Rapidly expanding amounts of digital data are causing corporations and businesses alike to rely heavily upon cloud storage systems for managing and distributing this increasing amount of data. Traditional cloud storage solutions like Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage offer high levels of availability, scalability, and performance via their centralized systems. However, there are concerns about the lack of privacy for data stored in the cloud, too much reliance on one vendor (vendor lock-in), and having only one point of failure. In the last few years, decentralized systems have been developed to address these concerns, taking advantage of a peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture to provide better resiliency and resistance to censorship. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and traditional cloud storage systems. It evaluates how both systems are architected, compares their performance characteristics and compares the costs of using each type of system. The results of an experimental setup measuring upload and download speed for several different file sizes illustrate key trade-offs between centralized versus decentralized storage systems. While cloud storage provides for a higher level of reliability and performance than that provided by IPFS, the authors conclude that IPFS has certain advantages over cloud storage in terms of decentralization and cost-effectiveness. Therefore, hybrid storage models may be the most practical solution for meeting the needs of new modern distributed applications.