
Google Drive
8.3
Ratings
2% below category average
Performance00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Reliability00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Storage Reports00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)Google Drive
Small Businesses
Cove Data Protection
Cove Data Protection
Score 9.9 out of 10
SugarSync
SugarSync
Score 5.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Bacula Enterprise
Bacula Enterprise
Score 9.1 out of 10
Druva Security Cloud
Druva Security Cloud
Score 9.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Bacula Enterprise
Bacula Enterprise
Score 9.1 out of 10
Druva Security Cloud
Druva Security Cloud
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)Google Drive
Likelihood to Recommend
9.2
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.9
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.6
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.8
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
6.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)Google Drive
Likelihood to Recommend
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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Suppose you require quick access to files across multiple systems. Real-time collaboration on Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets. You don’t have to send ten different versions of the same file back and forth. One person can write a document in Los Angeles, and someone in Tokyo can be on at the same time and see their edits as they make them.
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Pros
  • 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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  • Any user with access can store a file using different platforms like Android, IOS, Windows, or Ubuntu (Desktop version)
  • You can share files with any number of different users with different access rights or you can even keep it public by providing the access link and assign different rights for public access
  • You can open Excel/Word files using google software Sheets/Docs in the browser environment without having to install software like Microsoft Office etc on your Windows OS
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Cons
  • 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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  • Advanced File Search, personally I find it uncomfortable to search for files with specific extensions within my drive in Google Drive, the interface is not very clear and the search options are limited, making this work tedious.
  • In applications like Google Sheets, the number of cells is extremely small, which limits the amount of information that can be saved, this makes the tool focus on small files.
  • Inherited permissions, it happens to me that in certain shared files when analyzing the permissions granted to the participants some of them are left with owner permissions without having given such property, that point is confusing so I would like the interface to be clearer.
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Likelihood to Renew
Due to princing, availability and scalability.
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It's perfect for me. It keeps things saved and is easy to remove items if needed. Also, I very much enjoy the formatting options. Along with the integrations it has for SSO. Overall, this is the most user friendly system I have ever come across.
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Usability
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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It's easy enough to use for computer users of all ages and skill levels. I am an advanced user, and I think the hardest part might be showing someone how to download and set up the app on their device if they weren't too familiar with computers, but overall it is very easy to understand.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
Always available
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Performance
No answers on this topic
The documents load fairly quickly and also update in real time, especially given the fact that multiple people can be using it at once. The "Offline" feature works great to allow the user to make edits and access the document without access to the internet, and then sync changes later once they're back.
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Support Rating
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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It takes a few days for customer support to get back to you. Although, I have not had to use support too often. Once you get an email back, they are very thorough and work hard to fix the problem quickly. It is a really great resource and a great way to get the help you need if you're stuck. A phone call also works quickly but you have to call during specific times.
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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
The effective google workspace using training that my organization received and was conducted by me (as a team lead of the ICT team) was mind-blowing and as a result, our staff is performing well in terms of using the application for their daily jobs than before. Now, in my institution, all teachers and all the administrative personnel are very much interested in cloud storage facilities, in previous my institution was afraid of losing all important documents in the cloud storage. But, after having received the training they are now realized that if anyone has only one google account then he or she can use 15GB of cloud storage freely and they are now happy because now it is not necessary for anyone to carry the traditional pen drive.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
It's an extremely easy software to implement, once you sign up for a google account you automatically have access to google drive with a set amount of storage space. The business or Google Suite accounts have more storage space than a regular free account, but setting up and accessing google drive is very easy in both cases
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Alternatives Considered
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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Apple Drive dosn't offer that much storage and doesn't provide vast features with collaborative tools like docs , spreadsheet and forms etc. Google drive also allows you to search for files and folders that contain certain words in their title or content in any perticular file. therefore search is very deep and reliable and hepls to access your data easily
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
I have always been able to access
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Return on Investment
  • 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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  • It has given our operation remote capabilities
  • Easier to access and understand client's need through collaborative enviroment
  • availability to digital resources fast and easy
  • saved our operation hundreds of dollars in physical storage (both investment and maintenance)
  • our operation became easier for new staff to get onboard: small learning curve to use it
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ScreenShots

Google Drive Screenshots

Screenshot of Google Drive PriorityScreenshot of Comment on Microsoft Files in Google DriveScreenshot of Shared drives