QNAP NAS vs. TrueNAS

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
QNAP NAS
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
QNAP offers a wide array of network-attached storage units for SMBs, home, and enterprise.N/A
TrueNAS
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
TrueNAS is a network-attached storage featuring all-flash and hybrid storage editions, from iXsystems headquartered in San Jose.N/A
Pricing
QNAP NASTrueNAS
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
QNAP NASTrueNAS
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
QNAP NASTrueNAS
Considered Both Products
QNAP NAS
Chose QNAP NAS
QNAP NAS offers several advantages over TrueNAS and Synology. Compared to TrueNAS, QNAP provides a more user-friendly experience, with a simple setup process and intuitive interface, making it ideal for those who don’t want to deal with complex configurations. QNAP also has a …
TrueNAS
Chose TrueNAS
the features installed on the other providers solutions, TrueNAS allow just install only the featured do you need and not others you don't like or you don't need. The isolate runtime space give for plugins jail make TrueNAS a really modular NAS solution over the other …
Chose TrueNAS
Flexibility in Storage, configuration, and ability to scale the solution as needed. The GUI is straight forward. Finding help in the forums is also on point. Great community and support that you don't find with other products.
Chose TrueNAS
Synology and QNAP both felt to basic after trying TrueNAS, while NetApp and Fujitsu where both expensive and I wasn't convinced we would A utilize or need all the features and furthermore all the things we where going to use seemed to be something that TrueNAS simply did better.
Chose TrueNAS
Having a better, trusted filesystem to build upon makes a huge difference. I want to know that if something I've written is read, it was the thing I wrote. And if it can't be read, I want to know that soon and know how to repair it.
Chose TrueNAS
I like all three for different reasons. But TrueNAS fits the FOSS criteria perfectly, obviously. QNAP and Synology operate differently and fit different clients and/or different builds, and have a corporate entity supporting them. We have all 3, and TrueNAS likes friends. I …
Chose TrueNAS
TrueNAS lacks some of the polish of these systems, but the cost to build a system much more powerful (CPU, RAM, network interfaces) than a Synology or QNAP appliance is remarkably lower.
Best Alternatives
QNAP NASTrueNAS
Small Businesses
DiskStation
DiskStation
Score 8.8 out of 10
DiskStation
DiskStation
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Score 10.0 out of 10
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Score 10.0 out of 10
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
QNAP NASTrueNAS
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.6
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
QNAP NASTrueNAS
Likelihood to Recommend
We save a lot of money using QNAP for the backup of Virtual machines. We installed a QNAP in the datacenter of our Cloud Provider and the cost of the backup and storage that we use is, at least, 1/10 of the cost that we had in the past. We can choose what kind of drives we can install, so if we want affordable we can use 5400/7200 hard drives, if we need speed we can use SSD drives.
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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
  • Ability to scale and increase storage as needed.
  • Safe RAID setups to protect on hard drive failures.
  • A lot of apps to address many aspects of business.
  • Ability to expand memory.
  • New 10GB connection available.
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  • 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.
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Cons
  • I've had difficulties upgrading firmwares
  • Reboot it's even very slow , like 15/20 minutes but that's not so critical
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  • 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
No answers on this topic
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
QNAP NAS's usability is excellent, making it accessible to both beginners and more experienced users. The setup process is straightforward, with clear instructions that guide you through everything. The user interface is intuitive, allowing you to navigate easily between settings, apps, and features. Even with its powerful functionality, such as remote access and advanced file management, it doesn’t feel overwhelming. The mobile apps make it convenient to access files on the go, and everything integrates smoothly. Whether you need basic storage or more advanced features, QNAP balances ease of use with powerful capabilities, making it a highly user-friendly NAS option.
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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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Support Rating
QNAP NAS is a really good product, but I think the best part is the support for the products. Whenever I have a question or imagine something that won't happen, I can ask the support side. When the support engineer understands what I want to do, he does his best.
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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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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
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
QNAP NAS offers several advantages over TrueNAS and Synology. Compared to TrueNAS, QNAP provides a more user-friendly experience, with a simple setup process and intuitive interface, making it ideal for those who don’t want to deal with complex configurations. QNAP also has a robust app ecosystem, offering extensive multimedia, backup, and security features, which are easier to install and manage compared to TrueNAS. Against Synology, QNAP stands out for its greater hardware variety and expandability, with better options for PCIe expansion, memory upgrades, and 10GbE networking. Its hybrid storage approach also combines SSD and HDD caching, offering performance boosts Synology lacks.
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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.
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Return on Investment
  • The NAS Server itself is expandable, so you can develop it instead of changing it whenever you need it. Such as Ram, Network Bandwidth, Disk Capacity.
  • We have not experienced any hardware malfunctions in these years, the hardware structure is very stable. Even at first, the environment in which we were running the device was not what it should be, but it still did not cause any problems.
  • We stopped doing investment cost analysis because it looks like it will work until we retire.
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  • 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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