--- title: AWS Snowball Reviews meta_title: 'AWS Snowball Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 34 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: 34 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-12' 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:** 34 ## 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. Snowball need some more robust way of transfer of data **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** RAJAT J. | Senior Member Of Technical Staff, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 27, 2022 **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** 1. It is convenient that they provide a device to transfer the data 2. Speed of upload is faster and we can track the whereabout 3. The device is of solid quality. **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** 1. Formality when we are supposed to transfer the data from warehouse to device 2. Security is always a issue with physical transfer of data incase of any theft 3. The time it take to download the data from DC to upload in AWS DC **What problems is AWS Snowball solving and how is that benefiting you?** 1. Transfer of enormous amount of data from our data center to AWS data center and finally getting that data in s3 bucket. It is further used for analysis and other work. ### 2. Large data transfer service provided by AWs cloud **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Chetan S. | Software engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 05, 2022 **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** AWS snowball is the service that enables you to transfer your large data to or from the AWS cloud. You can also use it as edge computing functionality.AWS send device to copy your data into that and then they will take that back to the AWS cloud. **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** Sometimes it takes 6-7 days from the request to receive the device to copy the data. AWS also charge higher for this service. **Recommendations to others considering AWS Snowball:** Any AWS user can raise a request for a snowball device from the AWS console to receive it and copy their data. **What problems is AWS Snowball solving and how is that benefiting you?** Anyone can transfer a large amount of data i.e. 10 TBs of data and then access it through the AWS console for any further use. ### 3. 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. ### 4. 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 ### 5. 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. ### 6. 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. ### 7. 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. ### 8. Best AWS feature for migration of big amount of data in/out of AWS **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Arpit Y. | Software Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 08, 2021 **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** AWS Snowball is one of the best services for the migration of your data to/from the AWS cloud. Basically, when you select the snowball service from the AWS console, AWS will send a device call Snowball to your place via post. You can copy your data into the Snowball the AWS will take the device and take the data from Snowball to Glacier(one of the storage devices from AWS). You can store petabytes of data into the Snowball. It is very helpful for a large amount of data migration. **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** Sometimes it takes too long in sending the device to your address. Also this service is not available in all the regions of AWS. It also has some high-end costs. **Recommendations to others considering AWS Snowball:** If you want to migrate from your on-premises data center to AWS public cloud this need to migrate a lot of data to AWS, in this case, snowball is the best option for data migration. **What problems is AWS Snowball solving and how is that benefiting you?** When I want to store a large amount of data on AWS via network it takes a lot of time in days, in this time your network should be consistent. But with the help of snowball, I can copy my data in some minutes and send it to AWS for restoration. ### 9. Physical in or out of Data **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Harsh G. | Tech Consultant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 29, 2021 **What do you like best about AWS Snowball?** AWS Snowball helps in transferring Terabytes or Petabytes of Data Physically(Not over a network). It is a one-stop solution for sharing massive data in less time and cost, which may take more than a week to transfer data over the network. **What do you dislike about AWS Snowball?** Do not provide computational Capability, instead go for AWS Snowball Edge. **What problems is AWS Snowball solving and how is that benefiting you?** AWS Snowball process involves installing snowball client on servers and copy files using client, then ship back to AWS facility, and then data uploaded into AWS S3 Bucket. Benefits - Snowball wiped off once uploaded into S3. -Less cost and Time compared to Network Transfer -Secure and Fast ### 10. 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. ## 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/aws-snowball-review-3382035?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-19+04%3A23%3A23+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=927c1e3f-32ae-4b14-8630-d3a2ce7af768&secure%5Btoken%5D=6efaf00e9cdae7a6d69e720bb00c873bcb3bd7c7ed4d1a04d6ee917043024e47&format=llm_user) ## 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)