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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
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (2nd), Cloud Migration (3rd), Cloud Storage (4th), Cloud Backup (7th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (6th), Cloud Storage Gateways (1st), Content Collaboration Platforms (9th)
FreeNAS
Ranking in NAS
16th
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 October 2025, in the NAS category, the mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 2.5%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FreeNAS is 2.0%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform2.5%
FreeNAS2.0%
Other95.5%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

Richard Saini - PeerSpot reviewer
The ransomware recoverability has helped with our data protection mandates
File replication and versioning seem to work very well. We did have some challenges at the beginning, but all of that has been resolved now. It works very well. It does what our users require. Replication is excellent. We needed that, and the versioning is also pretty important. One of the reasons we chose CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform was the requirements we had to have ransomware protection. Our existing solution at the time would not have met those requirements of being able to restore from a ransomware incident. What we wanted from a platform was the ability to restore a snapshot or restore a file system or data back to a previous point in time, and CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform offered us that. Availability was a very key feature of why we liked the solution. It is effectively like the disaster recovery feature, and that also lends itself to replication. It works very well for our ransomware recovery objectives. There is business growth due to being able to offer greater storage capacity for them. Before, we were running into storage limitations, and now that we have enabled CTERA, we can accommodate more data and users. When it comes to reduction in recovery time objectives, we have not used it in that way. However, we are anticipating that our recovery time objectives will come down from over a month to hours or days. Recovery point objectives will also effectively be down to hours. It is hard to say how much it has freed up IT resources for other projects or tasks. Now that it is fully implemented and fully working, we are spending a lot less time looking after it. It has drastically reduced the amount of time we used to spend on backups. It is hard to provide the metrics, but six hours a month or something like that would be fair. The ransomware recoverability feature has definitely helped with our data protection mandates. It has reassured our security teams that we are in a good place with regard to securing the data and being able to recover the data.
Vincenzo D'Aniello - PeerSpot reviewer
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 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."
"CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow."
"The best feature is the migration tool within CTERA."
"The support is awesome. It is top-notch. I would rate their support a ten out of ten."
"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."
"CTERA's instantaneous and redundant file replication, available across multiple geographical locations, ensures easy and user-friendly recovery."
"CTERA has been particularly capable of keeping all of our workstations backed up. That became a critical feature for us during the pandemic when computers were rarely in the office. Everybody went off-site with their computers, and we were accustomed to working with a centralized storage infrastructure where people would come to the office and connect to the server to use, create, and modify files. Everything was done directly to that server."
"CTERA has out-of-the-box data protection capabilities."
"The solution has been very stable so far."
"Its stability is the most valuable. It is reliable, and we don't have to worry too much about it."
"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."
"It has the best storage capacity."
"It integrates well into either Windows or Linux environments."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"It has a learning curve."
"I am looking for a process where version upgrades do not impact the customers. There is no downtime."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"They fixed all the requirements that we had in the beginning. The beginning was a little bit rough, but we tuned it nicely. However, in some cases, they could improve performance."
"If you find the documentation, it is always incomplete and fragmented."
"FreeNAS should be better prepared for clustering."
"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."
"The support for S3 needs to be improved."
"The latest version of the dashboard doesn't work as good as the previous version."
"They can improve the integration with PSA systems. This functionality could be better."
"They should include clustering for the solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"So far, pricing seems to be fine."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Its licensing cost is based on the hardware capacity."
"We use the free version of the program."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
68%
Educational Organization
4%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Retailer
3%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Performing Arts
14%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
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?
I believe CTERA could improve their pricing experience by customizing price lists per region. For example, there is a difference between what is sold to customers in Israel versus U.S. customers. I...
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
There’s an issue with permissions, they aren’t always as transparent for customers as Microsoft’s, for example. Integrations with AI could also be improved, and error messages should be clearer, mo...
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
CTERA connected us with Bezeq, which is a communications company in Israel that also sells similar solutions, and we also set up a portal. We were then Bezeq's integrator, until Bezeq decided to st...
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Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

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: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.