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Amazon S3 vs Dropbox: What are the differences?
What is Amazon S3? Store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. Amazon Simple Storage Service provides a fully redundant data storage infrastructure for storing and retrieving any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web.
What is Dropbox? Build the power of Dropbox into your apps. Harness the power of Dropbox. Connect to an account, upload, download, search, and more.
Amazon S3 belongs to "Cloud Storage" category of the tech stack, while Dropbox can be primarily classified under "File Storage".
Some of the features offered by Amazon S3 are:
- Write, read, and delete objects containing from 1 byte to 5 terabytes of data each. The number of objects you can store is unlimited.
- Each object is stored in a bucket and retrieved via a unique, developer-assigned key.
- A bucket can be stored in one of several Regions. You can choose a Region to optimize for latency, minimize costs, or address regulatory requirements. Amazon S3 is currently available in the US Standard, US West (Oregon), US West (Northern California), EU (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Sydney), South America (Sao Paulo), and GovCloud (US) Regions. The US Standard Region automatically routes requests to facilities in Northern Virginia or the Pacific Northwest using network maps.
On the other hand, Dropbox provides the following key features:
- Dropbox Chooser- Get files from Dropbox into your web app with just a few lines of JavaScript.
- Sync API- Read and write to Dropbox from iOS & Android as if it were a local filesystem.
- Core API- The basics. Upload, download, search, and more from your web or mobile app.
"Reliable", "Scalable" and "Cheap" are the key factors why developers consider Amazon S3; whereas "Easy to work with", "Free" and "Popular" are the primary reasons why Dropbox is favored.
Airbnb, Netflix, and Spotify are some of the popular companies that use Amazon S3, whereas Dropbox is used by Lyft, StackShare, and 9GAG. Amazon S3 has a broader approval, being mentioned in 4148 company stacks & 7691 developers stacks; compared to Dropbox, which is listed in 1352 company stacks and 5849 developer stacks.
We offer our customer HIPAA compliant storage. After analyzing the market, we decided to go with Google Storage. The Nodejs API is ok, still not ES6 and can be very confusing to use. For each new customer, we created a different bucket so they can have individual data and not have to worry about data loss. After 1000+ customers we started seeing many problems with the creation of new buckets, with saving or retrieving a new file. Many false positive: the Promise returned ok, but in reality, it failed.
That's why we switched to S3 that just works.
Pros of Amazon S3
- Reliable592
- Scalable492
- Cheap456
- Simple & easy328
- Many sdks83
- Logical29
- Easy Setup12
- 1000+ POPs11
- REST API10
- Secure5
- Easy3
- Web UI for uploading files2
- Plug and play2
- GDPR ready1
- Flexible1
- Faster on response1
- Plug-gable1
- Easy to use1
- Easy integration with CloudFront1
Pros of Dropbox
- Easy to work with432
- Free254
- Popular215
- Shared file hosting175
- 'just works'168
- No brainer100
- Integration with external services79
- Simple76
- Good api49
- Least cost (free) for the basic needs case38
- It just works10
- Convenient7
- Accessible from all of my devices6
- Command Line client5
- Can even be used by your grandma4
- Mac app3
- Sync API3
- Synchronizing laptop and desktop - work anywhere3
- Reliable2
- Cross platform app2
- Extended version history2
- Beautiful UI2
- Delta synchronization2
- Ability to pay monthly without losing your files2
- Easy/no setup1
- YC Company1
- Everybody needs to share and synchronize files reliably1
- Backups, local and cloud1
- The more the merrier1
- For when client needs file without opening firewall1
- Easy to work with1
- Everybody needs to share and synchronize files reliabl1
- Easy to use1
- So easy1
- What a beautiful app1
- The more the merrier0
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Cons of Amazon S3
- Permissions take some time to get right7
- Takes time/work to organize buckets & folders properly6
- Requires a credit card5
- Complex to set up3
Cons of Dropbox
- Personal vs company account is confusing3
- Replication kills CPU and battery1
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What is Amazon S3?
What is Dropbox?
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