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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs CloudAlly 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

CloudAlly
Ranking in Cloud Backup
48th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
SaaS Backup (22nd), MSP Backup (11th)
CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in Cloud Backup
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (1st), NAS (4th), Cloud Migration (3rd), Cloud Storage (4th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (7th), Cloud Storage Gateways (1st), Content Collaboration Platforms (6th), AI Legal & Compliance (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Cloud Backup category, the mindshare of CloudAlly is 0.7%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Backup Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform0.9%
CloudAlly0.7%
Other98.4%
Cloud Backup
 

Featured Reviews

it_user550464 - PeerSpot reviewer
ICT Officer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Using the app is straightforward with easy buttons to click on.
Customer Service: We didn't contact their customer service at any point because the backup and recovery process is pretty straightforward. But they have a customer support email and phone just in case. Technical Support: CloudAlly can be used by a non-techie person because it's simple. We didn't contact the technical support, but it's available for any user who may encounter a problem.
Tim M. - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Supports global file recovery and rapid data versioning across 80 nodes
When we implemented CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform early on, and we've been on the platform for three years, we have three different cloud portals. We have an EU portal, we have an Americas portal, and we have an APAC portal. It would be nice if we could combine that into one portal just for that global single pane of glass look. We've talked with them about that and they say it's challenging just because of some of the structure, but that would be something nice if we could get that. I integrated with Varonis, and because CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform didn't have initially a working relationship with that vendor, it would have been nice had that pre-existed us saying we need this. But that wasn't totally CTERA's fault. There was a lot of challenge working with the vendor to build out that interface. A single pane of glass for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform would be beneficial. Everything else works fairly well. We've never had a point where we couldn't get to something that caused us to have a serious outage, and that to me is the mark of a good software package. It's never really caused us serious issues. We have our issues, that's true, and every software package does. However, we've always been able to meet the needs of the business, and we drive hard on security, stability, and scalability. From the scalability standpoint, that's one of the most important things to us. We're on their capacity-based licensing, so if I need to ramp up another CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform NAS, if we have an M&A, I can easily and quickly spin up another NAS and start doing that data transition fairly quickly. The biggest maintenance issue with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is firmware upgrades. We've done a lot of transition from hardware solution to virtualized infrastructure in order to minimize that hardware lifecycle portion of it. We have to upgrade the firmware and sometimes that can be challenging in the nature of business of our size with 80 CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform nodes around the globe. The issue we've had with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform happened recently in a firmware upgrade where there was a major database back-end upgrade and that took some time. For our smaller sites, it would be an hour or two, and I can build that into a fairly easy change window. But in our larger sites where we may have hundreds of terabytes of data, that database update process took maybe a day or a day and a half. That becomes more challenging, especially in a manufacturing environment where people are wanting to access configuration files. We had to pin the data locally because the data would be available on the local edge filer, but the cloud sync, while it was updating the database, the cloud files weren't available. That would be the other thing I'd like to see an improvement on: some way to do those database upgrades either in a more segmented fashion or in some type of offline environment. I understand the logistics behind that sounds easy, but I'm sure it's not.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Definitely an impressive ROI because the app is inexpensive and saves us time, headaches plus slow computer devices that could be jammed with huge data."
"The user-friendly interface of CloudAlly significantly enhances data protection."
"With this solution, its remarkable to see that ease of use means ease of use."
"CloudAlly provides a unique solution for every major email application."
"The user interface of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is fantastic, providing a centralized console where we can manage all our Edge Filers and configure them through a very user-friendly interface."
"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."
"The support is awesome. It is top-notch. I would rate their support a ten out of ten."
"The replication workflows have replicated content to our branch offices and cached that content, which makes that content accessible to our regional offices around the globe and makes accessing that data much easier and much faster."
"CTERA's instantaneous and redundant file replication, available across multiple geographical locations, ensures easy and user-friendly recovery."
"It makes people think I have my superhero cape on because they're thinking it's all lost, they're doomed, and we're able to quickly and effectively go back and say, 'Here you go,' and it's not hours, it's minutes."
"After we finished the implementation, after about six months or so of using it, it's good because all the administration tasks are done via a graphical user interface."
"I recommend everyone to use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform as it is really stable, versatile, and it does not have much downtime—it is perfect."
 

Cons

"CloudAlly can improve in the areas of reporting, especially regarding backup statistics and backup failures presented in pie graphs and charts."
"However, it is a bit difficult to find the files because I need to go through each and every folder step-by-step, and the search engine optimization is not that good, so I face some difficulties in finding the files."
"The issue we've had with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform happened recently in a firmware upgrade where there was a major database back-end upgrade and that took some time."
"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."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform can be improved, but I consider it to be good overall."
"Stability-wise, we just went through one issue that they addressed. We were having cloud sync issues."
"It would help to have a global single-pane-of-glass view of all my CTERA devices. We have different regions, and we must log in to each portal to see what's happening with those. It would be nice to have a single portal to see the health of the devices, versions, and firmware upgrades. Sometimes, we want to dive into something more complex, like investigating why CTERA storage usage grew from 2 terabytes to 4 terabytes in a week. That's a little challenging. It's something we would like to see on the road map."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I am not directly involved in the pricing aspects, but I understand that CTERA's pricing is competitive and within industry standards."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Legal Firm
28%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Wholesaler/Distributor
6%
Computer Software Company
52%
Outsourcing Company
17%
Educational Organization
5%
Construction Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with CloudAlly?
CloudAlly can improve in the areas of reporting, especially regarding backup statistics and backup failures presented in pie graphs and charts.
What is your primary use case for CloudAlly?
I use CloudAlly for what it's made for, which is backups.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
I do not know much about the pricing, setup cost, or licensing cost of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. I believe it comes with a license. From what I heard from my seniors, a 50 TB capacit...
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
I cannot think of any areas at this time that could be improved. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a well-rounded platform.
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
I primarily use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to replicate our marketing content to our regional offices. Marketing uses the Adobe application suite for creating and managing file content...
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Check out our customer success stories: https://www.cloudally.com/resources/customer-success-stories/ 
McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. CloudAlly and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.