Managed MinIO Hosting — production-ready from $15 a month
High-performance S3-compatible object storage. Deployed on your own dedicated instance in AWS, Azure, or GCP, kept patched, backed up, and monitored by ManageStacks — standard MinIO, no lock-in.
MinIO on ManageStacks is high-performance S3-compatible object storage deployed to your own AWS, Azure, or GCP region — priced flat at $29 per instance per month plus underlying disk cost, with erasure coding, bucket versioning, encryption at rest, and full S3 API compatibility. Materially cheaper than paying AWS S3 egress fees for cross-cloud traffic, and ideal as the object-storage backend for Loki, ClickHouse, backups, and AI/ML data lakes on ManageStacks.
What does MinIO do, and why do teams deploy it?
MinIO is high-performance, S3-compatible object storage that runs on any cloud or on-premises infrastructure. It provides a fully compatible Amazon S3 API — any tool or SDK that speaks S3 works against MinIO without code changes.
MinIO's performance characteristics are impressive: distributed setups deliver sustained multi-GB/s throughput, and single-node setups outperform S3 for read-heavy workloads. It supports erasure coding (up to N/2 disk failures tolerated), server-side encryption (SSE-S3, SSE-KMS, SSE-C), bucket versioning, object lifecycle management, and site-to-site replication for DR.
On ManageStacks, MinIO is often deployed as the underlying object store for other apps — Loki chunks, ClickHouse backups, Postgres WAL archives, ML model weights, Ollama model persistence — keeping everything within your cloud region and avoiding S3 egress costs when workloads cross clouds or accounts. Note: as of 2025 MinIO Inc. changed the licence to AGPL v3, and features that used to be in the community binary (like the web console UI) are now Enterprise-only — this matters if you were used to the older UX.
- Amazon S3-compatible API — full drop-in for S3 SDKs
- Erasure coding: tolerate up to N/2 disk failures without data loss
- Server-side encryption (SSE-S3, SSE-KMS, SSE-C)
- Bucket versioning + lifecycle management (transition + expiration)
- Site-to-site replication for disaster recovery + geo-distribution
- Event notifications via webhooks, Kafka, or SQS-compatible endpoints
High-performance S3-compatible object storage
What does managed MinIO hosting cost?
Flat per-app pricing, in your chosen AWS, Azure, or GCP region. No per-user pricing — a busy deployment costs the same as a quiet one.
Starter
Staging and internal tools. Dedicated instance, TLS, daily backups, managed upgrades.
Standard
Production workloads. Adds monitoring, staging environment, region choice, priority support.
Business
High-traffic and compliance workloads. Adds a high-availability replica and same-day support.
24×7 SRE retainer
Round-the-clock on-call across every hosted application, for teams that need a pager answered at 3am.
Self-hosting MinIO vs managed — what does it really cost?
The software is free. The engineer-hours are not.
Running it yourself
- Provision VMs with disks; install MinIO; configure erasure-coding topology by hand
- Configure TLS, IAM policies, and bucket lifecycle rules manually
- Wire in Prometheus exporter + Grafana dashboards separately
- Set up site-to-site replication for DR yourself
- Track MinIO releases + manage the AGPL v3 licence implications for your use case
On ManageStacks
- Subscribe through your AWS, Azure, or GCP marketplace
- MinIO comes up with erasure coding, TLS, IAM, and Grafana monitoring
- Pair with Loki, ClickHouse, Ollama on the same account for internal object storage
- Site-to-site replication available for DR on Business+
- Version upgrades handled by us with zero-downtime rolling restarts
MinIO on ManageStacks vs the alternatives
How MinIO on ManageStacks compares to hyperscaler object storage and other S3-compatible cloud offerings.
| MinIO on ManageStacksUs | AWS S3 | Cloudflare R2 | Backblaze B2 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Managed on your AWS, Azure, or GCP | AWS-managed | Cloudflare-managed | Backblaze-managed |
| Data residency | Your cloud region | AWS region choice | Cloudflare edge | Backblaze regions |
| Pricing basis | Flat per instance + disk | Per GET/PUT/GB storage + egress | Per GB storage + per op | Per GB storage + per op |
| Egress cost | None within your region | $0.09/GB out of AWS | Zero egress fees | $0.01/GB out (very cheap) |
| Open source | Yes (AGPL v3) | No (proprietary) | No (proprietary) | No (proprietary) |
| S3 API compatible | Yes | Yes (reference impl) | Yes | Yes |
Provisioning, upgrades, backups and monitoring on your team’s plate.
What does running MinIO yourself involve?
ManageStacks deploys MinIO with erasure-coded storage, TLS encryption, and Prometheus-based monitoring. On the same account, MinIO acts as the object-storage backend for Loki (log chunks), ClickHouse (backups), Postgres (WAL archives), and Ollama (model weights) — keeping data-heavy apps' storage internal and avoiding S3 egress costs.
MinIO key numbers
How long from subscribing to a live instance?
Subscribe
Subscribe to ManageStacks through your AWS, Azure, or GCP marketplace.
Provision
MinIO spins up with erasure-coded storage, TLS, IAM policies, and Grafana monitoring — typically 3-5 minutes.
Create buckets
Use the mc CLI or S3 SDK to create buckets, set lifecycle rules, and configure IAM policies for application access.
Integrate
Point applications (Loki, ClickHouse, Postgres backups, Ollama model store, application uploads) at your MinIO endpoint.
When is self-hosting MinIO the right answer instead?
“Managed hosting is not always the correct call.”
Self-host when a platform team already runs the infrastructure and on-call rotation to operate MinIO at genuinely low marginal cost. Self-host when compliance requires an air-gapped or on-premises deployment that no hosted option can satisfy. And self-host when the deployment depends on heavy customisation with a fast internal build-deploy loop, because an internal release process will beat any managed change process.
For everyone else — teams whose engineers have better things to do than shepherd upgrades — managed hosting is cheaper than the hours it replaces.
Which cloud should MinIO run on — AWS, Azure or GCP?
For most workloads, the choice of cloud matters less than proximity: run MinIO in the same cloud and region as the applications and data it talks to, because every request between them adds a round trip. The underlying compute performs equivalently across AWS, Azure, and GCP.
In practice, an existing cloud footprint decides it. All plans support all three clouds, and moving regions later is a scheduled migration, not a rebuild.
Deepest managed-service catalog, default when there's no existing footprint
Best fit for teams already on Microsoft 365 or Entra ID
Strongest for data/analytics-adjacent workloads
Every plan supports AWS, Azure, and GCP — region choice included.
Common questions about MinIO on ManageStacks
How is this different from just using AWS S3?
MinIO on ManageStacks is drop-in S3-compatible, so from your application's perspective it looks identical. The differences: (1) no S3 egress fees when your apps and MinIO are in the same account/region — huge for AI/ML workloads reading model weights repeatedly, (2) predictable flat pricing vs S3's per-GET/PUT/storage/egress metering, (3) data stays in your cloud region under your IAM. S3 wins when you need cross-region replication with vendor SLAs, or you're heavily integrated with S3-specific IAM features.
What about MinIO's licence change to AGPL v3?
In 2025 MinIO Inc. re-licenced the community binary from Apache-2.0 to AGPL v3 — technically OSI-approved but restrictive for commercial reselling and for embedding in commercial products. For internal use (running MinIO to store your own data), AGPL is not an issue. For applications distributed to customers, AGPL requires source disclosure. ManageStacks deploys MinIO for internal use only — you're not distributing the MinIO binary to customers.
How is erasure coding configured?
MinIO defaults to erasure coding across all drives in a set. For a 4-drive setup with EC:2 config, you can lose up to 2 drives simultaneously without data loss. ManageStacks configures the parity + drive count based on your instance tier — Business+ deployments use multi-node distributed MinIO with EC across nodes.
Can I run Loki, ClickHouse, or Postgres backups against MinIO on ManageStacks?
Yes — this is a common pattern. Point Loki's chunk store at your MinIO, ClickHouse S3 backup engine at your MinIO, Postgres WAL archives at your MinIO. Everything stays in your cloud region and avoids S3 egress. On the same ManageStacks account, these apps talk to MinIO over the internal network.
Does ManageStacks handle MinIO version upgrades?
Yes. MinIO releases frequently. We test each release, run migrations on a clone if needed, and roll forward once validated. Zero-downtime upgrades on multi-node distributed MinIO.
Is site-to-site replication supported?
Yes — for DR across cloud regions or between clouds. Active-active or active-passive replication supported. Configure through the MinIO console or the mc admin CLI.
What about the MinIO console UI?
MinIO's built-in web console (Object Browser) is now Enterprise-only after the 2025 licence change. On ManageStacks, you can use the mc CLI (fully open source) or any S3 GUI client (Cyberduck, Rclone, S3 Browser). Alternatively pair with a lightweight community browser fork.
What happens if I want to migrate off?
mc mirror or S3 sync tools copy your buckets to any S3-compatible target — real AWS S3, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, GCS, or another MinIO. Object storage is portable by API. Migration off is a supported operation.
Run MinIO without carrying the pager
Subscribe through your AWS, Azure, or GCP marketplace. We handle provisioning, SSL, monitoring, backups, updates, and security. From $15/mo.