Yes, you can. Payload allows you to configure storage on a per-collection basis. For example, you could store sensitive user documents securely in AWS S3 with strict access controls, while serving public marketing images through Cloudflare R2 to save on egress fees. You just need to configure each plugin to target the specific collection slug.

Unlike standard AWS S3 which uses virtual-hosted style URLs (e.g., https://bucket-name.s3.region.amazonaws.com), MinIO and many self-hosted S3-compatible alternatives route requests using path-style URLs (e.g., https://minio.yourdomain.com/bucket-name). Setting forcePathStyle: true tells the underlying AWS SDK to format the API requests correctly for your MinIO server.

By default, the S3 adapter will try to return the raw R2 bucket URL. To serve files through your custom Cloudflare CDN domain, you must use the generateFileURL function within your collection configuration to intercept and rewrite the URL path, as shown in the R2 example above.

Yes, standard AWS S3 charges for data transfer out to the internet. If your web app or SaaS is media-heavy, this can quickly become expensive. This is why many developers opt for Cloudflare R2, which offers zero egress fees, or host their own MinIO instances.