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NetApp AltaVault vs Panzura CloudFS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 18, 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
4.4
NetApp AltaVault boosts efficiency and cost savings by optimizing data storage, reducing hardware needs, and enhancing data protection.
Sentiment score
5.1
Organizations experienced enhanced resilience, doubled performance, and productivity gains by adopting Panzura CloudFS, solving past file storage issues.
Previously, we had latency issues with syncing up files between offices. Files were not locked, leading to overwrites which cost us literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost time and revenue.
We saw the benefits of Panzura CloudFS immediately because our remote offices were able to share files immediately after the product went live.
Panzura CloudFS saves us a significant amount of time frequently.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
NetApp AltaVault's support is praised for design help and issue resolution, despite initial file handling challenges.
Sentiment score
6.8
Panzura CloudFS support is praised for quick, expert assistance despite occasional delays, receiving high ratings from users.
The support staff and the number of people they have on staff right now are truly good.
When we have a priority-one issue, we typically receive a call within 20 to 30 minutes.
I would give the support for Panzura CloudFS a ten out of ten because they are responsive and helpful.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
NetApp AltaVault is scalable, flexible for cloud integration, and adaptable for various user needs and configurations.
Sentiment score
6.8
Panzura CloudFS is highly scalable, effortlessly supports many users across locations, with seamless deployment and dedicated support.
Unlimited users can access the system without issues.
From our original entry with Panzura CloudFS, we have added an additional seven sites, and deploying those additional nodes was very seamless and did not take any effort.
The latest version, 8.0.2, has better ease of decommissioning filers and bringing new ones online.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
NetApp AltaVault is stable and reliable after setup, with most early issues resolved and minimal critical problems reported.
Sentiment score
6.1
Panzura CloudFS is highly stable with rare outages and improved reliability, earning high user ratings overall.
I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.
We have never had their system crash on us.
There were times with file lock issues between filers, causing various anomalies, but with their ongoing development, these issues have improved.
 

Room For Improvement

NetApp AltaVault needs enhancements in capacity, integration, monitoring, user authentication, and bug fixes for improved efficiency and support.
Panzura CloudFS needs improvements in performance, compatibility, pricing, dashboard, alerting, licensing, Active Directory reliance, NFS service, and support.
When something goes wrong somewhere, there should be a little bit better alerting with issues before they become a big problem.
The GIS data formats, such as a geo database, have been found better kept outside of Panzura CloudFS.
It would have been nice if they had offered them in increments, of 5, 10, 15, or 20 terabytes than having to get a whole chunk of 25 terabytes again for licensing purposes, which is a little costly.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers find NetApp AltaVault competitively priced, offering flexible payment options despite varied annual costs from $3,000 to $375,000.
Panzura CloudFS pricing is higher than competitors, lacks granular licenses, but offers negotiation flexibility and transparency.
It did require us to purchase new hardware, however, that was not overly expensive.
They should consider more attractive pricing for companies of our size.
Overall, it is quite costly compared to NetApp and similar solutions.
 

Valuable Features

NetApp AltaVault enhances data management with cloud integration, encryption, deduplication, easy setup, and cost-effective storage solutions.
Panzura CloudFS enhances workflows with high availability, security, and seamless collaboration, reducing storage costs and boosting productivity.
There are different integrations available with NetApp AltaVault, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and I want to understand how they impact data security policies in my case.
It is very reliable and very quick.
It helps us increase network resilience. We have a primary object library stored in the cloud and have Panzura Mirroring which allows us to place data in a secondary cloud for added resiliency.
There is no degradation of speed because these filers have cached the data, and they are constantly swapping metadata and updating with each other, which is a very attractive method of getting us to use these applications.
 

Categories and Ranking

NetApp AltaVault
Ranking in Cloud Storage Gateways
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (52nd), Deduplication Software (12th), Disk Based Backup Systems (5th), Cloud Backup (46th)
Panzura CloudFS
Ranking in Cloud Storage Gateways
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (2nd), NAS (6th), Cloud Storage (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Storage Gateways category, the mindshare of NetApp AltaVault is 1.9%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Panzura CloudFS is 24.2%, up from 22.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Storage Gateways
 

Featured Reviews

Naveen Radhwani - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable, fulfils compliance requirements, and enables to manage data backups easily
I use the solution for backup and recovery Our systems have become more stable and scalable after using NetApp AltaVault. The dashboard is useful for managing data backups. The deduplication technology helps me take offline backups efficiently. The workload on the end team has been reduced. It…
Roger Clark - PeerSpot reviewer
Handles file locks effectively enabling seamless remote collaboration in global teams
It has not reduced the data storage cost. We have been trying to come up with a plan internally to archive project data at a certain time frame. However, our data continues to grow, so at the point of 25 terabytes, we had to buy another 25 terabytes license to exceed that threshold. It would have been nice if they had offered them in increments, of 5, 10, 15, or 20 terabytes than having to get a whole chunk of 25 terabytes again for licensing purposes, which is a little costly. It would be nice if Panzura offered data in increments instead of 25 terabytes per license. They have done a pretty good job of development from the point of offering new products. Pricing seems to be high for certain things, such as the audit feature of Panzura Data Services. It would be nice to see who deleted that 100 gig of data out there. They should make the pricing plan more attractive for a company of our size. We have almost 700 employees over the southeast from Texas to Florida and up to Tennessee, so we are a pretty big region.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Insurance Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Retailer
7%
Construction Company
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Is NetApp AltaVault compatible with AWS?
Hello. Yes, it is compatible with AWS but the great thing about it is that it's actually working with so many cloud providers, it may be just for everyone. Besides the Amazon cloud services, NetApp...
Can AltaVault be used for data reduction?
Hello, you can definitely use NetApp AltaVault for reducing your data and giving yourself some more storage. This product offers you deduplication and compression, helping you achieve that. I'm su...
What kind of security does NetApp AltaVault give you?
My organization is very happy with the security that NetApp AltaVault gives us for our data on the cloud. First, it gives us the option for data recovery, which is very good, especially if someone...
What are the products that Panzura provides?
Panzura offers four main products: CloudFS, data services, smart apps, and global services. They call this "all-in-one solution" and it's for end-to-end cloud data management. Why is it called that...
What kind of industries does Panzura serve?
Hello, I think businesses from all industries that have their data on a cloud can benefit from Panzura. Especially if you have offices in various locations or your employees are working from home a...
Why was Panzura acquired? Is the acquisition going to cause a change?
I think Panzura may change in a positive direction now that it's been bought by Profile Capital. That's a very big investment company for technology businesses and I think it's an opportunity for ...
 

Also Known As

AltaVault
Panzura Freedom
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blach Construction, NASA, Riggs, Counselman, Michaels & Downes, Seminole County Public Schools and Spot Trading
Petrofac, Komatsu, HCA Healthcare, Vanguard, Disney, Pokemon, US Department of Justice, Gensler, Fluor, AFRY, Milwaukee Tool, Navy Federal Credit Union, TechTarget
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp AltaVault vs. Panzura CloudFS and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.