We have used Akeeba for some time now, however due to the size of backups many issues come up from using remote backups (S3).
Is it less error prone when using a remote ftp backup rather then S3? From what we notice, due to the splitting of files and the typical php timeout limit of 30 seconds, even optimizing settings the backups the backup can fail roughly 20% of the time, and increase depending on the size of the site.
Also we have tried variations in the settings for the S3 backup, 20% failure rate is about as low as we can get it on any server environment (with 500mb+ sites, lower sites had less of a problem). We recently stopped using Akeeba due to this in favor of automated WHM backups but have a situation where we need to use it again. the version was in the 3.7 range when we last used it actively (it was around 80 Joomla sites with varied versions).
So is the process Akeeba uses for backups safer/faster with FTP/SFTP? The reason I ask this question is the 20% failure rate in my opinion has nothing to do with Akeeba, but packet loss and such that leads to it failing, when creating automated backups a failure could be right when its needed most. So my thoughts are the connection through FTP/SFTP could be more reliable then HTTP.