Amazon S3 Storage for WooCommerce: Overhaul and a Fresh Start

When Kestrel acquired the Amazon S3 Storage for WooCommerce plugin, we saw real potential in a niche but essential tool: enabling WooCommerce merchants to serve large digital products with speed, scale, and confidence.

We inherited a plugin with great bones but an aging codebase, a long feature backlog, and some stubborn bugs. Over the past few months, we’ve worked through nearly all of that backlog.

Now, we’re not just caught up, we’re starting to build forward.

Here are some highlights on what’s new, what’s fixed, and what’s possible in the first major chapter of the plugin’s evolution under Kestrel.

Automatic offloading for product downloads

One of the most impactful new features is automatic offloading of WooCommerce product downloads to your Amazon S3 bucket.

Once enabled, any downloadable file attached to a WooCommerce product is automatically uploaded to your S3 bucket as soon as you save it.

This helps you:

• Keep your customers’ experience seamless – downloads still run through WooCommerce’s standard file delivery system
• Reduce host strain by offloading large files to S3
• Ensure all downloads are served fast and reliably
• Add protection via pre-signed, time-limited S3 URLs

If you disable the plugin later, either for troubleshooting or because you no longer want to use it, your local files will resume serving without any manual changes or intervention from you.

If you’re already using Amazon S3 for WooCommerce, you can opt into this feature – it’s currently disabled by default to not disrupt any existing installs.

And if you prefer using shortcodes to serve downloads from S3, those will continue working as always. This feature simply gives you another, easier option.

Rewriting core functionality using the AWS SDK

The 3.0 release introduced a full under-the-hood rewrite, now using the official AWS SDK for PHP.

Why this matters:

• Future-proofing: The SDK ensures long-term compatibility with AWS infrastructure and security updates.
• New features: Enables the possibility for advanced functionality like Transfer Acceleration. Transfer Acceleration uses Amazon’s global edge network to speed up file delivery for international customers. It’s available as of version 3.2.0!
• Better developer experience: Cleaner hooks, more consistent behavior, and simplified debugging.

Less technical debt, more stability

Alongside the rewrite, we addressed key areas of technical debt:

• Removed outdated dependencies.
• Improved shortcode handling and compatibility.
• Added persistent caching to reduce load on S3 and speed up frontend delivery.

This round of updates is not flashy, but they fix real problems. If your downloads ever broke mysteriously before, those gremlins are probably gone.

Improved troubleshooting experience for Amazon S3 issues

In line with some of that backlog cleanup, version 3.0.5 introduced a plugin-specific diagnostic section in the WooCommerce System Status screen. You’ll see:

• Whether your S3 credentials and buckets are connected
• Region and permission settings
• Useful debug data to share with support (if needed)

Caching improvements for faster stores

We’ve added smarter caching to reduce load and latency:

• Shortcode URL caching prevents repeated lookups on product pages.
• S3 client reuse eliminates redundant API calls.

For stores serving lots of digital variations, or running on limited hosting plans, this means better performance and lower risk of hitting rate limits.

Localized for global sellers

The Amazon S3 Storage extension now supports six additional languages: German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, and Portuguese. Store admins in these regions now get a smoother, more intuitive experience with no extra configuration. We’ll continue to expand this availability as the plugin grows, but if you have a specific request, please let us know!

Experimental support for other S3-compatible providers

Want to test Cloudflare R2, Wasabi, Backblaze B2, or DigitalOcean Spaces? Now you can, with new filters added in version 3.0.5.

Use this filter to point the plugin at a non-Amazon provider while maintaining the same delivery workflows. Currently, this only works when using our Shortcode functionality – but you can use shortcodes as product download links!

For a bit more detail on how to use this experimental feature, check out our developer documentation here.

Why support other S3-compatible providers?

Using an alternative S3-compatible provider can offer WooCommerce merchants lower costs, better regional performance, and more control over their infrastructure. Services like Cloudflare R2, Wasabi, and Backblaze B2 often provide cheaper storage and transfer rates than Amazon, with perks like zero egress fees or flat-rate billing.

For stores serving specific regions or navigating data compliance laws, alternative providers may offer more suitable hosting locations. Developers also benefit from avoiding vendor lock-in, aligning storage with their existing stack, and gaining flexibility for custom delivery workflows, without changing the underlying API, or really anything about your WordPress site.

Overall, we just want to make the tool as flexible and as useful as possible for as many people as possible, and this is a relatively easy way to test into doing that a lot better.

🧠 Note: This is an experimental, developer-first feature. It’s not officially supported yet – but if you’re building with one of these platforms, we’d love your feedback.

👀 What will we do next with Amazon S3?

Now that the inherited backlog is behind us, we’re turning our focus toward building upon the newly firm foundation. Some of the items in consideration are:

• Dynamic content offloading, including Media Library support
• Deeper integration with alternate cloud providers (possibly via separate plugin extensions)
• A more robust shortcode + block experience for modern content editors

But more importantly, whatever you tell us to build next.

As always, we’re building tools for developers first. We intend to offer the tools you can confidently build stores on top of. Let us know what we should prioritize in the Amazon S3 Storage extension by reaching out to our support team.

If you’ve been holding off, or struggling with flaky downloads, it’s time to upgrade. The plugin’s faster, smarter, and ready for whatever your store throws at it. Get Amazon S3 File Storage from WooCommerce.com