Dropbox vs. TrueNAS

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Dropbox
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Dropbox is a cloud storage solution, equipped with features that help users to save time, improve productivity, and collaborate with others. Users can edit PDFs, share videos, sign documents, and collaborate with stakeholders without leaving Dropbox.
$9.99
per month
TrueNAS
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
TrueNAS is a network-attached storage featuring all-flash and hybrid storage editions, from iXsystems headquartered in San Jose.
$0
per month
Pricing
DropboxTrueNAS
Editions & Modules
Plus
$9.99
per month
Essentials
$18
per month
Business
$20
per month per user
Business Plus
$26
per month per user
Basic
Free
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DropboxTrueNAS
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
DropboxTrueNAS
Considered Both Products
Dropbox

No answer on this topic

TrueNAS
Chose TrueNAS
I chose TrueNAS (upgrading from FreeNAS) because of the small footprint, ease of use, and reliability of the ZFS file system. The file sharing protocols supported as well as the intuitive interface all make TrueNAS a great choice for business and hobbyists alike.
Chose TrueNAS
Our TrueNAS server came with much more performance for the price, and a great community for support.
Features
DropboxTrueNAS
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
Dropbox
8.0
1336 Ratings
4% below category average
TrueNAS
-
Ratings
Versioning8.11110 Ratings00 Ratings
Video files7.91092 Ratings00 Ratings
Audio files8.2988 Ratings00 Ratings
Document collaboration7.81162 Ratings00 Ratings
Access control8.41234 Ratings00 Ratings
File search7.61280 Ratings00 Ratings
Device sync8.31230 Ratings00 Ratings
Cloud Storage Security & Administration
Comparison of Cloud Storage Security & Administration features of Product A and Product B
Dropbox
8.5
1265 Ratings
1% below category average
TrueNAS
-
Ratings
User and role management8.41130 Ratings00 Ratings
File organization8.41246 Ratings00 Ratings
Device management8.61110 Ratings00 Ratings
Cloud Storage Platform
Comparison of Cloud Storage Platform features of Product A and Product B
Dropbox
8.3
1255 Ratings
4% below category average
TrueNAS
-
Ratings
Performance7.81244 Ratings00 Ratings
Reliability8.91251 Ratings00 Ratings
Storage Reports8.2954 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
DropboxTrueNAS
Small Businesses
SugarSync
SugarSync
Score 4.1 out of 10
DiskStation
DiskStation
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Druva Security Cloud
Druva Security Cloud
Score 9.4 out of 10
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Druva Security Cloud
Druva Security Cloud
Score 9.4 out of 10
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
DropboxTrueNAS
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(1348 ratings)
9.8
(39 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.1
(41 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.1
(496 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Availability
6.8
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
6.6
(38 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Online Training
8.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.5
(4 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Configurability
6.4
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
6.6
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
DropboxTrueNAS
Likelihood to Recommend
Dropbox
Let me describe a scenario that happened recently in our organization's marketing team storing thousands of images videos and pdfs and Dropbox is done a great perfomer in this situation by the product features which is very helpful for the team, such as smart sync reduces disc usage, preview support for many media formats & Integrate with Adobe Creative Cloud.
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iXsystems
We have many TrueNAS units deployed and they've served us well everywhere. Our most common use case is using it as storage backing for virtual machines. We have Proxmox talking to it, as well as having it acting as the hypervisor. We've never lost data with it, even when faced with multiple disk failures. We've also always found the performance to be robust and able to handle the needs of our clients. Our clients range from libraries, to medium sized enterprises and we've always been able to make it work, and work reliably.
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Pros
Dropbox
  • I can share projects I need feedback on.
  • I can make projects available to editors so that they can do their work.
  • Dropbox is a place where I can store files that I can access from anywhere, even if I don't have my laptop with me at the time.
  • I have an old friend who is an acting professor in Tokyo. He loves the dialogue that I write in my novels. He converts chapters into scenework for his acting students. They get very excited when there's new material!
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iXsystems
  • iSCSI Datastores for virtualization.
  • NFS store for unix storage or backups over networking.
  • Very fast performance, sometimes outclassing SSD arrays even in NFS.
  • The ZFS filesystem has given use much greater flexibility.
  • Using their newer servers we could in theory scale to any height of required storage.
Read full review
Cons
Dropbox
  • I’d like to be able to hover over an image/document and have it expand/enlarge without actually opening it
  • I’d love to see a carousel that lets me thumb through more quickly
  • I’m almost always in thumbnail view. I’d like to see them re-organize automatically when something is moved or deleted instead of leaving an empty space.
  • AI options for photo editing.
  • Easier pdf markups
Read full review
iXsystems
  • more graphical interface to admin features like plugins, jails, list are well but a tiles aproach will be better
  • allow bulk upload/download/update to Groups or user accounts from SMB shares.
  • some script language template featured to create/config/change/delete storage pools /dataset or shares .
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Likelihood to Renew
Dropbox
Dropbox is a user-friendly, easy tool which requires little to no skill and they offer a free version with a good amount of storage available. There are other file sharing tools available however at a cost. Dropbox free version I have used for years and it serves every purpose I need.
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iXsystems
The software has been amazing. It has saved me a lot of headache in the past few years. Also, it's nice to knowing that if any of our current Synology devices were to die I can have an iSCSI system up and running very shortly. I didn't give a 10 score because I find their support to be rather slow and pedantic. They test many things when the answer is right in front of them. The compute sytem (not storage) we purchased from them came with pcie gen4 nvme's. They didn't work, but rather than believe me about the spec's in the motherboard manual saying the onboard was pcie3 ONLY they shipped me 2 replacements until I showed them an old pcie3 device worked just fine. The part that rather frustrated me was the machine was claimed to have been tested / burnt in. How can this be true if the server won't even boot up into the BIOS?
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Usability
Dropbox
It works extremely well, and we have never had any issues with connecting or sharing files. It's very easy to use, and any team member can share, add, and delete files to a virtual drive. This is extremely helpful, and it's an amazing tool to use, ensuring everyone can connect and work together effectively.
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iXsystems
The software is fairly straight forward and if you mess up the network interfaces you can login locally at the console and fix any issues that you may have had with VLANS etc denying you network access. There was a little bit of annoying issues when setting up multiple network interface cards. Rather than keeping one interface setup with DHCP, when you add a second one with a new network it disables the first. Which makes it impossible to login again. However if you wait it will revert. I learned after works that you need to set up the network cards and then go back and setup the first one again and THEN test / apply. After that it was pretty good. The summary of the devices is very nice to. You get an accurate snapshot of how well your system is doing as soon as you login
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Reliability and Availability
Dropbox
I really recommend the product for the Dropbox availability is a great having very very less downtimes, they errors are less I have been faced yet, due to connectivity sometimes we are getting errors. Only sometimes the limitations of some features show some errors.
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iXsystems
No answers on this topic
Performance
Dropbox
Dropbox is really useful, you can access any file from anywhere and you can upload and even edit files online, but, sometimes it can be slow. Downloading, uploading, and syncing is a bit slow, it can take several minutes. Furthermore, the search engine for large amounts of data can be slow too and it is not powerful.
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iXsystems
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Dropbox
They immediately responded like in an example that I gave where one of our staff members accidentally deleted the whole Special Hope Network Dropbox, we immediately contacted Dropbox they walked us through the steps of how to retrieve the information and luckily enough we were able to retrieve the entire Dropbox and we have had back and forth with Dropbox on what to do when an employee leaves how to remove them how to add another employee.
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iXsystems
The support was responsive for opening cases. However I found solutions to simple problems took far too long. When we had a bad power supply and we had another with the exact same firmware version they should have sent replacement for both. We had to file another case for the other PSU that started dyeing the same week. They also had to do a lot of troubleshooting to replace the fans that were not behaving as they should. I'm not a home user. I know when certain things are failing and the silly hoops the jump through made it frustrating. However, once we finally got the problem identified we had parts shipped out via advance replacement which was nice.
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In-Person Training
Dropbox
The person for corporate product dealing and knowledge of the product explore and better and secure use are properly handover to us. Also provide full software and tool training from the basic to the pro level with each and every possible explanation. Provide many sessions regarding every doubt. Also Guide better suitable options for our business to migrate and integrate for the expansion in all places employee smoothly.
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iXsystems
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Dropbox
I did not personally take any training for Dropbox so I am self taught but I know when our Vice President selected Dropbox, he personally did do some training modules on it and I'm assuming it was very easy and simple to understand since he now acts like he is a pro at it!
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iXsystems
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Dropbox
I needed to stay current in improving my daily operations. Dropbox
was suggested to me by a former colleague two-years ago and I've been using it just fine ever since.
Read full review
iXsystems
The implementation went well after we got the boot drive working properly. The device was setup exactly as i asked with the hardware except for the boot drive. The reason I chose 9 instead of 10 was the boot drive put us back about a week for the part to arrive. I ended up using a personal drive to show them that they were wrong sending use the gen4 drives.
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Alternatives Considered
Dropbox
I prefer the layout and visual aspect of Dropbox as it mirrors my files on my computer. I feel that I am more organized, and it's easier to find my files in Dropbox than it was with Google Drive.
Read full review
iXsystems
I chose TrueNAS (upgrading from FreeNAS) because of the small footprint, ease of use, and reliability of the ZFS file system. The file sharing protocols supported as well as the intuitive interface all make TrueNAS a great choice for business and hobbyists alike.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Dropbox
I would recommend to this product directly to the sales team of Dropbox for the best deal provide to my referred person and provide the best service to them.
Read full review
iXsystems
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Dropbox
It's easy to integrate with the systems of Windows and Linux, easy to have web versions accessible, which provide the web login credentials. Also, it can be installed for individuals for the best autosync features.
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iXsystems
No answers on this topic
Professional Services
Dropbox
Their services are highly rated for moving massive, complex data sets from legacy on-premise servers to the cloud with minimal downtime.
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iXsystems
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Dropbox
  • When it works (usually if a client already has Dropbox, so they don't get the solicitation to sign up), it works flawlessly.
  • I've had multiple clients not see the "continue with download only" at the bottom and email me to resend the media another way because they don't have a Dropbox account.
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iXsystems
  • Using a TruNAS integrated solution has reduced support overhead compared to using custom hardware.
  • Being cheaper than full flash storage arrays, this unit allows for a good balance of speed with its use of SSD-based caching drives.
  • The reliability of the hardware/software integration means I spend less time troubleshooting and more time doing business. Coming from a custom-built solution it is apparent that IX Systems has done some extensive testing.
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ScreenShots

Dropbox Screenshots

Screenshot of the action bar, that sits across the browser page can be used to record the screen, edit PDFs, upload files, create folders, get signatures, or send and track documents.Screenshot of Dropbox Replay, that lets collaborators leave frame-accurate feedback and markups directly on project files.Screenshot of Dropbox Capture, which can be used to take screen recordings, screenshots, and GIFs with one click and share them with a link.Screenshot of the interface where Dropbox lets users upload, edit, send, and sign PDFs in one place.