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FreeNAS vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 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

FreeNAS
Ranking in NAS
16th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp FAS Series
Ranking in NAS
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (3rd), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the NAS category, the mindshare of FreeNAS is 2.0%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp FAS Series is 10.7%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NetApp FAS Series10.7%
FreeNAS2.0%
Other87.3%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

Vincenzo D'Aniello - PeerSpot reviewer
Open-source with great disk management and task synchronization
The system itself allows you to add any feature. The only bad thing is that this maybe depends on FreeBSD, and sometimes finding documentation is difficult. For example, we knew that previous versions automatically enabled the Linux kernel, yet with the recent version, this was no longer the case. Now, there was the possibility of being able to create Debian-based jails, and finding the documentation was not easy or fast. That said, in the end, we succeeded. If you find the documentation, it is always incomplete and fragmented.
Arnaud Salmon - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good performance and
Once, I've been in a program, but they stopped supporting protocols like HTTP, STP, and that kind of stuff. All of the DIP supports at the beginning were kind of support when it was just Python and just five storage. And it happened a few times that the customer required the STP and HTTP protocol for storage. And I was surprised I couldn't do it anymore with NetApp. So, it would be beneficial for them to support both kinds of protocols. The only little black points that I would put on top of NetApp FAS Series. There is room for improvement in deployment and configuration processes. The thing with ONTAP is that we have a lot of layers, from the raw disks to the volumes we present to servers and configure. There are quite a lot of things to configure. Probably NetApp should ease the way to install that. In NetApp products, such as ONTAP and FAS, a solid understanding of storage is still necessary to handle configurations in larger systems. It's not the same with Pure Storage or Huawei. Even someone less familiar with storage could manage it, making it more accessible.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has the best storage capacity."
"The solution has been very stable so far."
"FreeNAS is much simpler and easier to use than other solutions, but we don't have the complete range of features that come with the full version."
"Its stability is the most valuable. It is reliable, and we don't have to worry too much about it."
"It integrates well into either Windows or Linux environments."
"The ease of use of the 'jail', the management of backups, and copies to easily create test and pre-production scenarios have speeded up the development and distribution of business apps."
"What I like about it is that I can work on it from any computer or any device. The initial setup is very simple. The setup wizard is really helpful."
"NetApp's cloud-based PaaS has been a massive help for unstructured data."
"Reliable storage solution with an easy setup. It has high availability and makes single file restoration easy. It also has good stability and scalability."
"The solution has tiers inside which means we do not only need to use SSDs."
"The biggest advantage that makes NetApp FAS Series better is that we can use RAID technology on the storage."
"Most valuable features are its ease of use, robust Snapshot functionality, and that you can use it in two datacenters with SnapMirror-ing."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its absolute reliability."
"The initial setup was so straightforward. It was well-documented."
 

Cons

"If you find the documentation, it is always incomplete and fragmented."
"They should include clustering for the solution."
"They can improve the integration with PSA systems. This functionality could be better."
"The latest version of the dashboard doesn't work as good as the previous version."
"The one thing that I find difficult to do which is very time-consuming is that I like to have a backup of the important files."
"FreeNAS should be better prepared for clustering."
"The support for S3 needs to be improved."
"Replication should ideally be part of the ONTAP base bundle."
"One area that needs improvement is the hyper-converged solution. Although NetApp has a solution, compared to Nutanix, it falls short."
"The solution's configuration is not flexible."
"The high cost of the product is an area of concern, so from an improvement perspective, the tool needs to be made cheaper."
"I would like to see less latency and higher IOPS."
"If our customer needs a high-performance storage solution then we don't recommend this product."
"It was not possible to have a custom user inside ONTAP without the delete permission to delete the volume. We wanted others to be able to create a SnapMirror and volume, but have no volume deletion permission. In the newest version, it seems to already be in place, but there was a bug enabling this one in older versions 9.11, 9.10, or earlier."
"The product must support more drives."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its licensing cost is based on the hardware capacity."
"Its price is okay. It suits our needs."
"For our configuration, we pay a little bit less than €10,000 ($12,000 USD) per year."
"We use the free version of the program."
"it’s not an inexpensive solution and it may not be for the cost-sensitive customer."
"We are on a perpetual license."
"The price of the NetApp FAS Series is reasonable and it provides value for the money with the feature sets. NetApp FAS Series are competing with Huawei storage which has an office and does aggressive marketing with a discount. However, we found that if our customers do a technology refresh they are happy with the performance of the NetApp FAS Series."
"The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is not cheap, but in comparison to other vendors, NetApp FAS Series is affordable because they also have deduplication, compression, and inline compression. They focus on storage only, which is really good; it works."
"The price, compared to competitors, is quite high."
"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being expensive. We pay a one-time purchase price."
"NetApp FAS Series could be less expensive."
"The tool is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Performing Arts
14%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise57
 

Questions from the Community

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Which SAN product would you choose: IBM FlashSystem (FS9500) vs PureFlash Array/X NVMe vs PureFlash Array/XL NVMe?
Have you considered a NetApp FAS Storage for your NAS needs? I am sure it fits very well.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp FAS Series?
The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is not cheap, but in comparison to other vendors, NetApp FAS Series is affordable because they also have deduplication, compression, and inline compression. They fo...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Morroni Technologies Inc., Creative Integrations
Children's Hospital Central California, Plex Systems, PDF PNI Digital Media, Denver Broncos, PDF KSM Legal, Clayton Companies, Virginia Community College
Find out what your peers are saying about FreeNAS vs. NetApp FAS Series and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.