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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 (3rd), NAS (9th), Cloud Migration (7th), Cloud Storage (11th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (2nd), Content Collaboration Platforms (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 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 0.6%, 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

"I find Barracuda Essentials' dashboard incredibly valuable as it provides everything I need at a glance."
"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."
"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."
"CTERA's instantaneous and redundant file replication, available across multiple geographical locations, ensures easy and user-friendly recovery."
"CTERA has out-of-the-box data protection capabilities."
"The solution provides substantial flexibility, allowing the separation of workloads across various hardware platforms without vendor lock-in. This flexibility makes it adaptable to future infrastructure changes."
"CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow."
"CTERA stood out due to its ease of use and superior security features."
"The best feature is the migration tool within CTERA."
"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."
"The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a hybrid solution that supports both on-premises and cloud environments."
 

Cons

"Sometimes there are minor issues that can be frustrating, but not consistently bad."
"There Is room for improvement in the quarantine and user interface."
"They could implement scheduled reporting in the product."
"Enhancements are required on the data transmission front."
"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."
"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."
"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 area for improvement is the migration tool, which at times does not work as designed, necessitating the use of alternative solutions like Robocopy."
"The web portal that our users access to view data and backups could be optimized. CTERA could apply some of the improvements made to their administrative interface on the user side. The administrators are a much smaller group of people than the users, so it would be helpful if they targeted user experience resources to them."
"Stability-wise, we just went through one issue that they addressed. We were having cloud sync issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cheaper compared to other products."
"The product's price is higher than other vendors."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"So far, pricing seems to be fine."
"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."
"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 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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
67%
Educational Organization
4%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Retailer
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: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.