TrueNAS CORE

Review of TrueNAS CORE Software: system overview, features, price and cost information. Get free demos and compare to similar programs.

Overview

About TrueNAS CORE

TrueNAS, the world's most deployed storage software, is a universal data platform that allows users to easily adopt a modern, open source approach to store and protect their growing data. TrueNAS harnesses the power of the legendary ZFS file system to provide unified storage (File, Block Object, and Apps) with the reliability and performance demanded by virtualization, backup, and many other data-heavy needs for your organization.

TrueNAS CORE Screenshots

TrueNAS CORE Features

Features of TrueNAS CORE
Backup Log
Backup Scheduling
Cloud Backup
Compression
Continuous Backup
Incremental Backup
Local Server Options
Activity Dashboard
Activity Tracking
Backup and Recovery

Customer Reviews

See why people love TrueNAS CORE

5 Star
80%
4 Star
20%
3 Star
0%
2 Star
0%
1 Star
0%
Brendon C.

Brendon C.

Verified User

Law Practice · 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years
Dec 22, 2025

Best bang for the buck

Verified reviewer

What they liked

TrueNAS CORE's wide hardware compatibility make it relatively simple to build a system much more powerful than the NAS appliances from Synology or QNAP by reusing parts laying around in the parts box

Room for improvement
  • ZFS file system cannot grow a volume like Synology's Btrfs can, by simply adding a drive
  • This requires more planning

Marcin K.

Verified User

Information Technology and Services · 10000+ employees

Used daily for less than 2 years
Dec 22, 2025

BSD-based WebUI-using storage appliance

Basically fulfills all its core goals pretty well, can be had for free for own deployments or can be a paid solution for supported enterprise/business customers.

What they liked
  • ZFS has been implemeted great - its stable and performant in the BSD variant (Core), but it has issues in its linux based variant (Scale) due to how ZFS dataset is used as storage filesystem for Docker/Kubernetes functionalities
  • It's also rather resource prudent
Room for improvement
  • It is BSD-based in the Core guise, so any BSD issues or support apply here as well
  • In its linux-based variant (Scale), the ZFS datatset for applications results in thousands of snapshots reported in the UI, due to each layer of each container in use, plus a history of those for rollbacking purposes is saved and shown without any useful filtering option in the snapshots pane/page of the UI and by extension in the CLI
  • By default, SMB/NFS shares do not expose snapshots of the filesystem in the shares for ease of data recovery upon accidental deletes etc
Switched From

OMV was using MD-RAID which meant lengthy array rebuilds.

Why they chose it

"Scale was still in very alphs atges and was unusable at the time, and Qnap costed more and still used MD-ADM under the hood so potential rebuild of the array would be hours/days long."

M S.

Verified User

Retail · 5001-10000 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years
Dec 22, 2025

TrueNAS review

Verified reviewer

What they liked
  • Really good NAS OS, have the control over everything
  • ZFS pool is great for our usage and the capabilities of creating docker within TrueNAS is a plus
Room for improvement
  • Can be hard to understand how TrueNAS works at the beginning
  • You have to prepare yourself before starring with it

Nicholas F.

Verified User

Education Management · 10000+ employees

Used daily for more than 2 years
Dec 22, 2025

\

In the past 8 years I have deployed dozens of systems running FreeNAS and TrueNAS core. With the use of periodic SMART test schedules, ZFS scrubs, built in alerting, TrueCommand monitoring, and a whole host of maturity in the ZFS filesystem itself, I have never lost data because of a flaw in the product. It does exactly what it is designed to do, stops you from making poor decisions and keeps your data safe and uncorrupted.

What they liked
  • I have used TrueNAS to solve a host of issues
  • We use TrueNAS as an iSCSI target for workloads such as video surveillance and VDI
  • For this workload we have been able to bring new life to existing hardware we already own in order to extend it's useful life longer than we otherwise would be able to
  • TrueNAS, both CORE and SCALE, have a wide breadth of hardware support
  • This is something becoming decreasingly common, with major hypervisor players end-of-lifing hardware long before it's useful life has ended
  • We also use TrueNAS for it's filesharing capabilities
  • With immutable snapshots and replication, we are able to have warm backups on multiple hardware nodes for important datasets
  • This is an very easily implemented layer in our backup and DR policies
  • TrueNAS leverages ZFS which is a COW file system, making snapshots simple and TrueNAS layers on an easy to expose Volume Shadow Copy feature in Windows
Room for improvement
  • ZFS's implementation of deduplication leaves alot to be desired
  • TrueNAS CORE and SCALE do not natively support Fibre Channel
  • TrueNAS SCALE's UI for managing VMs needs maturity and improvement
  • TrueNAS SCALE's hypervisor needs clustering, HA and "DRS" like feature sets to be competitive at "scale"

Andy L.

Verified User

Photography · Self-Employed

Used daily for more than 2 years
Dec 22, 2025

Powerful NAS but simple to manage

Very happy with my TrueNAS setup. The only down time has been a major powercut!Day to day the system is "invisible" - it just works and I feel confident my data is safe.

What they liked
  • Open source software that is designed to do the job whilst making it easy to install and maintain
  • Prior to installing this software I had no experience of setting up a NAS system
  • The extra ability to run VMs with in it makes it ever better
Room for improvement
  • Very little to dislike
  • TrueNAS core is based on FreeBSD, which is a little different to the Linux which I am very comfortable with but in day to day use it makes no difference

Pam K.

Verified User

Defense & Space · 201-500 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years
May 28, 2026

Biggest Bang for Buck for Branch AND Home Office

We have been using a SAN/NAS since the early 2000's, and had been a Left Hand Networks fan, until they were bought out by HPE. The quality of HPE software declined in subsequent versions, until HPE removed all LHN technology from their products completely. TrueNAS Core is going back to the roots of how a SAN/NAS is supposed to be managed. We will never go back to HPE's bloated, over processed, non-private offerings, thanks to TrueNAS.

What they liked

Learning how to navigate the menu selections took considerably less time than competing companies (HPE specifically)

Room for improvement

The more difficult issue we have come across is losing the IP address of the iSCSI connection on cold restart (power loss from storms), otherwise it's been a solid product

Switched From

Pricing, quality, support.

Why they chose it

"Pricing, Quality, Support."

Patrick M.

Verified User

Computer & Network Security · 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years
May 28, 2026

TrueNAS Core For Pros and corporate users.

The benefits from running TrueNAS are the ability to scale, implement and recover data. Ease of use and the maintainability of the software makes TrueNAS a no brainer.

What they liked

Ease of use, scalability and the ease with which we can customize a solution for each customer

Room for improvement
  • Is there really something I don't like
  • No, there is nothing I do not like about TrueNAS

Verified Professional

Utilities · 51-200 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years
May 28, 2026

Truenas Core (and SCALE)

Utilities

What they liked
  • Nice UI, reasonably easy to set up once you have the appropriate hardware
Room for improvement
  • Restrictive hardware requirements, but there is a good reason for this
  • It is well worth complying with the recommended system requirements
Why they chose it

"Performance, cost, flexibility"

Verified Professional

Computer Hardware · Self-Employed

Used daily for less than 12 months
May 28, 2026

TrueNAS for the home user

Computer Hardware

What they liked
  • easy to setup and use
  • Will help any unexperienced home user to set up a nice productive server
  • One that can be adapted to any file sharing for any home use
Room for improvement
  • what it does above and beyond what windows file sharing does
Miran H.

Miran H.

Verified User

Printing · 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years
May 28, 2026

ftw

all ok

What they liked
  • Good software, easy to use and undestand
Room for improvement
  • all ok other than that i cant say anything

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