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FreeNAS vs NetApp FAS Series 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
NetApp FAS Series
Ranking in NAS
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (4th), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of FreeNAS is 3.1%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp FAS Series is 10.8%, down from 12.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetApp FAS Series10.8%
FreeNAS3.1%
Other86.1%
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.
Srikanth Purushothaman - PeerSpot reviewer
DIRECTOR at Vellore Online Systems
Has supported long-term data protection and backup while requiring better part availability and pricing options
For monitoring purposes, we normally use flash access storage exclusively. We utilize a hybrid system because we need performance, combining NL-SAS for the volume and SAS flash to use as a fast cache system that provides more IOPS. We normally implement RAID 10, which we prefer over RAID 6's n plus 2 combinations. We utilize it for data redundancy, even with write intensity on. Regarding the unified storage architecture for NetApp FAS Series, we normally opt for exclusivity unless budget constraints exist. Our IOPS are very high, reaching somewhere about 50k to 150k or 1.150k. The high performance ensures minimal latency. An advantage we've seen with NetApp FAS Series is that snapshots provide very rapid backup and fast recovery. We basically use snapshots for data protection as first-level protection, with deduplication between the two storages serving as second-level protection.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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 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."
"It has the best storage capacity."
"The program is fast, fun to work on and easy."
"The solution has been very stable so far."
"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."
"What impressed me the most about these systems are their excellent reliability, ease of administering (both in GUI and command line), and their very good documentation that is easy to access and understand."
"I would advise them to go with NetApp because it's unified storage, it supports both NAS and SAN environments, so whether you're doing block storage or you're doing file storage, it is a good solution."
"End-users like that they can rely on the Snapshot technology so they can do their restores themselves."
"Just do it. Chances are the functionality that comes with the ONTAP software will be better than other products at a similar price."
"The most valuable features are compression and dedupe."
"At the moment, we use NetApp SnapMirror to replicate data to another filer at an offsite location for backup. So, I like this feature."
"It just works, and when some drives go into failure status, it’s just a prediction of drive failure, letting us know when to get the drives replaced."
"One important feature for customers is its ease of use and continuity, enabling seamless usage across on-premise and cloud environments."
 

Cons

"The support for S3 needs to be improved."
"They should include clustering for the solution."
"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."
"If you find the documentation, it is always incomplete and fragmented."
"The latest version of the dashboard doesn't work as good as the previous version."
"The support for S3 needs to be improved."
"Make it easier to find out how to fix things when something goes wrong."
"Its support for Hyper-V clusters."
"The high cost of the product is an area of concern, so from an improvement perspective, the tool needs to be made cheaper."
"The process for going to cluster mode is expensive."
"The solution can improve on the replication features."
"We'd like to move to a solution that does more beyond just data, like starting to get more to servers and network specialization and data visualization and things like that."
"The one aspect of the solution that's negative for us is also more unique to us due to the fact that we did a MetroCluster. The tiebreaker piece that does the monitoring of the two different locations, and determines if one is not talking to the network normally (or if it's truly down) is a little difficult. It feels like it was not designed from the beginning to fit well into the other pieces. It feels like it was thrown in at the last minute and it is not smooth."
"Its licensing cost can be improved."
"The performance needs to be improved."
"Upgrades are always hold-our-breath situations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is okay. It suits our needs."
"We use the free version of the program."
"For our configuration, we pay a little bit less than €10,000 ($12,000 USD) per year."
"Its licensing cost is based on the hardware capacity."
"We are on a perpetual license."
"Most storage vendors also have software, or licensing bundles, which may offer the required licenses considerably cheaper, but do also maybe offer licenses, which are not needed."
"The product's pricing is reasonable."
"It’s difficult for us to get money, so make sure you get everything in order, because there’s no going back and saying “oh, I missed this or that”, so make sure you plan well and well in advance."
"The solution’s cost is reasonable."
"It is a one-time license charge for NetApp FAS Series to run and we pay annually for upgrades and support."
"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being expensive. We pay a one-time purchase price."
"We purchased it for four years, and it wasn't expensive. It was reasonable. Every company has a different agreement with NetApp. We got everything we wanted with all the bells and whistles and all the features and functionalities."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Performing Arts
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
Which SAN product would you choose: IBM FlashSystem (FS9500) vs PureFlash Array/X NVMe vs PureFlash Array/XL NVMe?
Have you considered a NetApp FAS Storage for your NAS needs? I am sure it fits very well.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp FAS Series?
I do not handle the pricing part of NetApp FAS Series since it is managed by the sales team.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Morroni Technologies Inc., Creative Integrations
Children's Hospital Central California, Plex Systems, PDF PNI Digital Media, Denver Broncos, PDF KSM Legal, Clayton Companies, Virginia Community College
Find out what your peers are saying about FreeNAS vs. NetApp FAS Series and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.