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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs Office 365 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 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 Storage (10th), Cloud Backup (12th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (2nd)
Office 365
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Content Collaboration Platforms category, the mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 1.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Office 365 is 5.5%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Content Collaboration Platforms
 

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.
Minos Pitsillides - PeerSpot reviewer
Excellent technical support, easy to install, but the price, while affordable, could be improved
Office 365 is scalable, but it is dependent on the situation. We don't have a problem with it from an organizational standpoint. They started with 100 employees and then added another 500 after six months, for a total of 600 employees. The setup of new users, new emails, and new applications to be assigned to the new users is straightforward. They also provide the PowerShell command, which they provided more, development type, like, for example, you can create users, not manually, but through a script that can create users, for example, 100 users in two, three minutes, and you don't do it manually. They're fantastic. My portfolio contains approximately 50 companies. Office 365 is our primary platform for the 50 companies. I only have one on G Suite, and the majority of them will be migrating from G Suite to 365 in the coming month.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a hybrid solution that supports both on-premises and cloud environments."
"The solution provides data eviction, where unused data is evicted from the local file, freeing up space. It also allows data to be rehydrated from the cloud when needed."
"The support is awesome. It is top-notch. I would rate their support a ten out of ten."
"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 been particularly capable of keeping all of our workstations backed up. That became a critical feature for us during the pandemic when computers were rarely in the office. Everybody went off-site with their computers, and we were accustomed to working with a centralized storage infrastructure where people would come to the office and connect to the server to use, create, and modify files. Everything was done directly to that server."
"The best feature is the migration tool within CTERA."
"CTERA has out-of-the-box data protection capabilities."
"As an email provider, I believe Office 365 is the best email provider."
"The way the ERP presents information for the user is very good."
"Many of the features in Office 365 are good, but I think Excel is a very good tool."
"I like all of the features."
"The most valuable feature is Microsoft Exchange."
"I like that it is cloud-based, wherefrom any computer I can access my documents and continue working."
"The integration with other applications is pretty good."
"We use it for documentation management, to collaborate with Microsoft Teams, web calls, web conference calls, chats, and as a documentation repository mainly. We have an Office pack suite to be able to write documentation, make spreadsheets, and create PowerPoints."
 

Cons

"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."
"However, in some cases, they could improve performance."
"I am looking for a process where version upgrades do not impact the customers. There is no downtime."
"One area for improvement is the migration tool, which at times does not work as designed, necessitating the use of alternative solutions like Robocopy."
"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."
"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 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."
"Could include integration with other single sign-on solutions."
"Constantly evolving with new features, which can be challenging for users."
"Sometimes the synchronization between the desktop and online is a little bit slow."
"Office 365 could allow for smoother collaboration with other companies, which is the main reason we use it. The B2B connection is something we need, like global adverse lists between two tenants or multiple users. That's what we're missing at the moment."
"Security is still complex, but the admin console improving."
"In terms of improvement, it should have tutorials when you first have the opportunity to use it, to be able to really learn it."
"The integration with mobile services is not so good. It's coming, but they could improve a lot."
"I'd like to see them add more features in the future in order to continue to advance the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I am not directly involved in the pricing aspects, but I understand that CTERA's pricing is competitive and within industry standards."
"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."
"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 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."
"So far, pricing seems to be fine."
"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."
"The pricing is high and has actually caused us to limit the number of licenses we purchase due to budgeting."
"Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis, or we prepay them."
"The pricing is not really high, but one can get the software with the license key for free."
"​The pricing/licensing is easy to manage."
"The price of Office 365 is very expensive."
"Good reporting and good value subscriptions for international calls."
"Most of the time, we purchase Microsoft Exchange licenses, which are less expensive and provide only an email platform and 50 gigabytes of email storage for free."
"The pricing is good for all the features that we receive, e.g., Skype for Business."
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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
81%
Computer Software Company
3%
Financial Services Firm
2%
Government
2%
 

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 are the differences between SnapComms and Office 365?
Here are the key differences between SnapComms and Office 365: SnapComms is specifically designed for employee communications, while Office 365 is a suite of productivity tools for bus...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Office 365, Office 365 Enterprise, Office 365 Enterprise E1, Office 365 Enterprise E3, Office 365 Enterprise E5, Office 365 ProPlus, Office 365 Business, Office 365 Business Essentials, Office 365 Business Premium, Office 365 F1
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
Me & the Bees Lemonade
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. Office 365 and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.