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Dropbox vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 17, 2024

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

Dropbox
Ranking in Cloud Storage
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
Content Collaboration Platforms (1st)
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Ranking in Cloud Storage
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (1st), Cloud Backup (14th), Public Cloud Storage Services (7th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Storage category, the mindshare of Dropbox is 5.4%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is 12.1%, down from 14.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Edgar  Paez - PeerSpot reviewer
Work from anywhere and backup easily while being practical
I recommend Dropbox, yet not for all of the features it has. I am a basic user. In a personal mode, we have about 100 employees, and maybe 20 of them use Dropbox as a personal backup system. ShareFile is more secure than Dropbox. Five years ago, ShareFile was qualified as having better security control, access privilege management, and version control recovery, among many features that we were using for private documentation. Overall, I would rate Dropbox an eight out of ten.
Pramod-Talekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution
The tool's most valuable features are the SnapLock and SnapMirror features. If something goes wrong with the data, we can restore it. This isn't a mirror; we store data in different locations. If there's an issue on the primary site, we can retrieve data from the secondary site. Multiprotocol support in NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is beneficial because it allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution. This feature eliminates the need to purchase different types of storage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Dropbox is easy to use."
"One of the advantages of Dropbox is that you can share files with people who are external to your organization without any additional costs. It is also easy to use, stable, and trustworthy."
"The security is very good."
"I like how user-friendly the solution is."
"The various methods for accessing files, such as through mobile apps, online synchronization, and on a PC, are highly valuable."
"Many people can use the Dropbox service and edit the data, it is simple to use."
"The scalability is great for us."
"The solution is easy to use."
"The most valuable features of this solution are SnapShot, FlexClone, and deduplication."
"One of the features our customers like is that it can be used from one cloud provider to another. They can use it from Azure to AWS or vice versa. That way, they don't need to use the same provider for backups. If something goes wrong on the primary site, having the same data in another cloud service provider is important."
"The feature which I like the most is that it has the capabilities that the traditional storage system offers. It provides all the functionality. The deduplication and compression work exactly like ONTAP's traditional storage. So people who have experience with that find it very easy to manage."
"The stability has been really good."
"Another feature which gets a lot of attention in our environment is the File Services Solutions in the cloud, because it's a completely, fully-managed service. We don't have to take care of any updates, upgrades, or configurations."
"The most valuable features are that it's reliable, simple, and performs well."
"This solution has made everything easier to do."
"The ability to do a straight SnapMirror from our on-prem to the cloud with no other data transitions is excellent."
 

Cons

"The solution could be more scalable."
"The product must be more user-friendly."
"There is a potential improvement regarding storage capacity and offering more than its current four gigabytes."
"Dropbox needs to improve its integration with Google platforms, including Google Sheets, Google Docs, and Google Slides, which facilitate easier collaboration."
"Dropbox, like many file sharing tools, needs to synch to a local hard drive. That is a bit difficult with 5TB Dropbox content."
"For us, storage is an issue. The free version is too small in terms of the amount of storage on offer."
"Dropbox could make the installation and the log of what has changed in a file easier. Showing logs could be more accessible."
"We are moving to Microsoft Teams. Instead of Dropbox, we will be using Microsoft Teams that has the advantage of saving the versions. It supports file versioning so that you can always go back to the previous version if you want to. If somebody has made a change in one of the files and you don't know what changes have been made, you can always go back to the previous version. This feature led us to migrate to Microsoft Teams. With Dropbox, there is no option for simultaneous work. This feature is there in Google Files. In Microsoft Teams, you can invite team members to collaborate. That is the reason why I prefer Microsoft Teams over Dropbox. It should also have more integration with other solutions."
"When Azure does their maintenance, they do maintenance on one node at a time. With the two nodes of the CVO, it can automatically fail over from one node to the node that is staying up. And when the first node comes back online, it will fail back to the first node. We have had issues with everything failing back 100 percent correctly."
"NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP needs to have customizable pricing options such as 10 TB increments. They seem to have only two options: 10 TB or 250 TB."
"I would like some more performance matrices to know what it is doing. It has some matrices inherent to the Cloud Volumes ONTAP. But inside Cloud Manager, it would also be nice to see. You can have a little Snapshot, then drill down if you go a little deeper."
"I would want more visibility and data analytics where we can see anomalies within the shares within the GUI."
"I would like to see more information about Cloud Volumes ONTAP using Google Cloud Platform on NetApp's website."
"The dashboard is a little bit clunky. I like to see it a little bit more on the simplistic side. I would like to be able to create my own widgets and customize what I want to see a little bit more versus what is currently there. That would be helpful so that when I log in, I go straight to my widget or my board without going to multiple places to get to what I need to find or build."
"Some of the licensing is a little kludgy. We just created an HA environment in Azure and their licensing for SVMs per node is a little kludgy. They're working on it right now."
"NetApp CVO needs to have more exposure and mature further before it will have greater acceptance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My company makes monthly payments towards the licensing charges associated with the product. I think it's a reasonably priced product."
"The solution does not come with a licensing cost."
"I don't pay any licensing costs."
"I use the free version of the solution."
"I believe I pay around $5 per month for the license."
"We are using the free version of Dropbox which has approximately two gigabytes of data capacity."
"The solution is expensive."
"One area that has been a big issue for me is when I tried to close my accounts, it is difficult. We had small personal accounts, and we then wanted to consolidate everything to the business account, but then to cancel and close those smaller accounts, it's a big issue. I still haven't done it and it's quite a long process."
"The pricing could be improved. It is a good product, but it is very expensive for me."
"They have a very good price which keeps our customers happy."
"The AWS consumer-based pricing model makes it easy for developers to use their credit cards to spin up virtual servers immediately."
"We find the pricing to be favorable due to the educational sector we belong to."
"If a customer is only using, say, less than 10 terabytes, I don't think CVO would be a good option. A customer using at least 100 or 200 terabytes should get a reasonable price from NetApp."
"We purchased the product directly from NetApp."
"The standard pricing is online. Pricing depends. If you're using the PayGo model, then it's just the normal costs on the Microsoft page. If you're using Bring Your Own License, which is what we're doing, then you get with your sales contact at NetApp and start figuring out what price is the best, in the end, for your company."
"It is expensive. There are no costs in addition to their standard licensing fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
50%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Computer Software Company
5%
Construction Company
4%
Educational Organization
29%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?
So a lot of these licenses are at the rate that is required for capacity. So they're they're able to reduce the license consumption and also the consumption of the underlying cloud storage.
 

Also Known As

No data available
ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Vita Coco, BCBGMAXAZRIA Group, Centric Project, Kayak, FourSquare, Asana, Huge Adversting , USA Gymnastics, Appen, Valliant, Radio Lab
1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard
Find out what your peers are saying about Dropbox vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.