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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs N2W comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 3, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
CTERA Enterprise File Services reduced costs and time, minimized manual storage, and eliminated SSD and alternative storage needs.
Sentiment score
2.3
<p>N2WS Backup &amp; Recovery users saved time and money, improved efficiency, reduced downtime, and achieved better data protection and ROI.</p>
Adding SSD storage to Windows file servers is expensive, and we no longer need to back up those devices.
I am positive that CTERA has helped reduce the total cost of ownership by eliminating the need for manual storage management and reducing storage service processes.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.3
CTERA's platform provides responsive support, rated highly for proactive assistance and efficient issue resolution by knowledgeable agents.
Sentiment score
3.3
N2W offers exceptional technical support with a responsive team, ensuring high user satisfaction through efficient issue resolution and communication.
They swiftly address concerns and take ownership of the call, providing a very satisfactory support experience.
High-priority issues are handled promptly.
I would rate their support a ten out of ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
CTERA's platform is scalable and easy to expand globally, though CPU and memory licensing constraints may pose challenges.
Sentiment score
4.6
N2W offers scalable, efficient backup for diverse cloud environments, accommodating growing workloads and numerous AWS accounts and instances.
If we need to upgrade CPU and memory, we should be able to do that without a license upgrade.
CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow.
It offers good scalability options, including vertical and outward scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
CTERA's platform faced initial bugs but improved over time, earning high stability ratings with reliable data access.
Sentiment score
5.1
N2W stability is highly rated, backing up 600+ instances daily with no downtime, ensuring reliable production operations.
It has been pretty stable since then.
We had things deployed for years, and we were suddenly getting cloud sync issues that were crashing our sites.
It is very stable and reliable.
 

Room For Improvement

The CTERA platform needs improvements in monitoring, updates, UI, logging, and performance, while users value current features and support.
N2W needs UI updates, improved integration, disaster recovery, multicloud support, and user-friendly features for enhanced backup management.
AI and automation features could enhance the platform, such as AI-powered search, predictive storage analytics, and intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring.
The main problem is that if two people are working on the same file, for example, one in the U.S. and one in Israel, they can overwrite each other’s work without any notification.
It would help to have a global single-pane-of-glass view of all my CTERA devices.
Improved disaster recovery options and expanded multicloud support are two areas where N2WS has already made significant advancements in the latest version.
I would like to see native support for more AWS services beyond EC2 and EBS, such as full coverage of RDS, DynamoDB, and Redshift.
This would help those who are not familiar with Infrastructure as Code to back up and restore these services without the overhead of understanding IaC configuration.
 

Setup Cost

CTERA offers cost-effective enterprise file services with flexible licensing, providing significant savings over EMC and Nasuni, especially in Israel.
N2W provides easy AWS Marketplace purchasing with flexible pricing and tiered licensing, supporting diverse needs without extra fees.
Unlike other solutions that require hardware purchases, CTERA offers software licensing with flexibility across multiple infrastructure providers.
CTERA’s pricing should be more proportional and accessible so that cost is not the factor preventing customers from purchasing.
CTERA's pricing seems to be on par with some of the other players, such as Nasuni and Azure.
Pricing can increase as backup volumes grow, so it is important to balance the level of protection with cost-optimization strategies such as tiering snapshots to S3 or Glacier.
I believe N2WS offers a highly competitive pricing model, delivering excellent value.
Not all features are available in the cheaper plans.
 

Valuable Features

CTERA excels in scalability, flexibility, data management, and protection, making it ideal for hybrid cloud and remote work environments.
N2W offers efficient backup, rapid recovery, cost optimization, and ransomware protection, ensuring business continuity for critical AWS services.
As soon as something is written to the device, CTERA copies it to the cloud, where it's versioned with snapshots so we can recover it.
A vital advantage of this platform is its instantaneous recovery capability, allowing seamless access to a secondary gateway if the primary one fails.
It is a three-in-one solution for us. It is a file-sharing platform, an archiving solution, and also a backup solution.
Lifecycle management and automated transitions to lower-cost storage tiers have been instrumental in optimizing costs while meeting compliance and retention requirements.
We had a ransomware event in 2023, and we were able to recover every machine with minimal effort.
The most valuable features are EC2 and RDS backups, as well as VPC capture.
 

Categories and Ranking

CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in Cloud Backup
7th
Ranking in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
6th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (2nd), NAS (4th), Cloud Migration (3rd), Cloud Storage (4th), Cloud Storage Gateways (1st), Content Collaboration Platforms (9th)
N2W
Ranking in Cloud Backup
24th
Ranking in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
19th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (29th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Disaster Recovery (DR) Software category, the mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of N2W is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Disaster Recovery (DR) Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform1.0%
N2W0.9%
Other98.1%
Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
 

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.
George Philippakos - PeerSpot reviewer
Backup process and monitoring become simple and effective while seamless instance recovery and cost optimization ensure business continuity
Policy creation is straightforward, with automatic backups of new resources enabled through tagging. Instance recovery is seamless, whether within the same VPC or across different VPCs. File-level restores are intuitive and easy to manage, while full VPC backups provide critical protection and peace of mind in the event of a disaster. In addition, lifecycle management and automated transitions to lower-cost storage tiers have been instrumental in optimizing costs while meeting compliance and retention requirements. The ability to create immutable backups further strengthens our business continuity strategy by ensuring an additional layer of protection against accidental or malicious data loss.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
68%
Educational Organization
4%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Retailer
3%
Computer Software Company
16%
Healthcare Company
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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 Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
 

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...
What do you like most about N2WS Backup & Recovery?
N2WS Backup &amp; Recovery is very easy to use and configure backup for AWS instances.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for N2WS Backup & Recovery?
I believe N2WS offers a highly competitive pricing model, delivering excellent value. It is certainly a worthwhile investment, providing a strong return on investment (ROI).
What needs improvement with N2WS Backup & Recovery?
Improved disaster recovery options and expanded multicloud support are two areas where N2WS has already made significant advancements in the latest version. I am eager to upgrade and take full adva...
 

Also Known As

No data available
N2WS Backup & Recovery, N2WS Cloud Protection Manager, N2W Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial/BYOL
 

Interactive Demo

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
Deloitte, NASA, Johnson & Johnson, Dyson, Deuthsche Bahn, Skechers, Allan Gray, Hewlett Packard, St. John's University, City of Oakland
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. N2W and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.