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Dell PowerStore vs FreeNAS comparison

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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

Dell PowerStore
Ranking in NAS
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
242
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (4th), Enterprise SAN (1st), All-Flash Storage (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)
FreeNAS
Ranking in NAS
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 7.7%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FreeNAS is 4.0%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerStore7.7%
FreeNAS4.0%
Other88.3%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2304864 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vmware Windows Senior Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Resilience has supported proactive management and secured audit readiness across multiple sites
The resilience in Dell PowerStore benefits my company from an auditing perspective because we know we have that resilience in place. I see Dell PowerStore playing a bigger role in the future because we are starting to use it more, and that is pushing it. The biggest return on investment for me when using Dell PowerStore is scalability. Scalability is key. I can amplify that scalability is the biggest return on investment because we have redundancy between two sites; if something goes down, we have to manage it, but we want to do it proactively.
Vincenzo D'Aniello - PeerSpot reviewer
Software developer at TREXON S.R.L.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have found that Dell PowerStore scales with my organization."
"The most valuable feature is the functionality of the integration between the storage and the domain."
"A particularly valuable feature is its simplicity."
"PowerStore is easy to use, powerful, reliable, and highly customizable to customer's needs."
"The insights offered by Dell AIOps are very robust when it comes to mitigating traffic flow and data resiliency."
"The importance of Dell PowerStore's compression and deduplication technologies for my organization is extremely critical, and probably one of the top things that is the selling point for Dell PowerStore."
"My experience with Dell's customer support overall has been amazing."
"The benefits my customers have realized from implementing and using Dell PowerStore include faster storage because most of them transitioned from regular SSD storage or spinning drives to NVMe storage, which is notably faster."
"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."
"It integrates well into either Windows or Linux environments."
"The stability is quite good; our system is in production and we have not had any problems with it, and when a drive fails, we don't really have any disruption because we can easily rebuild the disk, even if it is very large."
"The solution has been very stable so far."
"After using FreeNAS I will never spend money for commercial products like Dell or 3Par."
"It has the best storage capacity."
"The program is fast, fun to work on and easy."
"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."
 

Cons

"I may see ROI in the future, but so far, I do not see any savings."
"I have not seen anything specific. The only thing I can think of that needs improvement is the price."
"One feature I would like to improve with Dell PowerStore is regarding Metro LUNs."
"During my initial setups, when you initially deploy those, you have to choose between block-only storage or unified mode, where it has block storage and NAS storage."
"I appreciate Dell's commitment, but sometimes I feel Dell products can be costlier concerning the overall lifecycle management of the product."
"I haven't seen ROI with Dell PowerStore, but as the admin, it does make my life easier."
"It could be improved to be cheaper for us."
"The primary limitation is that Dell PowerStore typically uses SSD disks, making it more expensive than alternatives."
"One of my hard drives has failed and the documentation that I've been able to find has not helped."
"The support for S3 needs to be improved."
"Make it easier to find out how to fix things when something goes wrong."
"If you find the documentation, it is always incomplete and fragmented."
"They can improve the integration with PSA systems. This functionality could be better."
"FreeNAS should be better prepared for clustering."
"They should include clustering for the solution."
"Its support for Hyper-V clusters."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Dell PowerStore has been priced aggressively, especially when compared to other NVMe storage options. It is likely one of the most cost-effective options for organizations seeking a pure NVMe play in terms of pricing."
"We purchased it with a five-year warranty."
"Licensing is very simple. Everything is included in the basic license. There are no concerns about having to pay to add a feature. Everything is there."
"We are currently using Dell PowerStore for our smaller storage and there is no competition for pricing."
"With compression, we were able to have a solution within our company's budget. We include a clause in the contract with Dell that states if the compression ratio is not met, we will adjust the workload accordingly."
"Dell PowerStore is affordable and the license is just a face license which is great."
"If we use the 500 or 1000, the licensing and pricing are reasonable. PowerStore can compete with any vendor and the price isn't that expensive."
"The licensing for this solution is good and is in the mid-range tier."
"We use the free version of the program."
"Its price is okay. It suits our needs."
"Its licensing cost is based on the hardware capacity."
"For our configuration, we pay a little bit less than €10,000 ($12,000 USD) per year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
20%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise47
Large Enterprise120
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

What do you think about Dell EMC PowerStore? Is it actually a new product?
PowerStore is flexible, scalable, simple, and performant with market-leading economics for a wide range of legacy and next-gen apps. It is only Flash and can support many workloads from today's app...
How does Dell's EMC PowerStore compare with its EMC Unity XT?
Dell EMC PowerStore is a unified storage platform that has the added benefit of being scalable. The automated management of resources feature provides a more simple administration. I found the flex...
What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?
Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell offerings and integrated into the PowerStoreOS. The installation and setup have a ...
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Also Known As

PowerStore
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Morroni Technologies Inc., Creative Integrations
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. FreeNAS and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.