No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Avepoint FLY vs CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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

Avepoint FLY
Ranking in Cloud Migration
5th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in Cloud Migration
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (1st), NAS (4th), Cloud Storage (2nd), Cloud Backup (7th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (5th), Cloud Storage Gateways (1st), Content Collaboration Platforms (7th), AI Legal & Compliance (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Migration category, the mindshare of Avepoint FLY is 3.5%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 4.1%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Migration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform4.1%
Avepoint FLY3.5%
Other92.4%
Cloud Migration
 

Featured Reviews

DH
Technical Support Specialist at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Effortlessly manages large-scale data migrations and improves cost efficiency
There were some areas that could be improved with Avepoint FLY, particularly regarding an issue with the final reporting. While I cannot remember the exact issue, it was related to the final report concerning which files were migrated and what errors occurred. However, this could have been a user problem rather than an application problem.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If a company is looking for something that is easy to use and not too complicated, this is perfect."
"Some of the best features with Avepoint FLY are that it is very easy to use, and the tool moves files quite quickly."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten."
"The solution is very straightforward to use. It's not overly difficult to figure out."
"The most valuable feature of AvePoint FLY is its ability to install or use multiple client servers using a single master server and balance the migration load depending on our needs."
"The initial setup phase can be described as a very user-friendly one...The solution's technical support was good since they responded very promptly."
"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."
"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."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has improved our operations tremendously by eliminating our NAS branch and providing a single platform for our file storage where we can sync, share, and backup our runtime data."
"I like that the glass is always half full with CTERA file services. It keeps the data hot for users on location and then tiers off older data. If you need it, the stub is still there. You can click on it, and it's back on the device."
"I can definitely say that there is considerable time savings with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform compared to traditional approaches for file access and saving."
"The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a hybrid solution that supports both on-premises and cloud environments."
"I recommend everyone to use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform as it is really stable, versatile, and it does not have much downtime—it is perfect."
"CTERA's instantaneous and redundant file replication, available across multiple geographical locations, ensures easy and user-friendly recovery."
 

Cons

"The initial setup is a little bit more complex than setting up Cloud Backup for Avepoint."
"The solution's reporting could be improved because it does not have a lot of reporting capabilities."
"There were some areas that could be improved with Avepoint FLY, particularly regarding an issue with the final reporting. While I cannot remember the exact issue, it was related to the final report concerning which files were migrated and what errors occurred."
"Right now, AvePoint FLY doesn’t provide us with help to identify the size of the mailed items for a certain period."
"Technical support is lacking in that they don't seem to respond. I do a lot of research myself. I can't rely on them."
"More monitoring from the platform would be good. There is some monitoring, but it is paid. It is a chargeable service. It would be good for that to be included in the base."
"There are two things about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform that I think they can improve. The first one is the reporting or maybe the monitoring solution because they lack reporting about the shares that we have, the used space, the total space, the permissions, or other relevant metrics."
"There are some micro-level loggings that would have been better in improvising, and all those details are in the pipeline."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform could be improved by being a little faster in performance and having a timeline for new features and updates."
"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."
"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."
"I would rate CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform a nine out of ten because I think there are some shortcomings in the performance of the gateway that could be improved, and I realize part of that is we are running an older version."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AvePoint FLY's pricing is good enough for its capabilities."
"We are using the trial version and find it to be costly. It's something around $20. With another attachment, the cost was lower, at about $3. However, you seem to have to buy more licenses than you need."
"The prices of the tool are neither low nor high, so it can be considered a moderately-priced product."
"There are two different ways of licensing Avepoint FLY. So either you can use set up a licensing form based on objects which we do not recommend because then it will be more costly. So what you do is you set up the migration based on the users instead."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Migration solutions are best for your needs.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Retailer
7%
Computer Software Company
41%
Outsourcing Company
26%
Construction Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Avepoint FLY?
My experience with the pricing and setup cost of Avepoint FLY was that it is very competitive and fairly priced. It was significantly cheaper than some of the alternatives I was exploring, such as ...
What needs improvement with Avepoint FLY?
There were some areas that could be improved with Avepoint FLY, particularly regarding an issue with the final reporting. While I cannot remember the exact issue, it was related to the final report...
What is your primary use case for Avepoint FLY?
The migration I was involved in with Avepoint FLY was for an oil and gas industry, specifically from a file server to SharePoint Online, and we moved approximately two terabytes of data.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
Pricing for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is subscription-based, and licensing appears flexible and environment-dependent. It can be licensed for hosted data services or private deploymen...
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
A few improvements would be more granular reporting, a simpler initial setup, and a smoother admin experience for edge cases. It would also help if troubleshooting and policy management were a litt...
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
My main use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is replacing or modernizing legacy file storage and giving remote teams secure access to shared files across locations. I am using it to...
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pure SEO
McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
Find out what your peers are saying about Avepoint FLY vs. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.