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Dropbox vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 17, 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

Dropbox
Ranking in Cloud Storage
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
Content Collaboration Platforms (1st)
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Ranking in Cloud Storage
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (1st), Cloud Backup (14th), Public Cloud Storage Services (6th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Cloud Storage category, the mindshare of Dropbox is 5.1%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is 12.5%, down from 14.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Edgar  Paez - PeerSpot reviewer
Work from anywhere and backup easily while being practical
I recommend Dropbox, yet not for all of the features it has. I am a basic user. In a personal mode, we have about 100 employees, and maybe 20 of them use Dropbox as a personal backup system. ShareFile is more secure than Dropbox. Five years ago, ShareFile was qualified as having better security control, access privilege management, and version control recovery, among many features that we were using for private documentation. Overall, I would rate Dropbox an eight out of ten.
Pramod-Talekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution
The tool's most valuable features are the SnapLock and SnapMirror features. If something goes wrong with the data, we can restore it. This isn't a mirror; we store data in different locations. If there's an issue on the primary site, we can retrieve data from the secondary site. Multiprotocol support in NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is beneficial because it allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution. This feature eliminates the need to purchase different types of storage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main feature that I found the most valuable is the ability to link the documents such that they are automatically taken to a page where you can review them."
"The product's most valuable feature is storage."
"As the solution is cloud-based, installation is easy."
"Availability of dedicated Apps on any kind of OS."
"Dropbox is a very easy-to-use site that allows me to save files to the cloud for retrieval from almost any device (laptop, iPhone, iPad, etc...)."
"One of the advantages of Dropbox is that you can share files with people who are external to your organization without any additional costs. It is also easy to use, stable, and trustworthy."
"I use the product to open files."
"The search functionality and the ability to preview images are quite good."
"The solution’s Snapshot copies and thin clones in terms of operational recovery are the best thing since sliced bread. Rollback is super easy. It's just simple, and it works. It's very efficient."
"The good thing about NetApp is the features that are available on the cloud are also available on-premises."
"The solution’s Snapshot copies and thin clones in terms of operational recovery are good. Snapshot copies are pretty much the write-in time data backups. Obviously, critical data is snapshotted a lot more frequently, and even clients and end users find it easier to restore whatever they need if it's file-based, statical, etc."
"They have very good support team who is very helpful. They will help you with every aspect of getting the deployment done."
"It is much easier to control data since we can run queries across all our platforms with just one solution. Not only that, we can also monitor all the platforms with Active IQ, where we can see all the alerts, messages, and space consumption through a single application. This is regardless if the data is on-prem or AWS. It is much more efficient."
"The ability to do a straight SnapMirror from our on-prem to the cloud with no other data transitions is excellent."
"This solution has made everything easier to do."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it makes our data readily available and we don't have to go through a lot of trouble to access it."
 

Cons

"The scalability of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"I would like to have a document flow. S"
"The solution could be a bit less expensive."
"While generally user-friendly, there is room for improvement in the user interface, especially with the introduction of new integrations and features."
"Dropbox could be improved by reducing the storage price."
"A room for improvement in Dropbox is document editing. It would be nice to have the functionality of editing the document with other people at the same time. This is something that can be done on Office 365, and it's a feature I'd like to see in the next release of Dropbox."
"There is room for improvement in Dropbox's security measures."
"Dropbox needs to increase its storage."
"We've just been dealing with general pre-requisite infrastructure configuration challenges. Once those are out of the way, it is easy."
"When it comes to a critical or a read-write-intensive application, it doesn't provide the performance that some applications require, especially for SAP. The SAP HANA database has a write-latency of less than 2 milliseconds and the CVO solution does not fit there. It could be used for other databases, where the requirements are not so demanding, especially when it comes to write-latency."
"The navigation on some of the configuration parameters is a bit cumbersome, making the learning curve on functions somewhat steep."
"I would like to see more information about Cloud Volumes ONTAP using Google Cloud Platform on NetApp's website."
"Something we would like to see is the ability to better manage the setup and tie it to our configuration management database. We manage our whole IT infrastructure out of that database."
"If they could include clustering together multiple physical Cloud Volumes ONTAP devices as an option, that could be helpful."
"We have used technical support. As long as they don't call me at four o'clock in the morning to tell me that a drive failed and they are sending me another one, I like it. They have a tendency to do that."
"I would like to see more aggressive management of the aggregate space. On the Cloud Volumes ONTAP that we use for offsite backup copies, most of the data sits in S3. There are also the EBS volumes on the Cloud Volumes ONTAP itself. Sometimes what happens is that the aggregate size just stays the same. If it allocates 8 terabytes initially, it just stays at 8 terabytes for a long time, even though we're only using 20 percent of that 8 terabytes. NetApp could undersize that more aggressively."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Dropbox offers a freemium model which is very convenient and affordable. Beyond that, the pricing is favorable."
"I need to pay towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. The solution is expensive."
"Dropbox could be less expensive, and I pay monthly."
"One area that has been a big issue for me is when I tried to close my accounts, it is difficult. We had small personal accounts, and we then wanted to consolidate everything to the business account, but then to cancel and close those smaller accounts, it's a big issue. I still haven't done it and it's quite a long process."
"The solution is purchased on a subscription basis, and there are purchasing options. If you purchase annually there is a discount."
"The solution is expensive."
"I was using the free version of the product."
"I am using the free solution, which provides me with 2GBs of storage, and for me, it's sufficient."
"I know the licensing is a bit on the high-end. That's when we had to downsize our MetroCluster disks and just migrate to disks that were half used. We migrated into those just to reduce maintenance costs."
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was good, but it was a test system, not a real purchase."
"The pricing could be improved. It is a good product, but it is very expensive for me."
"If a customer is only using, say, less than 10 terabytes, I don't think CVO would be a good option. A customer using at least 100 or 200 terabytes should get a reasonable price from NetApp."
"We purchased the product directly from NetApp."
"The cost is quite high."
"Our licensing is based on a yearly subscription. That is an additional cost, but because of the storage efficiencies that the NetApp gives, even with the additional cost of the NetApp license, you still end up saving money versus straight Azure native for storage. It's definitely worth it."
"The standard pricing is online. Pricing depends. If you're using the PayGo model, then it's just the normal costs on the Microsoft page. If you're using Bring Your Own License, which is what we're doing, then you get with your sales contact at NetApp and start figuring out what price is the best, in the end, for your company."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
58%
Computer Software Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Construction Company
3%
Educational Organization
36%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dropbox?
For me, the biggest thing is version history. I can easily go back and view older versions.
What needs improvement with Dropbox?
One area of improvement would be to allow multiple users to edit a file simultaneously and see edits in real time, similar to OneDrive. In Dropbox, once a file is opened on one system, it locks the...
What do you like most about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?
So a lot of these licenses are at the rate that is required for capacity. So they're they're able to reduce the license consumption and also the consumption of the underlying cloud storage.
 

Also Known As

No data available
ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Vita Coco, BCBGMAXAZRIA Group, Centric Project, Kayak, FourSquare, Asana, Huge Adversting , USA Gymnastics, Appen, Valliant, Radio Lab
1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard
Find out what your peers are saying about Dropbox vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.