--- title: AWS Snowball Reviews meta_title: 'AWS Snowball Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 35 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how AWS Snowball works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.2 review_count: 35 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-09' parent_category: name: IoT Management url: https://www.g2.com/categories/iot-management --- # AWS Snowball Reviews **Vendor:** Amazon Web Services (AWS) **Category:** [IoT Edge Platforms](https://www.g2.com/categories/iot-edge-platforms) **Average Rating:** 4.2/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 35 ## About AWS Snowball AWS Snowball is a petabyte-scale data transfer service built around a secure suitcase-sized device that moves data into and out of the AWS Cloud quickly and efficiently. Jobs begin in the AWS Management Console, when a device (or devices) are shipped to your designated site to be filled up with data. Once the job is finished, the device is shipped back to AWS and the data put into your S3 bucket. Typical transfer times are about a week from start to finish. Snowballs are commonly used to ship terabytes or petabytes of analytics data, healthcare and life sciences data, video libraries, image repositories, backups, and archives as part of data center shutdown, tape replacement, or application migration projects. ## AWS Snowball Reviews ### 1. Must Service for Large data transfer to s3 **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Abhishek G. | DevSecOps, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 20, 2022 **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** The best thing about this service is that for large data transfers in TBs it's very convenient as we don't need to wait for that much. It's easy to order and data is securely transferred to the cloud. For Petabytes or exabytes of data, the snowmobile is used for very large organizations/architectures. **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** Its location-dependent, and sometimes delivery is delayed a lot though was is working to give a better experience but still needs a lot of improvement. Even in metro cities sometimes delays are encountered but with was support rarely faced any issues always cooperative. **What problems is AWS Snowball solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use these when we have very large data transfer from on-premise to AWS. During migration, it doesn't take that much time as even with the fastest connection over internet it's very tedious to transfer data when it comes to terabytes. ### 2. AWS Snowball **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** SaratahKumar c. | CEO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 02, 2022 **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** AWS Snowball storage hardware that I can able to rent from AWS **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** The only disadvantage of using AWS Snowball is on transportation of that device **What problems is AWS Snowball solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are using AWS Snowball for storing real-time data that is streaming from a hill station where we don't have a network ### 3. It's really good for export & import data from S3 **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jeevan S. | Information Technology Specialist, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 24, 2022 **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** We can transfer data through offline mode with the fully secure method. **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** As of now, I don't feel any negative points about it. **What problems is AWS Snowball solving and how is that benefiting you?** We can transfer a large amount of data with the least time and be fully secure. ### 4. Excellent for importing and exporting data to S3 **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Stephen C. | Agile Coach and Scrum Master, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 06, 2021 **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** AWS Snowball is part of the Snow Family - Snowball, Snowball edge and Snowmobile. I have never had a use case of Snowmobile, which is a truck that literally take a massive 100PB of data to the nearest data center. Snowball itself is slightly less cool than a truck for transporting data as it looks like a jerry can come futuristic briefcase. Its easy to use as plug in, set IP address, install Snowball client - which compresses and encrypts data. It is fast at migrating data, we did 48TB in 24 hours. **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** Its' not available in all regions and whilst data IN to S3 is free data OUT of S3 has a cost, so if your workload has lots of small files, possibly millions of them, you will be higher S3 costs. **What problems is AWS Snowball solving and how is that benefiting you?** Migrating data out of redundant but remote data centers across Europe safely in an encrypted highest quality secure way. ### 5. Snowball - Highly secure, portable devices to migrate data into and out of AWS **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Banking | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 15, 2022 **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** AWS Snowball is offline devices used to perform data migration. Any migration takes more than a week to transfer the data over the network, then we need to use Snowball devices. There are two types of storages available in Snowball 1. Snowball Edge Storage Optimized - transfer upto 80 TB 2. Snowball Edge Compute Optimized - transfer upto 42 TB **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** As of now, there are no dislikes and downsides for this product. **What problems is AWS Snowball solving and how is that benefiting you?** When we moved large amount of data to Cloud, it took more time to transfer the data to cloud due to limited bandwidth and connectivity. Hence we used AWS Snowball and completed data transfer within week. It's more secure and safe. ### 6. AWS Snowball Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gajendra R. | System Specialist, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 13, 2021 **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** You can transfer your terabyte if data from on promises to cloud with out using the your network. **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** It's not a dislikes, since a device will come to you and you upload the data and revert back to aws is bit time consuming process **Recommendations to others considering AWS Snowball:** For faster upload where network usage charge is high and bandwidth is low. **What problems is AWS Snowball solving and how is that benefiting you?** We can move our data much faster to cloud and it's less expansive compare to upload the data over network. ### 7. aseome tool for migration big data **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Program Development | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 21, 2021 **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** we can transfer large scale-data to AWS using Snowball **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** we have to wait still snowball will be arrived **Recommendations to others considering AWS Snowball:** nice tool if you want to use move big data to AWS Snowball is a nice tool sometimes you can use other tools which provided AWS but this is for large transfer **What problems is AWS Snowball solving and how is that benefiting you?** we have recently moved big data to AWS with a snowball. ### 8. Snow ball usage **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Government Administration | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 04, 2019 **Describe the project or task AWS Snowball helped with:** On of my employers planned to move to cloud partially and used snowball for data transfer **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** Snow ball comes in 50TB and 80TB sizes and very useful to copy data onto AWS data centers. Its very robust and secure. Data transfer speed is fast and the highlight. **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** When we request the snow ball we have to give the destination in the AWS environment (S3 bucket etc.) location where the data has to be copied and it cant be changed at any point after that. To access it one need to know shell scripting. **Recommendations to others considering AWS Snowball:** make sure you give the correct destination of data migration and know some shell scripting **What problems is AWS Snowball solving and how is that benefiting you?** The employer had slow net connection and huge volumes of data. Moving data using APIs or DX Connect wad not going to help and snowball was very effective. ### 9. These kind of snowballs aren't cold but they are cost effective and apparently indestructible!! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 04, 2018 **Describe the project or task AWS Snowball helped with:** There was a need to shift a significant amount of data from one client to another, where connection to the cloud may or may not be possible due to security and a lack of network access. Thank goodness for the external hard drive that literally never be filled up because the client was able to take the data from the site and load it (not the technical term) into the snowball, where they could take it and attach it to the clients local network for migration. **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** If you need to securely and quickly transfer data to AWS, Snowball is the right choice. Especially if your schedule doesn't allow time to make expensive upgrades to the network infrastructure. It's also great for secondary and third locations because they often have large backlogs of data and can be in a physically isolated environment. All reasons snowball can help save the day! **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** They cost $200 per use and remain property of Amazon so you'll be sending them back after the data has been migrated but that's the only dislike I can think of. ### 10. snowball migration review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** kurt o. | systems architect, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2018 **Describe the project or task AWS Snowball helped with:** data migration of key data from on-prem to aws **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** ease and quickness of getting a snowbll on sidte **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** when i order a snowball i can only select buckets i wnat the data to be loaded into. I would like to create the path inside the bucket i wnat the data to go into. ### 11. Move large amounts of data **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** david s. | Senior Release Manager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 29, 2018 **Describe the project or task AWS Snowball helped with:** This service is simple and effective. You plug plug in the box and move and scan a few settings and you are able to move the data from one node to the next. **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** Simple and effective moving Terabytes of data from our on prem area to the cloud. **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** The first time we did it it took a few times to get things moving and the data to transfer. ### 12. Snowball Excellence! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2018 **Describe the project or task AWS Snowball helped with:** Client had a large local infrastructure and data. They needed to migrate to AWS quickly and not utilize Direct COnnect or VPN as the datacenter was being spun down. **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** The ease of shipping and reliability. Having the device being handled to and from takes work off my team. Also the autoimport to where the data shows up in S3 automatically **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** Nothing that really comes to mind because areas where this fails AWS has other services to utilize. **Recommendations to others considering AWS Snowball:** Great way to move massive amounts of data into AWS without needing internet pipes ### 13. awesome product **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Robert P. | IT Infrastructure Manager, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 26, 2018 **Describe the project or task AWS Snowball helped with:** The product is way awesome. It has helped me transer a lot of data. **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** the product is way easy to use everytime I use it. **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** I like everything about the product that I've used ### 14. Moving lots of data **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 27, 2018 **Describe the project or task AWS Snowball helped with:** When speed of light is just not fast enough we use Snowball to move large amounts for data. **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** Love how fast the unit is arriving after ordering it and how easy it is to copy data to it from multiple machines. **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** The unit is very heavy. I almost broke my back last time I used one. ### 15. Snowball for the win **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Government Administration | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 29, 2018 **Describe the project or task AWS Snowball helped with:** Had to move 14TB produc tion Db from on premise to the cloud. Moving over the Network was not feasible **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** The security of the Snowball was very impressive. **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** There was nothing really in the snoball that was poor **Recommendations to others considering AWS Snowball:** It is by far the easiest way to transfer large chunks of data ### 16. Snowball New User **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Defense & Space | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 27, 2018 **Describe the project or task AWS Snowball helped with:** wonderful way to move large amounts of data while starting in a cloud environment **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** Ease of use and quickly available to new users in an AWS environment **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** I'm happy with this service. No dislikes as I have been very happy with this tool ### 17. heavy duty for heavy duty migration **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Government Relations | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 29, 2018 **Describe the project or task AWS Snowball helped with:** unit was very heavy bur very stardy. It was very easy to use and use **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** its simple and easy to use with good instructions **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** takes long time to order and shipping back can be an issue as some carrier will give hard time ### 18. Mass Migration **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 29, 2018 **Describe the project or task AWS Snowball helped with:** We are migrating to AWS, as a result we had to migrate 8 yrs of data to S3 **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** Using snowball to migrate the data is both simple and fast. **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** There is nothing I dislike about the product. ### 19. AwsResponses **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Karine Albenize dos S. | Consultor de SEO, Marketing and Advertising, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 13, 2018 **Describe the project or task AWS Snowball helped with:** At first, I wanted to use the platform to help me start my blog and begin monetizing it, but there were problems accepting my registration. **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** I like everything, I am fascinated by Amazon. **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** the fact of not having options in Portuguese and not even the possibility of description with translation **Recommendations to others considering AWS Snowball:** I think the person who is going to hire needs to know what they want because the tool is great, but you have to know what you really want from it to get 100% out of it. ## AWS Snowball Discussions - [What is AWS Snowball used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-aws-snowball-used-for) - [Which AWS service does AWS snowball edge natively support?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/which-aws-service-does-aws-snowball-edge-natively-support) - [What is the difference between snowball and snowball edge?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-the-difference-between-snowball-and-snowball-edge) - [When should I use AWS snowball?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/when-should-i-use-aws-snowball) - [View AWS Snowball pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/aws-snowball/reviews?filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=5§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-14+02%3A37%3A49+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=2abc925f-6f5e-4ca0-a5be-4a253e272346&secure%5Btoken%5D=5c6aa257f90268ea2899c08ce6312d8fcca79b278f8d4c37548ebb5810c7614d&format=llm_user) ## AWS Snowball Integrations - [Amazon EC2](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-ec2/reviews) - [Amazon S3 Glacier](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-s3-glacier/reviews) - [Amazon SageMaker](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-sagemaker/reviews) - [AWS Bedrock](https://www.g2.com/products/aws-bedrock/reviews) - [AWS DataSync](https://www.g2.com/products/aws-datasync/reviews) ## AWS Snowball Features **Edge** - Local processing - Edge Analytics - Edge Data Storage - Edge Application Management **Operations** - Process Control - Interoperability - Interface - Access Controls **Performance** - Containerization - Performance and Stability - Device Performance - Scalability ## Top AWS Snowball Alternatives - [Portainer](https://www.g2.com/products/portainer/reviews) - 4.8/5.0 (295 reviews) - [SUSE Rancher](https://www.g2.com/products/suse-rancher/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (146 reviews) - [Azure IoT Edge](https://www.g2.com/products/azure-iot-edge/reviews) - 4.1/5.0 (11 reviews)