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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs Dropbox Business - Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

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
6.2
CTERA's platform saves time and reduces costs, eliminating SSD needs and manual storage, with a two-year expense recovery.
Sentiment score
6.0
Dropbox Business users reported varied ROI experiences, appreciating features and security, though some struggled to establish clear financial gains.
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
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.9
CTERA's support is highly rated for its accessibility, quick response, knowledgeable team, and effective global storage management.
Sentiment score
2.9
Users find Dropbox intuitive, with generally good support available 24/7, though some experience delays and manage support independently.
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
High-priority issues are handled promptly.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Dropbox offers 24-hour support, both through chat and limited hour calls.
Research Analyst at Counterpoint Research (Counterpoint Technology Market Research)
We provide the support ourselves and do not have any support straight from Dropbox.
Measurement Manager at A3E Ingenieros
I really have not hit many brick walls where I have had to ask for customer support.
Business Process Manager/ Educational Technologist at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
CTERA's platform excels in scalability and flexibility, supporting global use with easy upgrades, despite minor licensing challenges.
Sentiment score
7.2
Dropbox Business - Enterprise offers scalable plans for various needs, with flexible options requiring payments for added storage or users.
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
CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow.
Senior Manager of Global Support at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It offers good scalability options, including vertical and outward scalability.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a performing arts with 501-1,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is stable, with resolved issues and occasional sync problems not disrupting overall reliability.
Sentiment score
8.1
Dropbox Business - Enterprise is highly stable, rated ten out of ten, with minor issues like syncing delays in low bandwidth areas.
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 could improve monitoring, updates, user portals, logging, data distribution, legacy upgrades, AI integration, file editing, and permissions.
Dropbox Business - Enterprise could improve file sharing, security, storage, pricing, integration, UI simplicity, real-time collaboration, and scalability.
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
Sharing documents with other people in the same division or department and being able to work without downloading the file would be ideal.
Measurement Manager at A3E Ingenieros
One area of improvement would be to allow multiple users to edit a file simultaneously and see edits in real time, similar to OneDrive.
Research Analyst at Counterpoint Research (Counterpoint Technology Market Research)
When you try to sync the files in Dropbox, it actually puts a copy of the file on your laptop, so it sucks up all of your memory.
Business Process Manager/ Educational Technologist at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

CTERA offers affordable enterprise file services, reducing total ownership costs compared to EMC, NetApp, and Nasuni, enhancing market accessibility.
Enterprise users appreciate Dropbox Business for competitive pricing and flexibility, though some desire better discounts compared to alternatives.
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
CTERA's pricing seems to be on par with some of the other players, such as Nasuni and Azure.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform offers scalable, flexible data management with seamless backup, user-friendly interface, and reliable recovery.
Dropbox Business - Enterprise provides seamless file sharing, strong security, and integration, enhancing productivity for both individuals and teams.
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
It is a three-in-one solution for us. It is a file-sharing platform, an archiving solution, and also a backup solution.
System Administrator at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
It also features an admin console where we can easily manage users, see which user has access to which content, and how much space they are consuming.
Research Analyst at Counterpoint Research (Counterpoint Technology Market Research)
I do enjoy the family sharing plan, so my entire family can use my one plan and my data storage, and we can have shared files or private areas for their own files.
Business Process Manager/ Educational Technologist at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in Cloud Storage
5th
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
10th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (2nd), NAS (4th), Cloud Migration (5th), Cloud Backup (8th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (1st), AI Legal & Compliance (1st)
Dropbox Business - Enterprise
Ranking in Cloud Storage
2nd
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Storage category, the mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 3.5%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dropbox Business - Enterprise is 7.7%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dropbox Business - Enterprise7.7%
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform3.5%
Other88.8%
Cloud Storage
 

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.
NancyHartman - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Process Manager/ Educational Technologist at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Family sharing and personal backups have improved how I manage and access my files anywhere
I am not fond of their syncing. Their file syncing is very clunky, so I am not a real fan of the file syncing. I think Box does a much better job of the syncing of data onto desktops and laptops. When you try to sync the files in Dropbox, it actually puts a copy of the file on your laptop, so it sucks up all of your memory. Whereas with Box, I can sync files into my file explorer and it is still cloud-based. They have not saved the file physically onto my laptop. They save it in the cloud and it just does a temporary download and then it uploads again, but that file is not saved on my laptop. Whereas with Dropbox, anytime you want to sync on your laptop, it actually does save it. There is a way to set it up, but it takes a lot more work and effort and I have never been able to get it to work the way I want it to work. So I just do not sync my files with Dropbox on my laptop. That limits my ability to use Dropbox from my work laptop because my work laptop just does not have any memory at all on it. They give the bare minimum of memory and say that it should all be in the cloud anyway, so you do not need to have that much storage space. So I cannot even access Dropbox from my work laptop and have to use the browser version of Dropbox if I need to access my Dropbox from my work laptop. Within the company, it is a personal choice. Our company has not dictated what cloud service to use. As long as it has all the security measures that meet the standards of our IT department, anyone can use whatever cloud service they want. For example, our company is not allowed to use Google because Google is not a secure cloud service in the estimation of our IT department. So there are cloud services that we are not allowed to use, but from the five to seven different services that they give us to choose from, we all can find what meets our needs.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
65%
Outsourcing Company
5%
Educational Organization
4%
Financial Services Firm
3%
Performing Arts
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
6%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
I believe CTERA could improve their pricing experience by customizing price lists per region. For example, there is a difference between what is sold to customers in Israel versus U.S. customers. I...
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
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 America...
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
We have approximately 80 nodes around the world and we're using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform mostly for unstructured file storage.
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?
One area of improvement would be to allow multiple users to edit a file simultaneously and see edits in real time, similar to OneDrive. In Dropbox, once a file is opened on one system, it locks the...
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
Vita Coco, BCBGMAXAZRIA Group, Centric Project, Kayak, FourSquare, Asana, Huge Adversting , USA Gymnastics, Appen, Valliant, Radio Lab
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. Dropbox Business - Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.