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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs NAKIVO Backup & Replication comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 8, 2026

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
5.1
CTERA platform enabled cost savings, improved efficiency, reduced storage costs by 80%, and quick ROI on Azure investments.
Sentiment score
5.5
<p>NAKIVO Backup &amp; Replication is cost-efficient, easy to manage, and delivers quick returns, saving time and costs significantly.</p>
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
CTERA has been a major improvement with a reduction in our storage and infrastructure cost, achieving up to eighty percent reduction in storage costs overall, which is significant.
S IT Era Administration And Implementation at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
I have seen a return on investment through money savings and time efficiency.
Business Consulting at Gestion IT
In terms of money, we have saved more, and because we are able to replicate everything from production to DR, we can now seamlessly work in any environment we want.
System Engineer at NetSolutions Ghana Ltd
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.5
CTERA offers highly rated customer support with responsive service, technical expertise, and dedicated account engineers despite some minor challenges.
Sentiment score
7.7
<p>NAKIVO Backup &amp; Replication support is praised for responsiveness, expertise, and availability, despite occasional slower weekend response.</p>
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
For critical issues, we receive a call within 10 to 15 minutes of creating a request.
Senior Associate at Iron Mountain Incorporated
They are equipped with newer technology, requiring less attention.
Co-Owner at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.8
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform offers scalable, flexible licensing, enabling efficient global data management and effortless resource management for users.
Sentiment score
7.7
<p>NAKIVO Backup &amp; Replication offers robust scalability, supporting diverse environments with flexible licensing, storage options, and streamlined expansion.</p>
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
The licensing supports various data sizes, such as EV16 supporting up to 16 terabytes, and if you exceed that, you move to EV32.
Senior Associate at Iron Mountain Incorporated
CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow.
Senior Manager of Global Support at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is stable and reliable, with minor issues addressed through updates and proper setup.
Sentiment score
7.9
<p>NAKIVO Backup &amp; Replication is stable and reliable, with minor issues like VM backup hangs requiring occasional restarts.</p>
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
They are built with newer technology and processes, needing less support.
Co-Owner at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Users find CTERA's interface confusing, seeking improved reporting, logging, synchronization, stability, documentation, and better cloud performance and migration tools.
NAKIVO needs improved restore, cloud support, UI, integrations, reporting, speed, support, AI, SNMP, legacy compatibility, and mobile features.
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
They had given a feature of real-time replication which they stopped in NAKIVO.
Co-Owner at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Setup Cost

CTERA offers competitive pricing with flexible licensing, appreciated for cost savings and simplicity compared to rivals and previous solutions.
<p>NAKIVO Backup &amp; Replication provides cost-effective, easy setup and flexible licensing, appealing to small to medium enterprises.</p>
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
From what I heard from my seniors, a 50 TB capacity license would be around 55 to 60 lakhs in Indian rupees.
Graduate Engineering Trainee at HCLSoftware
The product is affordable even for smaller organizations.
Co-Owner at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The pricing is very low, and the licensing process makes it easy to obtain any quote.
Business Consulting at Gestion IT
 

Valuable Features

CTERA's platform offers scalable, secure file services with features enhancing efficiency and positive user experience through strong support.
<p>NAKIVO Backup &amp; Replication offers user-friendly, cost-effective data protection with strong VMware integration, efficient recovery, and seamless cloud support.</p>
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
When it comes to data protection in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, we have encryption methodologies and we also have ransomware protection, which is a wide variety of features offered along with the CTERA appliance and application.
Senior Associate at Iron Mountain Incorporated
The VM, restore, and file recovery capabilities are considered gold standards.
Co-Owner at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
7th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (1st), NAS (4th), Cloud Migration (3rd), Cloud Storage (4th), Cloud Backup (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (1st), Content Collaboration Platforms (6th), AI Legal & Compliance (3rd)
NAKIVO Backup & Replication
Ranking in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
9th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Disaster Recovery (DR) Software category, the mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 1.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NAKIVO Backup & Replication is 2.8%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Disaster Recovery (DR) Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform1.9%
NAKIVO Backup & Replication2.8%
Other95.3%
Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
 

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.
EDERLEY TERRERO - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Consulting at Gestion IT
Has improved customer satisfaction through reliable replication and flexible deployment
NAKIVO Backup & Replication has positively impacted my organization and my customers because it is not expensive and easy to use. I can see all the backup and replication processes, and I can protect all my customer data. It's the best solution when compared with others. The time savings and customer satisfaction demonstrate specific positive outcomes. The customers are happy with the solution and appreciate that it is not expensive.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
53%
Outsourcing Company
17%
Educational Organization
5%
Financial Services Firm
3%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business81
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
I do not know much about the pricing, setup cost, or licensing cost of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. I believe it comes with a license. From what I heard from my seniors, a 50 TB capacit...
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
I cannot think of any areas at this time that could be improved. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a well-rounded platform.
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
I primarily use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to replicate our marketing content to our regional offices. Marketing uses the Adobe application suite for creating and managing file content...
How does Nakivo compare with Veeam Backup & Replication?
Nakivo is my favorite backup software. Below are the main benefits of Nakivo compared to Veeam 1. Low cost. 2. Backup storage with global deduplication (this is the main requirement of a backup sol...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nakivo?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is very positive. The pricing is very low, and the licensing process makes it easy to obtain any quote.
What needs improvement with Nakivo?
NAKIVO Backup &amp; Replication has been improving lately as they have released many updates, and it seems to work excellently at this moment. There will always be emerging needs, such as AI, which...
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
Coca Cola, Honda, 3M, University of Arizona, University of Maryland, University of Arkansas, Johns Hopkins University, Marriott, Radisson Hotels and Resorts, Fujifilm, Eiffage
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. NAKIVO Backup & Replication and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,797 professionals have used our research since 2012.