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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs Microsoft OneDrive comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 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

CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
10th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (2nd), NAS (8th), Cloud Migration (7th), Cloud Storage (11th), Cloud Backup (11th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (2nd)
Microsoft OneDrive
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Content Collaboration Platforms category, the mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 1.4%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft OneDrive is 9.6%, down from 12.9% 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.
Victor Bayouwa - PeerSpot reviewer
I love the backup capabilities and the offline sync
We use OneDrive to share documents throughout the organization and collaborate. It is also used for backups.  The backup capability is one feature I love about OneDrive. I also like how it syncs when you're working offline. Everything is updated once you connect again. It takes too long for…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"The best feature is the migration tool within CTERA."
"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 has out-of-the-box data protection capabilities."
"The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a hybrid solution that supports both on-premises and cloud environments."
"Ability to share documents."
"One of the good features is that the users are not even aware that they're using it."
"With this solution, the sharing of documents if very easy to do. There's a lot of collaboration you can do with your colleagues."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the amount of space allotted to each user that is issued a subscription."
"Image management is great since the search is simple, and accessing images with labels is easy."
"Being able to use OneDrive as a mapped drive in Windows Explorer is the most valuable feature. Rather than using OneDrive on a browser, you can also open up the Windows Explorer and I can see the file structure in the normal format."
"It's quite easy to use and then of course it is quite well integrated to the rest of Office 365."
"It is well integrated with other Microsoft products."
 

Cons

"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."
"It has a learning curve."
"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."
"AI and automation features could enhance the platform, such as AI-powered search, predictive storage analytics, and intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring. Predictive storage analytics will help with better capacity planning. There can be some sort of intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring."
"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."
"However, in some cases, they could improve performance."
"One area for improvement is the migration tool, which at times does not work as designed, necessitating the use of alternative solutions like Robocopy."
"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."
"It takes too long for OneDrive to synchronize various applications, especially when you are saving office data. It also requires too much bandwidth."
"The security is not as flexible as it is with Dropbox, which means that we can't share our OneDrive files."
"Technical support is not very impressive and is typical of large company software support."
"The scalability has room for improvement."
"If I want to pick out certain criteria of pictures, Google enables me to do that whereas OneDrive is a bit sort of flaky."
"The online application is quite limited, for this and other Office offerings."
"Microsoft OneDrive could improve because it doesn't support backing up .PST files, which are Outlook data files, and email archives. This is a substantial setback when it comes to Microsoft OneDrive."
"The initial setup is a bit clunky."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."
"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."
"So far, pricing seems to be fine."
"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."
"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."
"Using this software, it has had an amazing impact moneywise on our business. It allows us to share documents without the need of extra hardware."
"We pay a lot for the Enterprise version, but it is a premium service."
"The licensing is expensive and on a yearly basis."
"OneDrive comes with Microsoft 365 so it is just an added part of that package."
"It is free if you are using Office 365, and you get a terabyte of storage with your account."
"The price of Microsoft OneDrive is reasonable and compatible with competitors."
"This is a pricy solution, given that we are only using it at 50% capacity."
"Costwise, it is a great option. In most cases, it is a free space, which will be more than enough for most customers."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
69%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Educational Organization
4%
University
3%
Educational Organization
23%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
6%
 

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...
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Also Known As

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MS OneDrive
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
Chevron, Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, DBS, Nestle, Lowe's, MGM Resorts, Textron, MGM Resorts
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. Microsoft OneDrive and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.