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Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) vs CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Barracuda Email Gateway Def...
Ranking in Cloud Backup
40th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in Cloud Backup
11th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (2nd), NAS (8th), Cloud Migration (7th), Cloud Storage (11th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (2nd), Content Collaboration Platforms (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Backup category, the mindshare of Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is 0.2%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 0.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Backup
 

Featured Reviews

Alex Clerici - PeerSpot reviewer
Valuable, reliable, and offers a comprehensive dashboard
Setting up Barracuda was moderately complex and it took about an hour with initial support from Barracuda engineers. While the deployment process wasn't overly complicated, having some knowledge about Barracuda or assistance from an engineer is advisable, especially when dealing with customer architectures. Once set up, ongoing support wasn't necessary, making it a relatively straightforward process.
Igal Muginstein - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers flexibility, fast performance, and ransomware protection
The platform is releasing new features at a fast pace, which sometimes leads to version updates every three to six months. Although updates are generally not complex, it is challenging to stop the production environment during these updates, even if the downtime is just a few minutes. This is a common challenge across all NAS providers. From my perspective, the most important area for improvement is developing a method to perform updates without affecting customer production environments. Additionally, there are some cache size limitations that might become problematic for future use cases, though they don’t impact current applications. Collaboration for NFS and SMB protocols could also be enhanced. Although this issue isn't specific to CTERA, it is something we are working on together to improve. The quality of the versions has improved, but occasional issues still arise. All solutions face this challenge, but we hope to see a continued reduction in the number of bugs. That said, we haven't had any major production problems in the last four years, and we appreciate how responsive CTERA is to our issues. We engage in brainstorming sessions together, and we value this relationship.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable functionality is their robust blocking feature, along with fundamental rules for our environment."
"It makes it easier for customers to access emails during security incidents."
"If a customer faces an email security issue, we'll do some initial troubleshooting. If the issue isn't resolved, we work with the Barracuda team for further assistance."
"I find Barracuda Essentials' dashboard incredibly valuable as it provides everything I need at a glance."
"CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow."
"The features I find most valuable are in the gateways themselves. They have done a great job over the years of providing insight into what is happening with our products, with the batches that come through that are scanned. I enjoy that part of it, and it is fairly easy to use from our standpoint once we get to know the product."
"Our main reason for going for this solution was the uncontrollable growth of file data. It was unsustainable on our previous platform or technology. We needed something scalable like CTERA, so it was the scalability that we required."
"It is a three-in-one solution for us. It is a file-sharing platform, an archiving solution, and also a backup solution."
"CTERA has out-of-the-box data protection capabilities."
"CTERA stood out due to its ease of use and superior security features."
"The support is awesome. It is top-notch. I would rate their support a ten out of ten."
"I like that the glass is always half full with CTERA file services. It keeps the data hot for users on location and then tiers off older data. If you need it, the stub is still there. You can click on it, and it's back on the device."
 

Cons

"There Is room for improvement in the quarantine and user interface."
"They could implement scheduled reporting in the product."
"Sometimes there are minor issues that can be frustrating, but not consistently bad."
"Enhancements are required on the data transmission front."
"AI and automation features could enhance the platform, such as AI-powered search, predictive storage analytics, and intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring. Predictive storage analytics will help with better capacity planning. There can be some sort of intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring."
"It has a learning curve."
"However, in some cases, they could improve performance."
"One suggested improvement for the CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is the ability to distribute data across multiple active backend storage nodes rather than the current limitation of a single active node."
"One of the bigger things that I would like to see is additional logging. There are logs in there. They provide us with the initial logs on what is happening on our CTERA device. I appreciate that, but they do not give us any further information. I would like to have more information on the logs themselves."
"More monitoring from the platform would be good. There is some monitoring, but it is paid. It is a chargeable service. It would be good for that to be included in the base."
"The new Edge filer that they have comes with a lot more features than what we purchased. It would be better if we are able to add those extra features without having to swap out the hardware. A clear upgrade path for legacy customers would be beneficial."
"Stability-wise, we just went through one issue that they addressed. We were having cloud sync issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's price is higher than other vendors."
"It is cheaper compared to other products."
"So far, pricing seems to be fine."
"It is fairly priced. I am not too involved in the pricing of what we used to pay, but it would have reduced the cost of ownership. I cannot give a figure, but the EMC solution was very expensive compared to CTERA."
"CTERA's pricing seems to be on par with some of the other players, such as Nasuni and Azure. They all have benefits, but CTERA is competitive for its features."
"It is hard to compare the costs if we want to retain the same model of a separate high-performance storage or certain things, but it is one of the cheapest solutions available in Israel."
"I find the pricing reasonable. They offered us deals that helped us. Especially with the upgrade to a bigger unit last year, they were helpful with the deal."
"I am not directly involved in the pricing aspects, but I understand that CTERA's pricing is competitive and within industry standards."
"CTERA's pricing model is competitive compared to other companies that achieve the same thing. Their closest rival is Nasuni, and CTERA is significantly more affordable than Nasuni."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
69%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Educational Organization
4%
University
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials)?
If a customer faces an email security issue, we'll do some initial troubleshooting. If the issue isn't resolved, we work with the Barracuda team for further assistance.
What needs improvement with Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials)?
The features and product itself are good. Sometimes there are minor issues that can be frustrating, but not consistently bad.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
I am not directly involved in the pricing aspects, but I understand that CTERA's pricing is competitive and within industry standards.
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
One area for improvement is the migration tool, which at times does not work as designed, necessitating the use of alternative solutions like Robocopy. AI and automation features could enhance the ...
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
We use it as a hosted cloud solution. We had initially tried Azure File Sync, but that did not work. Due to certain security concerns, I was tasked with researching alternatives. I evaluated severa...
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) vs. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.