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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs NetApp Cloud Backup comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

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
5.4
CTERA Platform cuts costs up to 80%, improves recovery time by 50%, and offers a return within two years.
Sentiment score
8.5
Users report substantial cost savings, efficiency, ease of use, and reliable performance with NetApp Cloud Backup, enhancing operational continuity.
Adding SSD storage to Windows file servers is expensive, and we no longer need to back up those devices.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
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.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a performing arts with 501-1,000 employees
CTERA has been a major improvement with a reduction in our storage and infrastructure cost, achieving up to eighty percent reduction in storage costs overall, which is significant.
S IT Era Administration And Implementation at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.7
CTERA's customer service excels in responsiveness, expertise, and timely issue resolution, earning top user ratings and satisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.6
NetApp Cloud Backup is praised for its efficient customer service, knowledgeable support staff, and detailed documentation, despite occasional delays.
They swiftly address concerns and take ownership of the call, providing a very satisfactory support experience.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a performing arts with 501-1,000 employees
The quality and speed of support for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is some of the best in the industry.
Senior Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
For critical issues, we receive a call within 10 to 15 minutes of creating a request.
Senior Associate at Iron Mountain Incorporated
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
CTERA's platform provides scalable file services globally, with flexible licensing for data sizes, though CPU/memory upgrade flexibility can improve.
Sentiment score
7.9
NetApp Cloud Backup is highly scalable, performs well in cloud environments, and integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Azure for disaster recovery.
If we need to upgrade CPU and memory, we should be able to do that without a license upgrade.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
The licensing supports various data sizes, such as EV16 supporting up to 16 terabytes, and if you exceed that, you move to EV32.
Senior Associate at Iron Mountain Incorporated
CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow.
Senior Manager of Global Support at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
CTERA's platform is stable and reliable, with minimal downtime and resolved issues enhancing user confidence and continuous performance.
Sentiment score
8.7
Users commend NetApp Cloud Backup for its stability, efficient large workload handling, strong integration, and minimal downtime during data restoration.
It has been pretty stable since then.
System Administrator at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
We had things deployed for years, and we were suddenly getting cloud sync issues that were crashing our sites.
Senior Manager of Global Support at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It is very stable and reliable.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a performing arts with 501-1,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

CTERA should enhance usability, performance, monitoring, AI integration, and provide clear upgrade paths for improved user experience.
NetApp Cloud Backup users need better integration, KPI handling, ITSM support, and ease of use, with cost-effective comparisons to competitors.
AI and automation features could enhance the platform, such as AI-powered search, predictive storage analytics, and intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a performing arts with 501-1,000 employees
The main problem is that if two people are working on the same file, for example, one in the U.S. and one in Israel, they can overwrite each other’s work without any notification.
CEO at rtt.co
It would help to have a global single-pane-of-glass view of all my CTERA devices.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

CTERA's flexible, cost-effective pricing competes well with EMC, offers infrastructure compatibility, but licensing may confuse some users.
Enterprise buyers appreciate NetApp Cloud Backup's cost-effective pricing, though virtual NetApp hosting is pricier than general cloud hosting.
Unlike other solutions that require hardware purchases, CTERA offers software licensing with flexibility across multiple infrastructure providers.
Business Development Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
CTERA’s pricing should be more proportional and accessible so that cost is not the factor preventing customers from purchasing.
CEO at rtt.co
From what I heard from my seniors, a 50 TB capacity license would be around 55 to 60 lakhs in Indian rupees.
Graduate Engineering Trainee at HCLSoftware
 

Valuable Features

CTERA excels in user-friendly interface, robust security, scalability, centralized control, and versatile integration, enhancing global file accessibility.
NetApp Cloud Backup is praised for its simplicity, seamless integration, efficiency, data protection, scalability, user-friendliness, reliability, and cost-effectiveness.
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.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
A vital advantage of this platform is its instantaneous recovery capability, allowing seamless access to a secondary gateway if the primary one fails.
Business Development Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
When it comes to data protection in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, we have encryption methodologies and we also have ransomware protection, which is a wide variety of features offered along with the CTERA appliance and application.
Senior Associate at Iron Mountain Incorporated
 

Categories and Ranking

CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in Cloud Backup
7th
Ranking in Cloud Storage Gateways
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (1st), NAS (4th), Cloud Migration (4th), Cloud Storage (3rd), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (7th), Content Collaboration Platforms (7th), AI Legal & Compliance (3rd)
NetApp Cloud Backup
Ranking in Cloud Backup
33rd
Ranking in Cloud Storage Gateways
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (31st), Deduplication Software (9th), Disk Based Backup Systems (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Cloud Backup category, the mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Backup is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Backup Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform1.0%
NetApp Cloud Backup0.7%
Other98.3%
Cloud Backup
 

Featured Reviews

Tim M. - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Supports global file recovery and rapid data versioning across 80 nodes
When we implemented CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform early on, and we've been on the platform for three years, we have three different cloud portals. We have an EU portal, we have an Americas portal, and we have an APAC portal. It would be nice if we could combine that into one portal just for that global single pane of glass look. We've talked with them about that and they say it's challenging just because of some of the structure, but that would be something nice if we could get that. I integrated with Varonis, and because CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform didn't have initially a working relationship with that vendor, it would have been nice had that pre-existed us saying we need this. But that wasn't totally CTERA's fault. There was a lot of challenge working with the vendor to build out that interface. A single pane of glass for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform would be beneficial. Everything else works fairly well. We've never had a point where we couldn't get to something that caused us to have a serious outage, and that to me is the mark of a good software package. It's never really caused us serious issues. We have our issues, that's true, and every software package does. However, we've always been able to meet the needs of the business, and we drive hard on security, stability, and scalability. From the scalability standpoint, that's one of the most important things to us. We're on their capacity-based licensing, so if I need to ramp up another CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform NAS, if we have an M&A, I can easily and quickly spin up another NAS and start doing that data transition fairly quickly. The biggest maintenance issue with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is firmware upgrades. We've done a lot of transition from hardware solution to virtualized infrastructure in order to minimize that hardware lifecycle portion of it. We have to upgrade the firmware and sometimes that can be challenging in the nature of business of our size with 80 CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform nodes around the globe. The issue we've had with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform happened recently in a firmware upgrade where there was a major database back-end upgrade and that took some time. For our smaller sites, it would be an hour or two, and I can build that into a fairly easy change window. But in our larger sites where we may have hundreds of terabytes of data, that database update process took maybe a day or a day and a half. That becomes more challenging, especially in a manufacturing environment where people are wanting to access configuration files. We had to pin the data locally because the data would be available on the local edge filer, but the cloud sync, while it was updating the database, the cloud files weren't available. That would be the other thing I'd like to see an improvement on: some way to do those database upgrades either in a more segmented fashion or in some type of offline environment. I understand the logistics behind that sounds easy, but I'm sure it's not.
MS
Solutions Architect at SC PROSERVICECORP SRL
Offers protection and does scanning of the data in the storage
NetApp has a nasty way of dealing with the license for the product's on-premises virtual NetApp appliance that you need in your whole architecture, and it is not directly linked to NetApp Cloud Backup. It is not a feature that I want to change in NetApp Cloud Backup because the cloud backup service is architectured in a way that makes it available to users, so it looks pretty good to me. When you go to the other side, you can see what you want to have on-premises for the main side in order to have backup in the cloud via NetApp Cloud Backup. With the on-premises part, you need to have either a physical NetApp or a virtual NetApp. You only have two options for primary storage from the network. In the physical cases, it is pretty straightforward as you have pricing and something like a grid with your NetApp. The sales representatives explain how much it will cost you to have some physical NetApp storage based on performance, types, and so on. The support contracts are for three or five years. When it comes to the virtual NetApp, you can run on top of an existing VMware tool or a recent cluster; it gets nasty because they do not let you change the licensed server. Once you deploy a virtual NetApp with a licensed server that you have on-premises, you migrate off from that, but NetApp does not let you change the licensed server, which should be really simple.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
48%
Outsourcing Company
21%
Educational Organization
4%
Construction Company
3%
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise18
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
Our experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform was good; it was very manageable for getting started with the product.
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
A wishlist item would be the ability to import shares from one device to another. I would rate CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform a nine out of ten because I think there are some shortcomings ...
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
Our main use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is that we use it as a cloud platform. We use it as an enterprise file system to access shares in our daily operations.
What's the 3-2-1 data protection that NetApp Cloud Backup offers?
Hi, the 3-2-1 data protection from this product is related to a backup strategy with the same name. I'm assuming you don't know about it so I'll tell you in a few words. In its essence, this backup...
Is NetApp Cloud Backup secure for backup?
I've just started using NetApp Cloud Backup but my initial reason behind choosing it in the first place is that they advertise their high-security approach. So basically, they give you ransomware p...
Is NetApp Cloud Backup expensive in your opinion?
It depends on how much exactly you count as expensive. For me, NetApp Cloud Backup isn't too expensive. I say that based on the services it provides and on the way it provides them. I think it's im...
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. NetApp Cloud Backup and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
890,124 professionals have used our research since 2012.