Amazon S3 alternative

[barbara schendel]

I have a client with about 5.5GB worth of audio files that we want to move out of his media library and put on an external server somewhere. (they do not need to be in the media library at all, we can embed them into a page from whatever URL they are at). We had been planning on using Amazon S3 but as I have started setting it up, I've realized it is pretty complicated and I may be in over my head.

However, as you can guess, client likes the low per-GB price of S3 over something like Libsyn.

Looking for recommendations of another simple file storage service where we can store files and serve them, but that is a bit easier to work with.

Curious to hear what others have used. 

[Lisa Drew]

If you’re client has a Microsoft account, they get One Drive with 1TB of space. 

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[Juan Abelleira]

Dropbox offers free storage up to 5 gigs!

[Michael Helmke]

I believe you are looking for an affordable service for hosting files on the public internet vs free bulk storage from the likes of google drive or dropbox (which doesn't really offer that).  To me the best "alternative" to S3 is AWS S3 and I'd refer you to the following resources.  If you have already looked at them and they weren't suitable then I apologize in advance.

This document is an AWS tutorial on configuring an S3 bucket as a static website:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/HostingWebsiteOnS3Setup.html

The idea is you create a subdomain that you will use for file storage like "storage.example.com" and that subdomain is hosted on S3 for storage.  You link to files from there from your main site.

In order to get files uploaded to S3 easily, the AWS command line utility works however the Windows and Mac based FTP client FileZilla also supports S3 for bulk uploading:

https://filezilla-project.org/

I'm not sure that true alternatives to S3 are going to be orders of magnitude simpler to use.  However you might look at Microsoft Azure cloud services and see if their cloud storage product (I think called "Azure Storage") has a simpler setup and usage than S3.

Curious to hear what you decide upon.

Michael Helmke

On Monday, May 24, 2021 at 12:17:45 PM UTC-5 barbara schendel wrote:

[dar...@hbi.com]

Hi Barbara,

Have you try https://wasabi.com/?

I have not used them, but I believe that they are cheaper than AWS.

On Monday, May 24, 2021 at 12:17:45 PM UTC-5 barbara schendel wrote:

[Michael Helmke]

For the small quantities of data that Barbara mentioned in the first post (5Gb or so), AWS cost is probably going to be about 50 or 60 cents a month if the entire archive was downloaded each month.  Less if not.  Wasabi looks like they have a minimum monthly fee of $6/month.  They may certainly be cheaper for more data and high volume sites, though.

-- Michael

[dar...@hbi.com]

Good point Michael.  I have not used them, but they may be easier to set up than AWS.

[barbara schendel]

Thank you very much everyone for the suggestions! 

We played around with Dropbox but that doesn't seem to allow files to be embedded directly, it wants to display them in its own sort of dropbox window. (when you paste the .mp3 path directly into an incognito window, rather than the plain browser window with just the file player in it, it displays a whole dropbox branded page with a little dropbox audio player in there). When you attempt to embed a file like that into a WP page, the audio cannot be played and you will get errors in the JS console saying "no supported resource". (I may be doing it wrong, perhaps there are additional steps to take to allow something to be embedded directly, but if there was, I could not find it)

Similar thing with Google drive. You can't get a direct link that ends with .mp3, instead you get a long complicated URL that does not actually play when embedded. (plus it was very very slow to produce a player or any audio when you try to go to that URL)

I did look at Wasabi, the only problem there was (aside from the minimum monthly charge) they don't actually say they are easier anywhere. Just cheaper. So that made me hesitate. ! 

There may be an ideal solution out there somewhere but probably not for the next-to-nothing cost and very fast performance we saw with S3 (kind of like the good/fast/cheap thing where you can only pick two!). 

Therefore, I think what we are going to end up doing is using S3 after all but just sticking with the simple GUI console you see when logged in as the root user. And, to share access with my assistant, I will have to share the actual root login with her. Terribly inelegant and probably not how it's intended to be used, but at least it works without an engineering degree and is better than having to write JSON or use command line for everything.

Thank you so much for the ideas. And, if I do end up finding an ideal easy/fast/cheap solution at some point, I'll post an update here for anyone else that runs into a similar conundrum! 

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[dar...@hbi.com]

Barbara,

I believe that you can create a user in AWS with just access to manage the the S3 buckets, so you do not have to give the root login. 

Good Luck

[Nick Ciske]

The advantage of Wasabi is predictable costs (AWS S3 charges for outgoing bandwidth after ~10g/mo) which can result in some big surprise bills that could easily exceed $6/mo based on traffic. Adding a CDN in front of S3 can help, but is another layer to mange. 

Wasabi also tends to have better download speeds than AWS S3 due to it’s infrastructure and pricing model.

See also: DigitalOcean Spaces which is easier than S3/Wasabi with predictable pricing and built in CDN (key for large MP3 files!) — nicer UI, but less granular permissions for API calls (and anyone in your DO account can upload/manage files to any space in your account). You don’t need to host at DO to use DO Spaces.

If you do decide use AWS S3, never use your master account login for anything except account admin, or you are opening yourself up for a world of hurt should those get compromised (as in, they can spin up whatever they want, and you get the bill).

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/latest/userguide/orgs_best-practices_mgmt-acct.html

You can create as many IAM users with different roles (predefined S3 roles) as you want — one for you, one for your assistant, etc.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_users_create.html

AWS is complicated (because it’s insanely powerful) but once you get the hang of IAM users and the core services, it’s a lot less scary… IME ;-)

_________________________

Nick Ciske

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612-564-1626

nick....@luminfire.com

[Toby C]

Regarding Wasabi, here's a true story:  I was unable to connect a WP backup plugin with both S3 and Backblaze (another S3 competitor) yesterday - likely user error, but still... Wasabi just worked. Sure it's $5/mo vs 10-cents/mo or whatever, but I just saved, potentially, hours of setup time + related headaches.  And now I can eat ice cream to celebrate the victory.

Toby

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[barbara schendel]

Thanks for the links and advice Nick. I miraculously was able to get an IAM user added and didn't even have to write any JSON (there was a way to search for the permissions you want to assign). 

Thanks also for the recommendation about Wasabi, Toby! I think I will check that out the next time I have a situation like this.  (or maybe/hopefully I'll be more comfortable in s3 by then)