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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs Google Drive Enterprise 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)
Google Drive Enterprise
Ranking in Cloud Storage
8th
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
76
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 Google Drive Enterprise is 2.0%, down from 3.5% 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.
AshwinMor - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers the most simplest and easiest UI to use
I would not like many changes in the tool, but I think the 15 GB space provided by Google Drive Enterprise needs to be increased to around 25 five GB, as it would be really helpful for users. These days, the resolution of pictures and everything else has been increased. If you take a picture from an iPhone, it could easily be of around seven to eight GB. Photos are memories that one would want to keep or store properly. I believe that it is not possible to save a lot of photos in Google Drive Enterprise since it only provides 15 GB to users. The product does not offer a bit more storage space for users, which makes it an area that needs to be considered for improvement.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CTERA has out-of-the-box data protection capabilities."
"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."
"The support is awesome. It is top-notch. I would rate their support a ten out of ten."
"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."
"CTERA's instantaneous and redundant file replication, available across multiple geographical locations, ensures easy and user-friendly recovery."
"CTERA stood out due to its ease of use and superior security features."
"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."
"The best feature is the migration tool within CTERA."
"Even if you lose your laptop or device, your data will still be accessible on Google Drive Enterprise. Therefore, keeping your files on the tool is a safe option. You can access it from any device if you have a Gmail account. When you create a Gmail account, you automatically get access to free Google resources, including 15 GB of Google Drive Enterprise storage, which is shared across all Google products."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to share files."
"It's a stable product."
"We can use the product to store large documents we cannot always carry."
"Google Drive is much more stable compared to Dropbox. Dropbox is a catastrophic solution. I used Dropbox because I manage many files, and I lost files because the synchronization between Dropbox and my customer folder was unstable. I use Google Drive to back up my files. Google Drive is the best solution to manage the backup between my Apple computer and my personal computer."
"The most valuable features of the solution are space and availability."
"The initial setup of Google Drive Enterprise was simple."
"The most valuable feature of Google Drive is its seamless integration across mobile devices and computers."
 

Cons

"I am looking for a process where version upgrades do not impact the customers. There is no downtime."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Stability-wise, we just went through one issue that they addressed. We were having cloud sync issues."
"The new Edge filer that they have comes with a lot more features than what we purchased. It would be better if we are able to add those extra features without having to swap out the hardware. A clear upgrade path for legacy customers would be beneficial."
"One suggested improvement for the CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is the ability to distribute data across multiple active backend storage nodes rather than the current limitation of a single active node."
"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."
"The product lacks in the area of documentation."
"Improvements could include better editing features within a Word document, similar to the characteristics of on-premises versions, such as more formatting functions. Another improvement could be file transfer from the browser to the desktop, making it as simple as drag and drop."
"If you have different accounts, you have to log out and log in to access the accounts. This could be improved by removing this requirement. The storage limit could also be increased."
"The tool must provide more storage capacity."
"Considering things like speech recognition or enhanced benefits in Google Cloud could be worth exploring for a better experience."
"The free tier of storage is limited."
"Google Drive Enterprise is not scalable."
"Google should also make it simpler to manage rights and access for different users. I want to share one folder with some people and another with other groups. It's not easy to manage. You have to use Google's web interface to assign rights, but IBM Box lets you permissions directly on the Windows interface."
 

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."
"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."
"I am not directly involved in the pricing aspects, but I understand that CTERA's pricing is competitive and within industry standards."
"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."
"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."
"The tool is a bit expensive."
"We pay a monthly licensing fee for the solution."
"It has a yearly license."
"The price could be better."
"I am using the free version."
"That would be ideal if it were as cheap as possible."
"I pay for the additional storage. Otherwise, it's free as a basic plan, 15 GB."
"I have evaluated Amazon AWS and IBM solutions. Amazon AWS has competitive prices for cloud storage and backups."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
70%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Educational Organization
4%
University
3%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
18%
Government
11%
Construction Company
5%
 

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 Google Drive Enterprise?
With Google Drive Enterprise, multiple people can edit a document, and you can open it as Google Docs.
What needs improvement with Google Drive Enterprise?
The search function in Google Drive Enterprise could be improved as it currently requires looking through many documents to find the right one. I am not aware of the security level it provides, and...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Drive Enterprise, Google Drive
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
Journal Communications
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. Google Drive Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,989 professionals have used our research since 2012.