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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs Google Workspace comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 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
7.2
CTERA Enterprise File Services reduced costs and time, minimized manual storage, and eliminated SSD and alternative storage needs.
Sentiment score
8.8
Google Workspace offers positive ROI with productivity gains, cost savings, seamless collaboration, and efficient data management despite some cost concerns.
Adding SSD storage to Windows file servers is expensive, and we no longer need to back up those devices.
I am positive that CTERA has helped reduce the total cost of ownership by eliminating the need for manual storage management and reducing storage service processes.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.3
CTERA's platform provides responsive support, rated highly for proactive assistance and efficient issue resolution by knowledgeable agents.
Sentiment score
6.1
Customer service and technical support receive mixed reviews, with paid users benefiting from more assistance options than free users.
They swiftly address concerns and take ownership of the call, providing a very satisfactory support experience.
High-priority issues are handled promptly.
I would rate their support a ten out of ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
CTERA's platform is scalable and easy to expand globally, though CPU and memory licensing constraints may pose challenges.
Sentiment score
8.0
Google Workspace is praised for its seamless scalability, easily managing thousands of users with minimal configuration issues.
If we need to upgrade CPU and memory, we should be able to do that without a license upgrade.
CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow.
It offers good scalability options, including vertical and outward scalability.
Scalability involves another configuration with a new email configuration, involving some authentication issues with Microsoft Outlook.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
CTERA's platform faced initial bugs but improved over time, earning high stability ratings with reliable data access.
Sentiment score
8.5
Google Workspace is widely regarded as stable and reliable, with minor integration issues and occasional network-related concerns.
It has been pretty stable since then.
We had things deployed for years, and we were suddenly getting cloud sync issues that were crashing our sites.
It is very stable and reliable.
The only issue is collaboration with Outlook, where I am having a bit of a problem.
 

Room For Improvement

The CTERA platform needs improvements in monitoring, updates, UI, logging, and performance, while users value current features and support.
Google Workspace users face logout issues, slow email, integration challenges, high pricing, and seek improved interfaces and Microsoft compatibility.
AI and automation features could enhance the platform, such as AI-powered search, predictive storage analytics, and intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring.
It would help to have a global single-pane-of-glass view of all my CTERA devices.
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.
The new integration was implemented last September, and we are facing some issues with OAuth 2.0 authentication.
 

Setup Cost

CTERA offers cost-effective enterprise file services with flexible licensing, providing significant savings over EMC and Nasuni, especially in Israel.
Enterprise users experience mixed feelings on Google Workspace pricing, finding both value in productivity and challenges in affordability.
Unlike other solutions that require hardware purchases, CTERA offers software licensing with flexibility across multiple infrastructure providers.
CTERA's pricing seems to be on par with some of the other players, such as Nasuni and Azure.
I find the pricing reasonable.
 

Valuable Features

CTERA excels in scalability, flexibility, data management, and protection, making it ideal for hybrid cloud and remote work environments.
Google Workspace offers scalable, affordable, user-friendly tools for collaboration, productivity, and secure data management with an intuitive interface.
As soon as something is written to the device, CTERA copies it to the cloud, where it's versioned with snapshots so we can recover it.
A vital advantage of this platform is its instantaneous recovery capability, allowing seamless access to a secondary gateway if the primary one fails.
It is a three-in-one solution for us. It is a file-sharing platform, an archiving solution, and also a backup solution.
The valuable features include the email service, email updates, and Google Drive.
 

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 Workspace
Ranking in Cloud Storage
6th
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Email Applications (1st), Wireless Email (2nd)
 

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 Workspace is 3.2%, down from 9.1% 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.
Sunil-Nair - PeerSpot reviewer
Email collaboration and accessibility have improved team productivity
The valuable features include the email service, email updates, and Google Drive. People are given email access to Google Drive. The team can share manual files and work accordingly. They can access different teams from anywhere, collectively putting files, sharing them, and managing them. Additionally, the manufacturing product does not require any downgrades. It works fine and continuously for the last three or four years. Users can access their emails from anywhere in their browser without a laptop or can directly access from Gmail. This is helpful for salespeople.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
70%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Educational Organization
4%
University
3%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

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 Workspace?
Easy-to-build forms are allowing me to get feedback and information from my internal teams as well as from the customers very efficiently with the result data in structured manner.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Workspace?
I'm not satisfied with the cost because I feel these services should be free as they use our data.
What needs improvement with Google Workspace?
As far as Google Workspace is concerned, it is working fine for us. Our needs are fulfilled, so that's fine. However, integration with Microsoft Outlook could be improved. The new integration was i...
 

Also Known As

No data available
G-Suite Enterprise, G-Suite, Google Apps for Business, G Suite Basic, G Suite Business, G-Suite Basic, G-Suite Business, Google Vault
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
There are over five million businesses that use Google Apps for Business worldwide. Some key customers include The Roche Group, National Geographic, American Red Cross, City of Los Angeles, Flight Centre, and Konica Minolta.
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. Google Workspace and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.