Dell PowerStore vs FreeNAS comparison

Dell Technologies and FreeNAS are both solutions in the NAS category. Dell Technologies is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7, while FreeNAS is ranked #15. Dell Technologies holds a 10.4% mindshare in N, compared to FreeNAS’s 2.7% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of FreeNAS users who would recommend it.

Dell PowerStore

Read 164 Dell PowerStore reviews

22,645 Views
3,623 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

FreeNAS

Read 9 FreeNAS reviews

762 Views
762 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Dell PowerStore

FreeNAS

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 2024

FreeNAS and Dell PowerStore both compete in the network-attached storage domain. FreeNAS seems to have the upper hand for cost-effective and flexible solutions, while Dell PowerStore is preferred in environments needing advanced features and robust performance.

Features: FreeNAS provides open-source software, customizable storage solutions, and broad data protection capabilities, enhancing its flexibility and usability. Dell PowerStore stands out with integrated AI operations, a data-centric design, and scalable architecture, which supports complex data management tasks seamlessly.

Room for Improvement: FreeNAS could enhance its support services, offer more streamlined scaling options, and improve its user interface for non-tech users. Meanwhile, Dell PowerStore might focus on reducing its pricing to appeal to mid-sized companies, offer more straightforward integration with existing smaller IT setups, and refine initial setup procedures to require less technical expertise.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: FreeNAS offers a do-it-yourself deployment that suits tech-savvy users who enjoy hands-on control but might lack extensive customer support. In contrast, Dell PowerStore simplifies deployment with strong customer support, easing the adoption process for larger businesses.

Pricing and ROI: FreeNAS requires minimal initial investment, maximizing ROI for budget-conscious organizations by delivering cost-saving storage solutions. Dell PowerStore involves a higher upfront cost, justified by its performance and feature set, potentially offering greater long-term ROI for companies with complex storage needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerStore vs. FreeNAS Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore vs. FreeNAS

December 2025

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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

Dell PowerStore

Ranking in NAS

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

164

Ranking in other categories

Data Warehouse (4th), Enterprise SAN (1st), All-Flash Storage (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)

FreeNAS

Ranking in NAS

15th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 10.4%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FreeNAS is 2.7%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NAS Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Dell PowerStore	10.4%
FreeNAS	2.7%
Other	86.9%

NAS

Featured Reviews

reviewer2304864

Vmware Windows Senior Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Resilience has supported proactive management and secured audit readiness across multiple sites

The resilience in Dell PowerStore benefits my company from an auditing perspective because we know we have that resilience in place. I see Dell PowerStore playing a bigger role in the future because we are starting to use it more, and that is pushing it. The biggest return on investment for me when using Dell PowerStore is scalability. Scalability is key. I can amplify that scalability is the biggest return on investment because we have redundancy between two sites; if something goes down, we have to manage it, but we want to do it proactively.

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Vincenzo D'Aniello

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The compression is excellent."

"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerStore is the ease of deployment and general use."

"The stability has been excellent."

"If I were giving advice to another company looking at Dell PowerStore, I would say that you cannot go wrong with Dell, as the sales and support teams are always top notch."

"In my view, if a storage array requires constant monitoring or 'whispers in your ear' every five minutes with issues, it isn't doing its job. Because the sites currently running PowerStore are silent and stable, I consider the Return on Investment to be excellent. It provides exactly the peace of mind we are looking for."

"My company finds particular features within Dell PowerStore valuable, primarily the cost benefits for the performance that we get out of the platform."

"PowerStore is robust compared to the previous models like Unity, and it provides excellent compression and deduplication."

"It provides a big benefit when upgrading a new VMware environment. For example, in a big environment with 10 to 30 ESXs, you can take everything and put that into PowerStore. So, it is cost-effective, which is very important and has been massive for us. You reduce almost 80% from the hardware and work directly from PowerStore. Building hardware, especially in a big VMware environment, is a big issue for my organization."

More Dell PowerStore pros

"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 solution has been very stable so far."

"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."

"It has the best storage capacity."

"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."

"Its stability is the most valuable. It is reliable, and we don't have to worry too much about it."

Cons

"Even though most customers have four-hour support, it sometimes takes two days for parts to arrive when I would expect it the next day."

"Could be improved by including a synchronizing feature for the file systems."

"I have experienced some issues, downtime, and outages with Dell PowerStore, as we have had quite a few issues related to storage and resilience."

"Customer service is good, though if you are running into some issues where you have to chase after them or they do not understand what is going on, overall it is pretty good."

"The cost of technical support is high."

"The interface of Dell PowerStore reminds me of the Cisco mentality where it's just boxes moving around as you're clicking; it's not easy to understand what you're trying to do, and you have to have solid documentation to navigate the system and make changes to ensure you're not jeopardizing your system as you present and remove storage and expand LUNs."

"When we go to buy or populate more drives in the storage array, they're so expensive. If they could lower the cost for components, we would definitely expand them more and be more inclined to buy more storage units, but it's currently a price crunch for us."

"From an entry-level perspective, PowerStore 500T has limited expansion capabilities."

More Dell PowerStore cons

"If you find the documentation, it is always incomplete and fragmented."

"FreeNAS should be better prepared for clustering."

"The support for S3 needs to be improved."

"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."

"They should include clustering for the solution."

"They can improve the integration with PSA systems. This functionality could be better."

"The latest version of the dashboard doesn't work as good as the previous version."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of licensing, my organization has Dell Technologies End User License Agreement (EULA), but I don't know exactly how it works, though it is a big bundle of licenses for Dell Data Domain, Dell EMC Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, Dell ECS, and all such kinds of storage arrays."

"As compared to others, PowerStore is cheaper."

"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."

"The price of Dell PowerStore could improve. The price should be managed more compared to Huawei Dorado or IBM All-Flash series."

"The price of Dell EMC PowerStore could be better, it is a bit expensive."

"I rate the price of Dell PowerStore a seven out of ten."

"We purchased it with a five-year warranty."

"Dell PowerStore is not a cheap solution."

More Dell PowerStore pricing and cost advice

"We use the free version of the program."

"Its licensing cost is based on the hardware capacity."

"For our configuration, we pay a little bit less than €10,000 ($12,000 USD) per year."

"Its price is okay. It suits our needs."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

16%

Performing Arts

12%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	54
Midsize Enterprise	34
Large Enterprise	81

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Large Enterprise	2

Questions from the Community

What do you think about Dell EMC PowerStore? Is it actually a new product?

PowerStore is flexible, scalable, simple, and performant with market-leading economics for a wide range of legacy and next-gen apps. It is only Flash and can support many workloads from today's app...

See all answers

How does Dell's EMC PowerStore compare with its EMC Unity XT?

Dell EMC PowerStore is a unified storage platform that has the added benefit of being scalable. The automated management of resources feature provides a more simple administration. I found the flex...

See all answers

What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?

Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell offerings and integrated into the PowerStoreOS. The installation and setup have a ...

See all answers

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Comparisons

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 14% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerVault vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 9% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 8% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 7% of the time

More Dell PowerStore Competitors

NetApp FAS Series vs FreeNAS

Compared 11% of the time

QNAP NAS Storage vs FreeNAS

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs FreeNAS

Compared 10% of the time

StarWind Storage Appliance vs FreeNAS

Compared 10% of the time

Buurst SoftNAS vs FreeNAS

Compared 9% of the time

More FreeNAS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore

January 2026

Download Dell PowerStore product report

Buyer's Guide

FreeNAS

January 2026

Download FreeNAS product report

Also Known As

PowerStore

No data available

Overview

Dell PowerStore is a scalable, high-performance platform supporting both modern and traditional workloads, enhancing IT operations with AI-driven automation and advanced data reduction features.

Designed for flexibility, Dell PowerStore integrates seamlessly with VMware, providing robust security and high IOPS. Users benefit from fast NVMe storage, intelligent data management, and scalable performance to handle diverse workload demands. However, improvements are needed in replication, enterprise functionalities, and UI complexity. Stability and support issues highlight the need for enhanced monitoring and pricing strategies.

What are the key features of Dell PowerStore?

Advanced Compression: Optimizes storage capacity effectively.
Data Deduplication: Reduces redundant data, improving efficiency.
Scalability: Easily adjusts to growing business needs.
VMware Integration: Enhances virtualization performance.
AI-Driven Management: Simplifies IT operations.
NVMe Storage: Provides fast, reliable access to data.
Robust Security: Ensures data protection.

What benefits does Dell PowerStore offer?

High Performance: Supports demanding applications with high IOPS.
Flexible Design: Adapts to changing workload requirements.
Cost Efficiency: Promotes ROI through data reduction and scaling.
Enhanced Management: Streamlines operations with AI and integrations.
Improved Data Handling: Efficiently manages databases and storage.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and IT, Dell PowerStore is critical for VMware virtualization, high-performance databases, and backup storage. It supports hosting virtual machines, mirroring storage, and handling SAP and Oracle databases effectively. Its role in hybrid and on-premises setups showcases its adaptability and integration capabilities for mission-critical tasks.

Dell Technologies

FreeNAS is an operating system that can be installed on virtually any hardware platform to share data over a network. FreeNAS is the simplest way to create a centralized and easily accessible place for your data. Use FreeNAS with ZFS to protect, store, backup, all of your data. FreeNAS is used everywhere, for the home, small business, and the enterprise.

FreeNAS

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Morroni Technologies Inc., Creative Integrations

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore vs. FreeNAS

December 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerStore vs. FreeNAS

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