Getting Started with AWS S3 and quickS3

S3 is the most widely used object storage there is, but giving your team access to it usually means a detour through the IAM console, which is its own kind of pain. quickS3 lets you hand out secure access to S3 buckets in a few minutes instead.

Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you have:

• An AWS account with S3 access
• An existing S3 bucket (or create one through the AWS console)
• Your AWS Access Key ID and Secret Access Key

Step 1: Create an IAM user

quickS3 keeps your team out of IAM, but you still need one IAM user with S3 access to connect quickS3 to your bucket in the first place.

1. Go to the AWS IAM Console
2. Create a new IAM user
3. Attach the AmazonS3FullAccess policy (or write a custom policy scoped to specific buckets)
4. Create access keys for the user

Step 2: Connect AWS S3 to quickS3

1. Log in to your quickS3 account and go to Storage Providers.
2. Click Add Provider and select AWS S3.
3. Fill in the form:
   • Endpoint is your bucket’s S3 endpoint (e.g. https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com for us-east-1). Use the region where your bucket lives.
   • Region is the AWS region (e.g. us-east-1).
   • Bucket scopes (optional): leave blank to let quickS3 list all buckets the key can access, or enter a comma-separated list of bucket names to restrict the connection.
   • Access key ID and Secret access key come from Step 1.
4. Leave Allow quickS3 to update bucket CORS settings (recommended) on. When you save or test the connection, quickS3 adds the quicks3.com origin to your bucket’s CORS policy so your team can upload and download from the browser without extra setup. If you’d rather manage CORS yourself, turn this off and set it in the AWS console (see troubleshooting below).
5. Save, then assign buckets to roles.

Step 3: Set up team access

Once you’re connected, you can create roles with specific permissions (read-only, upload, delete), assign team members to those roles, and restrict access down to the folder level.

Security best practices

A few habits worth keeping. Rotate your credentials on a schedule, whether through AWS Secrets Manager or a plain calendar reminder. Use bucket policies to limit access to specific IP ranges or VPC endpoints. Turn on versioning so an accidental delete isn’t permanent, and enable CloudTrail logging so you can see who accessed what.

Troubleshooting

“Access Denied” errors?

• Verify your IAM user has the correct permissions
• Check that the endpoint and region match your bucket
• Make sure no bucket policies conflict

Can’t see files?

• Confirm the bucket isn’t empty and is included in your bucket scopes (if you set them)
• Check that you’re using the correct region and endpoint

Browser uploads blocked (CORS)?

If you turned off CORS auto-update, add a CORS rule in the S3 console (Bucket → Permissions → CORS):

[
  {
    "AllowedHeaders": ["*"],
    "AllowedMethods": ["GET", "PUT", "POST", "DELETE"],
    "AllowedOrigins": ["https://quicks3.com"],
    "ExposeHeaders": []
  }
]

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Ready to get started? Sign up for quickS3 and connect your first S3 bucket today.