The licensing cost of the product is expensive, and when combined with support, it becomes quite costly. Compared to other storage devices such as Huawei, which are gaining market presence, NetApp AFF can be on the higher side.
Analyst at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
May 27, 2025
Planning of all the lifecycle storage with NetApp AFF is part of the solution. While it is not cheap, they have introduced a new series of AFF that are more affordable, providing options for more users.
We were able to get pricing that was very similar to what Pure has. And for a lot of situations, the only thing Pure had was that they were cheaper. They wanted to keep us as a customer, and they were flexible. End-of-quarter pricing discounts help. We're we're comfortable with this product. They're bringing us an entire new storage system in what would have been a lot of work on our end.
Sr. Systems Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
Sep 25, 2024
Money has been a serious constraint. The fact that they're making things more affordable is making our lives that much easier to keep up with our accreditations. We can show that we can save money by doing more with less, and we can do that with this solution.
IT Infrastructure Analyst at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Top 5
Sep 25, 2024
Cost is a big factor in our decision-making process. When we're buying storage, the first thing we look at is how much we're paying per gigabyte. Cost has been the driving factor when choosing this solution. It might not be the cheapest option; however, when you see the value you're getting from it, then it begins to be more cost-effective.
Automated Systems Analyst II at a government with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
Sep 24, 2024
NetApp is offered at a reasonable price point, so it has saved us money. Our primary goal is to keep our costs low. We're hoping that the next line of products will include a more budget-friendly option.
NetApp AFF is a highly expensive solution. On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a nine out of ten.
NetApp AFF's pricing is competitive. It is not expensive or cheap. The tool's pricing is based on configurations and can cost around 150-160 dollars for 70 TB of storage.
Storage Engineer at a religious institution with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Nov 30, 2022
The pricing is palatable; we can swallow it. We're a longtime customer and we view our relationship as a partnership, not just a one-time deal. They have taken good care of us.
Network Storage Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Vendor
Apr 27, 2022
NetApp AFF is somewhat pricey. If they weren't as pricey, that would be a big deal for us. It's worth it but if you could get a really nice car for less, you'd go for the "less."
System Administrator at a leisure / travel company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Feb 16, 2022
There is room for improvement when it comes to the cost. The cost is very high compared to other devices. The HPE storage we used before was less expensive. NetApp is also more expensive than Dell EMC.
Director, IT Infrastructure Services at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Jan 19, 2022
I looked at other vendors for other potential projects and thought NetApp's pricing was very competitive. We are in the process of procuring the necessary license to do SnapMirror and back that data up to the cloud via AWS. Hopefully, we will be using that shortly.
Sr. System Engineer at a government with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Dec 20, 2021
The pricing is pretty reasonable for what we get. But if you have to buy any more disk space, it can be quite expensive. We had some internal discussions with people who wanted to store a lot of graphical data and we gave them the pricing for that and they were really horrified about the pricing of a single shelf.
The licensing and pricing are fine. As a reseller for the product, we need to make the differentiation in the minds of the customer. They are not just buying some tool that does only one thing, e.g., showing a LAN for a customer. The pricing is fair for what it is. If you need more options, then there will be more costs involved with the license, but that is not irregular.
Consulting Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Nov 4, 2020
It depends on how you look at things, but they are in a higher price range. They have different license models. You can get a license model where everything is included, but you can also purchase more licensing and buy what you need. It really depends on what you buy.
We have used the solution’s thin provisioning to add new applications without having to purchase additional storage. We use thin provisioning on all of our flash arrays at this point. It gives us the choice to be able to overprovision and take advantage of compression, compaction, and thin provisioning all at the same time. We can get more out of the purchases that we make. I would like it to be a lot less expensive, but it's been a very good solution for us.
Storage Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Nov 5, 2019
At the time when we purchased the NetApp AFF, it was bundled into the hardware price. That made the pricing okay. If we were to add more shelves now, the licensing cost increases exponentially. It is probably cheaper to buy brand new hardware in the new model. It will be faster and bundled in with software for a promotion where they throw in all the licenses. It works out well.
Infrastructure Team Lead at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Nov 5, 2019
The price of the upgrading of the solution is high. I could buy a whole unit of All Flash FAS 300 with a shelf for around $285,000. Yet if I want to add one additional shelf, it'll cost me $275,000. So they want you to upgrade by replacing it. It's cheaper to buy a whole new unit than to just scale-out. The upside is they last. AFF lasts us three or four years. So that's a good investment. I don't think it's cost-efficient for a lot of people. Their pricing structure is not competitive at this point with other companies. Support is a fortune on it. Every three years you need to do a rip and replace for an upgrade. It's not an in-place upgrade.
Storage Administrator at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Nov 5, 2019
One of the reasons we like this solution is that all of the features are included with the one license. For example, we can use NFS, CIFS, SnapMirror, SnapRestore, etc. It's all included in the package and we don't have to pick and choose. We purchased the license for a five-year term.
Senior Data Center Architect at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Nov 5, 2019
It's expensive. It's in the hundreds of thousands. It's beneficial, but at times, I feel compared to other vendors, we are paying a premium for the licensing that other vendors include. You're locked in with NetApp, and you already have everything setup.
Chief Information Officer at Mt. San Rafael Hospital
Real User
Dec 19, 2018
The total cost of ownership has increased a little. When I look at building very strong, good strategies that get presented to the board of directors and the additional executive teams, I look at two things: I look at ROI and I look at total cost of ownership. At times, my overall goal is that I want to get out of the data center business. I know that TCO really does increase because you have that on-prem solution, but I think moving forward into the cloud-based initiatives that we have, we're going to definitely start seeing a decrease within that TCO because now we don't have all of this inventory to take care of. We're being a lot more efficient and a lot more agile as well too.
Manager Biomedical System Services at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
Oct 24, 2018
Look at the different options that NetApp offers. Look for a model and option which fits your needs correctly. Don't buy a low-end product for a high-end job. NetApps offers a lot of different options. Just take your time and work with the consulting teams. Lay out what your needs are to ensure you are purchasing what will help you be successful.
The NetApp A-Series and C-Series are AFF storage arrays that deliver high performance, scalability, and simplified data management for a wide range of workloads. They are designed for organizations that need to improve the performance and agility of their applications, while also reducing costs and complexity.
NetApp A-Series and C-Series feature a scale-out architecture that can be scaled to meet the needs of your growing business. They also support a wide range of built-in data protection...
The licensing cost of the product is expensive, and when combined with support, it becomes quite costly. Compared to other storage devices such as Huawei, which are gaining market presence, NetApp AFF can be on the higher side.
Planning of all the lifecycle storage with NetApp AFF is part of the solution. While it is not cheap, they have introduced a new series of AFF that are more affordable, providing options for more users.
I do not deal with pricing, but the pricing of NetApp and Dell seems pretty close. NetApp support is cheaper than Dell support.
We were able to get pricing that was very similar to what Pure has. And for a lot of situations, the only thing Pure had was that they were cheaper. They wanted to keep us as a customer, and they were flexible. End-of-quarter pricing discounts help. We're we're comfortable with this product. They're bringing us an entire new storage system in what would have been a lot of work on our end.
Money has been a serious constraint. The fact that they're making things more affordable is making our lives that much easier to keep up with our accreditations. We can show that we can save money by doing more with less, and we can do that with this solution.
Cost is a big factor in our decision-making process. When we're buying storage, the first thing we look at is how much we're paying per gigabyte. Cost has been the driving factor when choosing this solution. It might not be the cheapest option; however, when you see the value you're getting from it, then it begins to be more cost-effective.
NetApp is offered at a reasonable price point, so it has saved us money. Our primary goal is to keep our costs low. We're hoping that the next line of products will include a more budget-friendly option.
NetApp AFF is a highly expensive solution. On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a nine out of ten.
Its price is quite competitive, but there is still scope for better pricing.
I am comfortable with the pricing, which is fair compared to others.
NetApp AFF seems to be fairly priced compared to other solutions like Oracle.
NetApp AFF's pricing is competitive. It is not expensive or cheap. The tool's pricing is based on configurations and can cost around 150-160 dollars for 70 TB of storage.
NetApp AFF is an expensive solution.
The additional license for the solution costs 45k. It is relatively cheap compared to other vendors.
The customers need to pay for the license.
The solution is expensive. It is a perpetual license. You do not have to pay for it monthly or yearly.
The pricing is palatable; we can swallow it. We're a longtime customer and we view our relationship as a partnership, not just a one-time deal. They have taken good care of us.
NetApp AFF is somewhat pricey. If they weren't as pricey, that would be a big deal for us. It's worth it but if you could get a really nice car for less, you'd go for the "less."
The only area where the product has room for improvement is the cost.
There is room for improvement when it comes to the cost. The cost is very high compared to other devices. The HPE storage we used before was less expensive. NetApp is also more expensive than Dell EMC.
I looked at other vendors for other potential projects and thought NetApp's pricing was very competitive. We are in the process of procuring the necessary license to do SnapMirror and back that data up to the cloud via AWS. Hopefully, we will be using that shortly.
The pricing is pretty reasonable for what we get. But if you have to buy any more disk space, it can be quite expensive. We had some internal discussions with people who wanted to store a lot of graphical data and we gave them the pricing for that and they were really horrified about the pricing of a single shelf.
NetApp AFF is an expensive product, although not compared to other vendors.
In addition to simplifying the management across a mix of solutions, AFF simplifies the cost. That was one of the main reasons we purchased AFF.
The upgrade costs were huge.
The licensing and pricing are fine. As a reseller for the product, we need to make the differentiation in the minds of the customer. They are not just buying some tool that does only one thing, e.g., showing a LAN for a customer. The pricing is fair for what it is. If you need more options, then there will be more costs involved with the license, but that is not irregular.
I'm not impressed with their pricing.
Not so good, it's expensive and got a delayed response.
The price of NetApp is very expensive, but we don't know how much Pure is, so we can't compare.
All features are included in the license, whereas with an EMC solution, you have to pay separately for extra terabytes.
It depends on how you look at things, but they are in a higher price range. They have different license models. You can get a license model where everything is included, but you can also purchase more licensing and buy what you need. It really depends on what you buy.
We don't like the cost. We would like to buy more.
We would like it to be free.
We have used the solution’s thin provisioning to add new applications without having to purchase additional storage. We use thin provisioning on all of our flash arrays at this point. It gives us the choice to be able to overprovision and take advantage of compression, compaction, and thin provisioning all at the same time. We can get more out of the purchases that we make. I would like it to be a lot less expensive, but it's been a very good solution for us.
At the time when we purchased the NetApp AFF, it was bundled into the hardware price. That made the pricing okay. If we were to add more shelves now, the licensing cost increases exponentially. It is probably cheaper to buy brand new hardware in the new model. It will be faster and bundled in with software for a promotion where they throw in all the licenses. It works out well.
Comparing this solution to others it may seem expensive, but the price to performance for NetApp is greater. You get a lot more for the money.
The price of the upgrading of the solution is high. I could buy a whole unit of All Flash FAS 300 with a shelf for around $285,000. Yet if I want to add one additional shelf, it'll cost me $275,000. So they want you to upgrade by replacing it. It's cheaper to buy a whole new unit than to just scale-out. The upside is they last. AFF lasts us three or four years. So that's a good investment. I don't think it's cost-efficient for a lot of people. Their pricing structure is not competitive at this point with other companies. Support is a fortune on it. Every three years you need to do a rip and replace for an upgrade. It's not an in-place upgrade.
One of the reasons we like this solution is that all of the features are included with the one license. For example, we can use NFS, CIFS, SnapMirror, SnapRestore, etc. It's all included in the package and we don't have to pick and choose. We purchased the license for a five-year term.
It's expensive. It's in the hundreds of thousands. It's beneficial, but at times, I feel compared to other vendors, we are paying a premium for the licensing that other vendors include. You're locked in with NetApp, and you already have everything setup.
The pricing is good.
You have to pay a little bit more for the storage but you gain with the speed provided.
The price to performance ratio with NetApp is unmatched by any other vendor right now.
full bundle too expensive I.e. full licenses to implement native replicas and backups
With other options, you need to buy a couple of different products to achieve the same outcome.
The total cost of ownership has increased a little. When I look at building very strong, good strategies that get presented to the board of directors and the additional executive teams, I look at two things: I look at ROI and I look at total cost of ownership. At times, my overall goal is that I want to get out of the data center business. I know that TCO really does increase because you have that on-prem solution, but I think moving forward into the cloud-based initiatives that we have, we're going to definitely start seeing a decrease within that TCO because now we don't have all of this inventory to take care of. We're being a lot more efficient and a lot more agile as well too.
Using NetApp, our total cost of ownership decreased by 17%.
The total cost, the pricing of it, has gone up quite a bit.
Our total cost of ownership has increased. SSDs are expensive.
I would like the pricing to be cheaper.
Look at the different options that NetApp offers. Look for a model and option which fits your needs correctly. Don't buy a low-end product for a high-end job. NetApps offers a lot of different options. Just take your time and work with the consulting teams. Lay out what your needs are to ensure you are purchasing what will help you be successful.
Always consider whether you can afford the solution.