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FreeNAS vs Nasuni 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

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
Nasuni
Ranking in NAS
12th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (3rd), Cloud Migration (6th), Cloud Storage (14th), Cloud Backup (34th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (18th), Cloud Storage Gateways (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of FreeNAS is 3.9%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nasuni is 3.8%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nasuni3.8%
FreeNAS3.9%
Other92.3%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

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.
SD
Infrastructure Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Cloud data management that achieves cost efficiency with advanced data protection features
I am currently using Nasuni for seismic data. We have a huge data size, and we want to reduce costs. Nasuni acts as a caching solution, so we put some data into the cache, and the rest goes to the blob, which helps us save on costs. We use it for applications like Petrol and Tech Log, where 3D…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has been very stable so far."
"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."
"The program is fast, fun to work on and easy."
"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."
"After using FreeNAS I will never spend money for commercial products like Dell or 3Par."
"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 integrates well into either Windows or Linux environments."
"Nasuni gives us a single platform with a 360-degree view of our data, which is important so that we know the size of our estate and the amount of data that we hold."
"We have less downtime and fewer trouble tickets from users who cannot access their shared files. Nasuni has reduced the friction and noise associated with file management because the devices are more reliable."
"With Nasuni, we have been able to replace multiple data silos and toolsets with a single global file system, which is important to us because we have been able to consolidate several different products and solutions."
"Using this solution has helped us to reduce the time it takes to recover data in the event of a disaster, lower our cost of operations, reduce our workload, and our savings through using Nasuni is approximately 35%."
"Nasuni has eased our job because we don't have to worry about the user requests for additional space anymore."
"The features I find most valuable in Nasuni are the unlimited snapshots, antivirus capabilities, auditing, and ransomware protection."
"The most valuable feature is the simplicity of the backup and restore functions."
"We use Nasuni's continuous file versioning feature and it fully protects us. With the ability to version files and have continuous recovery, it helps in terms of resiliency. If we have an incident then we would be able to easily recover from it by using the technology."
 

Cons

"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 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."
"Make it easier to find out how to fix things when something goes wrong."
"Its support for Hyper-V clusters."
"They should include clustering for the solution."
"The support for S3 needs to be improved."
"FreeNAS should be better prepared for clustering."
"If you find the documentation, it is always incomplete and fragmented."
"Nasuni could improve cloud integration and documentation of various ways we can leverage the product. It integrates with Azure, but the native Azure File Sync solution lets you divide data into tiers like hot, cool, and archived. Nasuni doesn't allow you to break the data apart into those tiered categories."
"The speed at which new files are created is something that could be improved. For example, if you create a new file in another country, I won't see it for between 10 and 15 minutes."
"The only thing that I'd like to see is more support for platforms like OneDrive or Box.com."
"There is some room for improvement when it comes to monitoring. We are not using Nasuni monitoring. We are using our own monitoring through Xenos. Nasuni can provide better monitoring capabilities for us to monitor all the filers and NMC so that we don't have to use a third-party tool."
"I would like to see them improve their tools in regards to accessing data using smartphones, tablets, and iPads. I think the Nasuni app could be improved to make access to the data cleaner and more efficient."
"They could lower the cost, but it saves so much money when you go into it (by losing all the backup)."
"The privilege settings need to be more granular, and alerts are an excellent example. If a user doesn't have access to them, they can't see them and access information such as what they may have done wrong, what's there, and when the last sync happened. However, the ability to view alerts also comes with permission to delete them, which is not good, so we need more customization options here."
"Some applications may not be suited for the Nasuni environment. You may need something with better performance. Otherwise, if you want to run daily operations or some file system, it's a good bet."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We use the free version of the program."
"Its licensing cost is based on the hardware capacity."
"Nasuni should provide small-scale licenses, like a 20 TB license. Currently, the smallest is a 30 TB license."
"With this solution, the license renewal is pretty swift. With the virtual appliance, you just need to take care of the OS versions and patches. In a way, we don't have to struggle much with renewals because the only thing that we need to take care of are the licenses. We renew it every three years. This aspect goes with infrastructural costs because it doesn't cost us too much to maintain the solution."
"They could lower the cost, but it saves so much money when you go into it (by losing all the backup)."
"The pricing is on par with everybody else, and fair."
"It is around $850 per terabyte per year. Any additional costs that you would incur are for the local caching devices that you'll need to access Nasuni. You kind of provide your own virtual machines or compute to access the data. You also pay for the object storage. So, there are three parts to it. There is the Nasuni license per terabyte. You would also pay for the actual object storage in the cloud, and then you would pay for virtual machines to access the storage."
"Its pricing can get a tad expensive. When we first took Nasuni out, we were just paying for the service. We got storage at a reduced rate. It has now changed, and they're now more of an all-in-one type of thing. It can be quite expensive, but it works out. Apart from that, licensing-wise, it's very simple."
"Its price is fair and reasonable. I don't have anything negative about its pricing and licensing. For us, there is also the cost of monitoring. We are monitoring through Xenos and not through Nasuni. That is another cost for us from the monitoring perspective, but as far as Nasuni goes, we don't have any other cost apart from the licensing fee."
"The cost of licensing is negotiated and billed annually per terabyte."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Performing Arts
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise24
 

Questions from the Community

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Does Nasuni have a good pricing model?
Based on the experience of my organization, Nasuni is definitely worth the money, since it gives you an all-in-one solution where you'd usually need several programs. About the cost, there isn't a ...
Is it easy to restore files with Nasuni?
As someone who has used this feature of Nasuni I can tell you - yes, it's good for file recovery and you'll definitely benefit from very quick times. I can't tell you if it's the best one because I...
What features and services does Nasuni offer?
Hi, if you pick Nasuni, you'll be benefiting from many services for a good price. Well, it's a personalized price you get after an agreement with the company but in my organization's case, it is a ...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Morroni Technologies Inc., Creative Integrations
American Standard, CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, E*TRADE, Ithaca Energy, McLaren Construction, Morton Salt, Movado, Urban Outfitters, Western Digital
Find out what your peers are saying about FreeNAS vs. Nasuni and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,647 professionals have used our research since 2012.