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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs FreeNAS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 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

CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in NAS
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (1st), Cloud Migration (4th), Cloud Storage (2nd), Cloud Backup (7th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (5th), Cloud Storage Gateways (1st), Content Collaboration Platforms (7th), AI Legal & Compliance (2nd)
FreeNAS
Ranking in NAS
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 5.2%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FreeNAS is 3.9%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform5.2%
FreeNAS3.9%
Other90.9%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Vincenzo D'Aniello - PeerSpot reviewer
Software developer at TREXON S.R.L.
Open-source with great disk management and task synchronization
The system itself allows you to add any feature. The only bad thing is that this maybe depends on FreeBSD, and sometimes finding documentation is difficult. For example, we knew that previous versions automatically enabled the Linux kernel, yet with the recent version, this was no longer the case. Now, there was the possibility of being able to create Debian-based jails, and finding the documentation was not easy or fast. That said, in the end, we succeeded. If you find the documentation, it is always incomplete and fragmented.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have seen a clear return on investment, and I would estimate that CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform saved about 50 to 60 percent of the costs tied to our old file storage and backup setup."
"CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has positively impacted my organization by making our data management better, giving us greater security in our use, and letting us work easier with all the file services we need."
"The solution provides data eviction, where unused data is evicted from the local file, freeing up space. It also allows data to be rehydrated from the cloud when needed."
"I can definitely say that there is considerable time savings with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform compared to traditional approaches for file access and saving."
"The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a hybrid solution that supports both on-premises and cloud environments."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has improved our operations tremendously by eliminating our NAS branch and providing a single platform for our file storage where we can sync, share, and backup our runtime data."
"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."
"The fact that no data are lost when a hard drive fails is extremely reassuring, as I have had two of five drives fail at one time and no data were lost."
"It integrates well into either Windows or Linux environments."
"The solution has been very stable so far."
"FreeNAS is much simpler and easier to use than other solutions, but we don't have the complete range of features that come with the full version."
"The ease of use of the 'jail', the management of backups, and copies to easily create test and pre-production scenarios have speeded up the development and distribution of business apps."
"What I like about it is that I can work on it from any computer or any device. The initial setup is very simple. The setup wizard is really helpful."
"The program is fast, fun to work on and easy."
"The stability is quite good; our system is in production and we have not had any problems with it, and when a drive fails, we don't really have any disruption because we can easily rebuild the disk, even if it is very large."
 

Cons

"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."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform could be improved by being a little faster in performance and having a timeline for new features and updates."
"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."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform can be improved, but I consider it to be good overall."
"One area for improvement is the migration tool, which at times does not work as designed, necessitating the use of alternative solutions like Robocopy."
"Stability-wise, we just went through one issue that they addressed. We were having cloud sync issues."
"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."
"However, in some cases, they could improve performance."
"Its support for Hyper-V clusters."
"The one thing that I find difficult to do which is very time-consuming is that I like to have a backup of the important files."
"FreeNAS should be better prepared for clustering."
"Make it easier to find out how to fix things when something goes wrong."
"One of my hard drives has failed and the documentation that I've been able to find has not helped."
"The latest version of the dashboard doesn't work as good as the previous version. Sometimes we change our dashboard back to the previous version because the latest version just doesn't work as good."
"The support for S3 needs to be improved."
"If you find the documentation, it is always incomplete and fragmented."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 am not directly involved in the pricing aspects, but I understand that CTERA's pricing is competitive and within industry standards."
"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 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."
"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."
"Its price is okay. It suits our needs."
"For our configuration, we pay a little bit less than €10,000 ($12,000 USD) per year."
"Its licensing cost is based on the hardware capacity."
"We use the free version of the program."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
41%
Outsourcing Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Construction Company
4%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Performing Arts
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
Pricing for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is subscription-based, and licensing appears flexible and environment-dependent. It can be licensed for hosted data services or private deploymen...
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
A few improvements would be more granular reporting, a simpler initial setup, and a smoother admin experience for edge cases. It would also help if troubleshooting and policy management were a litt...
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
My main use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is replacing or modernizing legacy file storage and giving remote teams secure access to shared files across locations. I am using it to...
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Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
Morroni Technologies Inc., Creative Integrations
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. FreeNAS and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.