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Dropbox vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 17, 2024

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

Dropbox
Ranking in Cloud Storage
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Content Collaboration Platforms (1st)
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Ranking in Cloud Storage
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (1st), Cloud Backup (10th), Public Cloud Storage Services (5th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Cloud Storage category, the mindshare of Dropbox is 8.5%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is 15.7%, up from 15.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Storage
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Pramod-Talekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution
The tool's most valuable features are the SnapLock and SnapMirror features. If something goes wrong with the data, we can restore it. This isn't a mirror; we store data in different locations. If there's an issue on the primary site, we can retrieve data from the secondary site. Multiprotocol support in NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is beneficial because it allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution. This feature eliminates the need to purchase different types of storage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Setting up DropBox is straightforward, and one person can do it in less than five minutes."
"I like the synchronization, and the integration with Microsoft Office is good."
"I like how user-friendly the solution is."
"The security is very good."
"The performance has been good."
"The solution is easy to use."
"It offers security, accessibility, and user-friendly features."
"The solution is very fast and simple. If I want to share a file I can put it on the cloud or on-premise. It's user-friendly."
"We are definitely in the process of reducing our footprint on our secondary data center and all those snapshots technically reduce tape backup. That's from the protection perspective, but as far as files, it's much easier to use and manage and it's faster, too."
"One thing I have noticed is that it is very simple to move the data where we need to move it, delete it, or archive it if we need to archive it to StorageGRID."
"CVO gives us the ability to access data as quickly as possible, which is critical because of the mission set we handle. Some things cannot wait. For example, we tried having the data in the cloud itself, but it took too long for us to retrieve it from cold or deep storage. If we have it ONTAP or on-prem, it's so much easier to pull it within minutes."
"So a lot of these licenses are at the rate that is required for capacity. So they're they're able to reduce the license consumption and also the consumption of the underlying cloud storage."
"If you have a fair amount of experience with NetApp, you can work on it very easily."
"One of the features our customers like is that it can be used from one cloud provider to another. They can use it from Azure to AWS or vice versa. That way, they don't need to use the same provider for backups. If something goes wrong on the primary site, having the same data in another cloud service provider is important."
"The ease of use in terms of how the product works is valuable. We are able to work with it and deploy the storage that we need."
"NetApp's Integration with AWS has helped us because we had a tough time transferring data when we used an ONTAP competitor as our storage partner. They don't have integration with AWS tools, so we had to figure it out on our own. ONTAP has built-in integration and allows us to replicate a copy to our second data center."
 

Cons

"I would like to be able to unarchive my files online."
"They can provide more storage. Data is something that everybody is after. Any organization that has the requirement of data for any type of analysis will definitely need increased storage."
"The only thing I have had trouble with is the ability to share files. The recipients of my requests have had difficulty accessing the files."
"The mobile aspect of the solution needs improvement. For instance, if I want to use a file from Dropbox on my phone, I sometimes struggle to download images off of Dropbox. The solution lacks accessibility on different devices."
"I cannot edit a document at the same time as another user."
"DropBox is a little more complicated to scale up than OneDrive. It isn't as seamless to scale up storage or change the number of users. We have two or three users in Mumbai, and we don't plan to add more."
"It's an expensive solution."
"There is a potential improvement regarding storage capacity and offering more than its current four gigabytes."
"I rate the scalability a five out of ten."
"The only area for improvement would be some guidance in terms of the future products that NetApp is planning on releasing. I would like to see communication around that or advice such as, "Hey, the world is moving towards this particular trend, and NetApp can help you do that." I do get promotional emails from NetApp, but customer-specific advice would be helpful, based on our use cases."
"The data tiering needs improvement. E.g., moving hard data to faster disks."
"We would like to have support for high availability in multi-regions."
"The product is more restricted with underlying cloud."
"The integration wizard requires a bit of streamlining. There are small things that misconfigure or repeat the deployment that will create errors, specifically in Azure."
"We want to be able to add more than six disks in aggregate, but there is a limit of the number of disks in aggregate. In GCP, they provide less by limiting the sixth disk in aggregate. In Azure, the same solution provides 12 disks in an aggregate versus GCP where it is just half that amount. They should bump up the disk in aggregate requirement so we don't have to migrate the aggregate from one to another when the capacities are full."
"We are getting a warning alert about not being able to connect to Cloud Manager when we log into it. The support has provided links, but this particular issue is not fixed yet."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am on a monthly subscription for the solution and I am somewhat satisfied with the pricing. However, the price could a bit better."
"The solution is paid for annually."
"The product is free up to a certain limit."
"The solution does not come with a licensing cost."
"My company makes monthly payments towards the licensing charges associated with the product. I think it's a reasonably priced product."
"The amount of free space they provide is sufficient for me. However, if you want more space I don't believe is very expensive."
"The solution allows one only a certain amount of free storage, but he must pay for a subscription, perhaps on a six-month basis, if he wishes to maintain this."
"The solution is expensive."
"If a customer is only using, say, less than 10 terabytes, I don't think CVO would be a good option. A customer using at least 100 or 200 terabytes should get a reasonable price from NetApp."
"Compared to other storage vendors, NetApp, is not always able to compete with their pricing. Yet, we acknowledge the ease of use ONTAP brings with the AWS integration."
"It is not a cheap solution because we need to pay for the license and pay for Azure resources as well."
"The AWS consumer-based pricing model makes it easy for developers to use their credit cards to spin up virtual servers immediately."
"It is expensive. There are no costs in addition to their standard licensing fees."
"They allow a special price if you are working closely with them. Since we have a lot of NetApp systems, we got some kind of discount. That's something they do for other customers, not just for us. The price was fair. In addition to the licensing fees, you're paying Amazon for your usage..."
"Our licensing is based on a yearly subscription. That is an additional cost, but because of the storage efficiencies that the NetApp gives, even with the additional cost of the NetApp license, you still end up saving money versus straight Azure native for storage. It's definitely worth it."
"Overall, the pricing of NetApp is aggressive and the pricing becomes more aggressive as the amount of data increases. The cost for a given volume of data that you are storing becomes lower. The greater the volume of data, the cheaper the license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
61%
Computer Software Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
University
3%
Educational Organization
55%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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?
Dropbox needs to improve its integration with Google platforms, including Google Sheets, Google Docs, and Google Slides, which facilitate easier collaboration. I would also like to see features rel...
What do you like most about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?
So a lot of these licenses are at the rate that is required for capacity. So they're they're able to reduce the license consumption and also the consumption of the underlying cloud storage.
 

Also Known As

No data available
ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Vita Coco, BCBGMAXAZRIA Group, Centric Project, Kayak, FourSquare, Asana, Huge Adversting , USA Gymnastics, Appen, Valliant, Radio Lab
1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard
Find out what your peers are saying about Dropbox vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.