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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs Dropbox comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in Cloud Storage
10th
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
12th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (2nd), NAS (9th), Cloud Migration (7th), Cloud Backup (12th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (2nd)
Dropbox
Ranking in Cloud Storage
5th
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Storage category, the mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 3.3%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dropbox is 4.8%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Igal Muginstein - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers flexibility, fast performance, and ransomware protection
The platform is releasing new features at a fast pace, which sometimes leads to version updates every three to six months. Although updates are generally not complex, it is challenging to stop the production environment during these updates, even if the downtime is just a few minutes. This is a common challenge across all NAS providers. From my perspective, the most important area for improvement is developing a method to perform updates without affecting customer production environments. Additionally, there are some cache size limitations that might become problematic for future use cases, though they don’t impact current applications. Collaboration for NFS and SMB protocols could also be enhanced. Although this issue isn't specific to CTERA, it is something we are working on together to improve. The quality of the versions has improved, but occasional issues still arise. All solutions face this challenge, but we hope to see a continued reduction in the number of bugs. That said, we haven't had any major production problems in the last four years, and we appreciate how responsive CTERA is to our issues. We engage in brainstorming sessions together, and we value this relationship.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best feature is the migration tool within CTERA."
"The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a hybrid solution that supports both on-premises and cloud environments."
"The features I find most valuable are in the gateways themselves. They have done a great job over the years of providing insight into what is happening with our products, with the batches that come through that are scanned. I enjoy that part of it, and it is fairly easy to use from our standpoint once we get to know the product."
"Our main reason for going for this solution was the uncontrollable growth of file data. It was unsustainable on our previous platform or technology. We needed something scalable like CTERA, so it was the scalability that we required."
"I like that the glass is always half full with CTERA file services. It keeps the data hot for users on location and then tiers off older data. If you need it, the stub is still there. You can click on it, and it's back on the device."
"The solution provides substantial flexibility, allowing the separation of workloads across various hardware platforms without vendor lock-in. This flexibility makes it adaptable to future infrastructure changes."
"It is a three-in-one solution for us. It is a file-sharing platform, an archiving solution, and also a backup solution."
"CTERA has out-of-the-box data protection capabilities."
"One of the most useful features of Dropbox is its ease of use."
"Offers great flexibility."
"Dropbox has a simple interface, and it's pretty straightforward."
"The solution provides great performance."
"The solution is reliable and user-friendly."
"Dropbox offers helpful functionalities for business purposes, such as receiving file requests from external parties like customers who don't have an account. Additionally, it includes features, such as reminders and workflow capabilities."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the ability to access files and documents from any device, anywhere."
"I think Dropbox is a good option for Windows users because it's easy to use in Windows and a user can access all other products and software."
 

Cons

"The web portal that our users access to view data and backups could be optimized. CTERA could apply some of the improvements made to their administrative interface on the user side. The administrators are a much smaller group of people than the users, so it would be helpful if they targeted user experience resources to them."
"AI and automation features could enhance the platform, such as AI-powered search, predictive storage analytics, and intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring. Predictive storage analytics will help with better capacity planning. There can be some sort of intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring."
"They fixed all the requirements that we had in the beginning. The beginning was a little bit rough, but we tuned it nicely. However, in some cases, they could improve performance."
"More monitoring from the platform would be good. There is some monitoring, but it is paid. It is a chargeable service. It would be good for that to be included in the base."
"However, in some cases, they could improve performance."
"It would help to have a global single-pane-of-glass view of all my CTERA devices. We have different regions, and we must log in to each portal to see what's happening with those. It would be nice to have a single portal to see the health of the devices, versions, and firmware upgrades. Sometimes, we want to dive into something more complex, like investigating why CTERA storage usage grew from 2 terabytes to 4 terabytes in a week. That's a little challenging. It's something we would like to see on the road map."
"One of the bigger things that I would like to see is additional logging. There are logs in there. They provide us with the initial logs on what is happening on our CTERA device. I appreciate that, but they do not give us any further information. I would like to have more information on the logs themselves."
"I am looking for a process where version upgrades do not impact the customers. There is no downtime."
"The solution could provide more capacity for free."
"The product could always offer more storage."
"We are moving to Microsoft Teams. Instead of Dropbox, we will be using Microsoft Teams that has the advantage of saving the versions. It supports file versioning so that you can always go back to the previous version if you want to. If somebody has made a change in one of the files and you don't know what changes have been made, you can always go back to the previous version. This feature led us to migrate to Microsoft Teams. With Dropbox, there is no option for simultaneous work. This feature is there in Google Files. In Microsoft Teams, you can invite team members to collaborate. That is the reason why I prefer Microsoft Teams over Dropbox. It should also have more integration with other solutions."
"It is difficult to set up. I'd rate the solution maybe a six or seven out of ten."
"Dropbox could be improved by reducing the storage price."
"I would like to see integration with Office products, it would be very helpful."
"The solution could be better integrated with other platforms."
"They can do the scanning of viruses, and they can also do malware detection when they do the synchronization."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"CTERA's pricing model is competitive compared to other companies that achieve the same thing. Their closest rival is Nasuni, and CTERA is significantly more affordable than Nasuni."
"It is hard to compare the costs if we want to retain the same model of a separate high-performance storage or certain things, but it is one of the cheapest solutions available in Israel."
"I am not directly involved in the pricing aspects, but I understand that CTERA's pricing is competitive and within industry standards."
"I find the pricing reasonable. They offered us deals that helped us. Especially with the upgrade to a bigger unit last year, they were helpful with the deal."
"It is fairly priced. I am not too involved in the pricing of what we used to pay, but it would have reduced the cost of ownership. I cannot give a figure, but the EMC solution was very expensive compared to CTERA."
"CTERA's pricing seems to be on par with some of the other players, such as Nasuni and Azure. They all have benefits, but CTERA is competitive for its features."
"So far, pricing seems to be fine."
"I am using the free version of the solution."
"My company makes monthly payments towards the licensing charges associated with the product. I think it's a reasonably priced product."
"We are using the unlicensed free version of Dropbox."
"It has some free features, but for some of the features, you need to pay. If you need more storage, then you need to pay. Its licensing probably is on a monthly basis."
"We pay for the license yearly."
"Its price is quite cheap. It is quite competitive. You just need to pay for the license. There are no additional costs."
"There is a subscription-based pricing model and I pay monthly."
"Users need to pay to increase the solution's capacity."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
70%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Educational Organization
4%
University
3%
Educational Organization
65%
Computer Software Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
3%
University
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
I am not directly involved in the pricing aspects, but I understand that CTERA's pricing is competitive and within industry standards.
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
One area for improvement is the migration tool, which at times does not work as designed, necessitating the use of alternative solutions like Robocopy. AI and automation features could enhance the ...
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
We use it as a hosted cloud solution. We had initially tried Azure File Sync, but that did not work. Due to certain security concerns, I was tasked with researching alternatives. I evaluated severa...
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?
I would like to have a document flow. Sharing documents with other people in the same division or department and being able to work without downloading the file would be ideal. Working online would...
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
Vita Coco, BCBGMAXAZRIA Group, Centric Project, Kayak, FourSquare, Asana, Huge Adversting , USA Gymnastics, Appen, Valliant, Radio Lab
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. Dropbox and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.