FreeNAS vs StarWind Storage Appliance comparison

FreeNAS and StarWind are both solutions in the NAS category. FreeNAS is ranked #12 with an average rating of 9.0, while StarWind is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.5. FreeNAS holds a 1.9% mindshare in N, compared to StarWind’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of FreeNAS users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

FreeNAS

Read 9 FreeNAS reviews

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486 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

StarWind Storage Appliance

Read 10 StarWind Storage Appliance reviews

235 Views
174 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

FreeNAS

StarWind Storage Appliance

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 2024

FreeNAS and StarWind Storage Appliance compete in the network-attached storage market. StarWind Storage Appliance appears to have the upper hand due to its advanced features and professional support.

Features: FreeNAS is open-source, offers ease of use through a web interface, and provides flexibility in managing storage. It is known for container integration, dynamic disk management, and simple task synchronization. StarWind Storage Appliance features high availability, automated storage tiering, and hyper-convergence. It offers instant failover redundancy, iSCSI support, and proactive expert support.

Room for Improvement: FreeNAS could benefit from more comprehensive professional support, enhanced enterprise features, and reduced complexity for enterprise-level functionality. StarWind Storage Appliance may improve by offering more budget-friendly options, refining its setup process for less technical users, and enhancing community-driven support options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: FreeNAS offers straightforward deployment and robust community resources, making it suitable for tech enthusiasts. StarWind Storage Appliance provides professional deployment options and dedicated customer support, ensuring smooth integration and minimal downtime for businesses.

Pricing and ROI: FreeNAS has low initial setup costs and is ideal for small teams or personal use, providing excellent ROI. StarWind Storage Appliance, with higher upfront costs, delivers strong ROI for businesses focused on performance and scalability due to its extensive feature set and professional support.

To learn more, read our detailed FreeNAS vs. StarWind Storage Appliance Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

FreeNAS vs. StarWind Storage Appliance

April 2025

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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

FreeNAS

Ranking in NAS

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

StarWind Storage Appliance

Ranking in NAS

14th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

All-Flash Storage (30th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the NAS category, the mindshare of FreeNAS is 1.9%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Storage Appliance is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NAS

Featured Reviews

Vincenzo D'Aniello

Software developer at TREXON S.R.L.

Open-source with great disk management and task synchronization

The system itself allows you to add any feature. The only bad thing is that this maybe depends on FreeBSD, and sometimes finding documentation is difficult. For example, we knew that previous versions automatically enabled the Linux kernel, yet with the recent version, this was no longer the case. Now, there was the possibility of being able to create Debian-based jails, and finding the documentation was not easy or fast. That said, in the end, we succeeded. If you find the documentation, it is always incomplete and fragmented.

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Kishore CA

Senior Engineering Assistant at Bharat Electronics Limited

Offers stable performance even with a single node failure and manages everything with just two nodes.

The only drawback is that it takes a bit of time during initial synchronization, especially after restarting the environment. This is a potential area of improvement. There's a synchronization time, but it takes time. Initially, when we start the first environment deployment, it starts synchronizing between the storage. So, it is taking time. One thing is that even when you restart. Let's assume that the synchronization is completed and the storage is synchronized. Both storages are fully synchronized, and it is in sync mode. Now, if we want to restart both nodes, there is a case for maintenance purposes. You took both nodes for maintenance, and we rebooted it. Then, it should not synchronize again. It should be a checksum. And if there is a checksum match, there should be no synchronization again. So, one thing that should be taken care of. Another thing is that I used freeware- the community version, free license, which we deployed using PowerShare. In that case, it was very difficult to bring back another node when one node was faulty. Let's assume that both the nodes are working fine. And we found one node faulty. And we destroyed all the volumes in that and tried to bring it back. So that was a difficult factor. The final solution is that we were not able to bring back the failed node. So, we reconstructed a new data source for that. That is another drawback. In future releases, I would like to see the integration with VMware or some other things as a plugin model for VMware.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has the best storage capacity."

"Its stability is the most valuable. It is reliable, and we don't have to worry too much about it."

"It integrates well into either Windows or Linux environments."

"FreeNAS is much simpler and easier to use than other solutions, but we don't have the complete range of features that come with the full version."

"The solution has been very stable so far."

"What I like about it is that I can work on it from any computer or any device. The initial setup is very simple. The setup wizard is really helpful."

"The ease of use of the 'jail', the management of backups, and copies to easily create test and pre-production scenarios have speeded up the development and distribution of business apps."

"Having instant failover redundancy helps me sleep easier at night."

"It is very easy to use and very cost effective."

"StarWind Storage Appliance is simpler and more effective than using Microsoft products. We chose it because it can be easily integrated with Microsoft."

"We saw an ROI. We have saved both time and money by using it."

"The management interface is the most valuable feature for us."

"Its user-friendly interface makes it an attractive option, especially for customers who may not be highly tech-savvy."

"Another good feature is that you can pause the appliance if you want to move it from one location to another and then once it's moved you can resume it, this way you can physically move the whole cluster or storage without any downtime. Its really easy to use, if you have a good foundation in storage and clustering then you will need less then one hour to figure out how to operate it."

"We are able to easily back up our data and send it to an offsite location."

More StarWind Storage Appliance pros

Cons

"They should include clustering for the solution."

"They can improve the integration with PSA systems. This functionality could be better."

"The one thing that I find difficult to do which is very time-consuming is that I like to have a backup of the important files."

"The latest version of the dashboard doesn't work as good as the previous version."

"FreeNAS should be better prepared for clustering."

"If you find the documentation, it is always incomplete and fragmented."

"The support for S3 needs to be improved."

"An improvement would be if they reached out to education customers with other available products."

"With StarWind Storage Appliance, it would be better to have an overall easier setup with a little bit of configuration changes since, currently, even a small mistake may cause the setup process to go wrong."

"They could improve by providing integration with HP."

"It needs more integration with backup vendors so there is native integration with it that will allow storage level backup/snapshots. I would love to see integration with Veeam and Commvault so it can be recognized by them directly and added as network storage."

"StarWind no longer sells HDDs for primary storage."

"The dashboard features are not in the free version."

"They offered onsite installation, but we chose to do it ourselves. That took longer and was more work for us but saved us a ton of money in the end."

"StarWind Storage Appliance's demo version should be similar to the paid one."

More StarWind Storage Appliance cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For our configuration, we pay a little bit less than €10,000 ($12,000 USD) per year."

"We use the free version of the program."

"Its licensing cost is based on the hardware capacity."

"Its price is okay. It suits our needs."

"I rate StarWind Storage Appliance's pricing an eight out of ten."

"The cost is determined by various factors, including the amount of terabyte storage you require, the number of nodes you want to purchase, and the duration of your maintenance agreement"

"It costs about 50,000 euros."

"We found that the price of StarWind was very good compared to VMware or Nutanix."

"On the homepage, you can not see the pricing."

"StarWind by far provides the best bang for the buck."

"With StarWind Storage Appliance, the payments made towards the licensing part of the product are on a per-node basis, making it cost-effective for us to use the solution in our company."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

21%

Educational Organization

Comms Service Provider

Performing Arts

Computer Software Company

23%

Government

19%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Performing Arts

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about FreeNAS?

The ease of use of the 'jail', the management of backups, and copies to easily create test and pre-production scenarios have speeded up the development and distribution of business apps.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FreeNAS?

The core version is free and open-source.

See all answers

What needs improvement with FreeNAS?

See all answers

What do you like most about StarWind Storage Appliance?

I would say data protection and easy management are the most valuable features of the product...I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Storage Appliance?

I rate StarWind Storage Appliance's pricing an eight out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with StarWind Storage Appliance?

StarWind Storage Appliance's demo version should be similar to the paid one.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs FreeNAS

Compared 23% of the time

Qumulo vs FreeNAS

Compared 21% of the time

HPE StoreEasy vs FreeNAS

Compared 13% of the time

NetApp FAS Series vs FreeNAS

Compared 12% of the time

NetApp Private Storage vs FreeNAS

Compared 10% of the time

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StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 17% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 17% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 17% of the time

Scality RING vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 15% of the time

More StarWind Storage Appliance Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

FreeNAS

April 2025

Download FreeNAS product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Storage Appliance

March 2025

Download StarWind Storage Appliance product report

Overview

FreeNAS is an operating system that can be installed on virtually any hardware platform to share data over a network. FreeNAS is the simplest way to create a centralized and easily accessible place for your data. Use FreeNAS with ZFS to protect, store, backup, all of your data. FreeNAS is used everywhere, for the home, small business, and the enterprise.

FreeNAS

For SMB and Enterprises who are looking for high performance primary storage for server virtualization, VDI, database and Big Data scenarios, or inexpensive secondary backup tier, our solution is StarWind Storage Appliance. It unifies commodity servers, disks and flash, and associated software into an easily scalable storage platform.

Additionally, the appliance features an optional gateway to Azure public cloud, which helps to implement an effective Disaster Recovery plan or meet regulatory requirements. StarWind SA scales up by adding individual disks and flash modules, or JBODs, while adding ready controller nodes allows scaling out.

StarWind SA targets those, who need high-performance primary storage or secondary storage for backup. In case there is a whole virtualization infrastructure to build from scratch, StarWind HCA will come in handy. Otherwise, if all the required hardware is present, StarWind Virtual SAN will be enough to build a high-performance virtualization setup.

StarWind

Sample Customers

Morroni Technologies Inc., Creative Integrations

Bosch, EC2 IT, Solid Earth Inc., Canon

Buyer's Guide

FreeNAS vs. StarWind Storage Appliance

April 2025

Free Report: FreeNAS vs. StarWind Storage Appliance

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