Alternatives to Synology NAS - Which Is Best?

I'm still using a Netgear after over 15 years! Looking to upgrade!! Researching and leaning towards Synology, just wondering where Netgear stands today.

I've never used a Synology. Only ever had Thecus and QNAP.

They keep removing services like DS Video they will lose market share.

Owner of Qnap Turbo NAS TVS-872XT-i5-16G. It broke down right at the end of the warranty, continuous restarts. Talk to QNAP, invoice for more than €1000, without clearly specifying the repair, without providing a breakdown of the work carried out so that I could contribute it to the insurance and have them pay me half of the repair. I understand that so as not to discover that the repair cost €100 of the €1000. I receive the NAS and just at the end of the repair warranty, six months and a few more days, continuous reboots and the NAS stops turning on. I speak with QNAP, repair with a fixed price and another €700. For the same fault, they do not assume any responsibility. Solution, switch to another brand.

I'm about to change from synology because there is no support for 24TB+ drives. Any recommendations? (Looking for 200TB storage NOT SERVER/RACK SOLUTION) TrueNAS?

Thanks for a good video with many interesting views. I think that I came to the conclusion that I shall hold on to my current old DS718+ with 16GB of memory. Will be interesting to see what 2025 brings to us in this kind of stuff.

I had problems with synology, lost users, hardware bug don't power on. Also had problems with qnap. Next will be diy nas. Slow performance on all...

So many of their consumer models still only have 1G ports with an "option" for 10G. Come on guys 2.5 at the very least.

DS716+ still rolling, and if it dies, based on what I’ve been following, such as this video essay, I will have to come up with some custom solution.
Been in IT for a long time, and want my home services to be as simple and as usable as possible. Beyond synology being one of the few choices 7+ years ago, I wanted something I didn’t have to spend time dealing with it. For the price, there are now options both out of the box and custom system builds.

I have a Synology ds220j and it does do what I want to do at the moment. But I want to upgrade as I now want to create a media server, but the current Synology I doubt will work well in this situation. But yes a bigger better Synology would be nice, but the need to use Synology memory and Synology nvme drives , or risk warranty begs the question why. I have thought about Qnap, because what they offer in hardware, the QTS seems complicated compared to DSM. Then asustor lockestor hardware is good not sure of the software…

I'm looking for a system to run an online cloud server for 4-8k video clips. Security, speed, and long term investment are important to me. What would you recommend?

P.S I'm looking for at least 6 bays and would like to run raid 6 for dual redundancy. Thanks for any tips.

I will stick with Synology since my data is important to me.

Currently I use an old DS213j ,...! I've tried some TerraMaster 4 bays but find the browser based apps are to clunky.
Need a 4\5\6 bay Nas With features I'm used to. I'm thinking Synology \Q-Nap \ around £600
Enjoy the information

I have started to disgust synology snobness and trying to place itself to apple position in nas world. Overpriced, pripretorery disk, ram, closed circuit portless nases. Fuck DSM.

Went over to Unraid because of Synology’s dismal hardware and overpricing. I mainly use Plex and they fail to meet my demands for a seamless Plex environment.

Unraid is superb, more flexible and more powerful. DSM is just not enough reason to stay anymore

I would go Qnap tomorrow if only they would allow hybrid raid. I wished for this for over 15 years.

synology does not deserve the money for its hardware. It is like apple.

I considered Synology a few years ago, but I went with Asustor, and I'm glad I did, and I've moved up into a better NAS, again with Asustor.

Asustor

I just want one single thing from a Synology competitor: A rock solid alternative to SHR.

The prosumer cannot afford buying a set of uniform disks and having an ability to mix and match is what keeps me with Synology.

Plugging any storage in and having DSM add it to the pool and intelligently adjust its configuration is THE killer feature for me.

I host every service elsewhere, on a dedicated piece of hardware. I just want the easiest way to mix disks into maximum storage.

I wish the uGreens were available in Canada (only US & Germany so far according to the company).

Thanks for this great advice, thinking of leaving synology. My DS220+ will soon leave the building. Mostly because of the current course and stopping video station made me make this decision.

As a Unifi + QNAP user, I have come to realize that I would strongly prefer a dedicated NAS-only device. I would rather run VM and containerized services such as PiHole and JellyFin and OPNsense on a dedicated mini-PC or NUC. The opensource products are so polished these days that I have no interest in the half-assed commercial versions provided by the consumer NAS manufacturers. With the affordability of 10GbE and Thunderbolt networking, there is little advantage to combining storage and services into a single vulnerable machine. Keeping each service and storage as separate and discrete as possible adds a lot of resilience to the overall network.

For those that just want a single box, and are concerned about Synology's current commitment to the lay user market, I'd have to say that I am impressed with the improvements made by QNAP over the past few years.

As the consumer market continues to grow synology are going to continue to move away. Who wants to participate in the race to the bottom.

Why nobody ever talks about user telemetry in these devices? AFAIK QNAP is the only one with options to disable it; haven't tested it myself. The other players don't offer opt-out capabilities. Yes, they have privacy policies and claim they only retrieve anonymized information with personal data removed. Sure. But if the company's headquarters are outside Europe can I trust them on this? (Synology, backdooring much?)

At the moment I'm on the DIY way, but I have some side projects that would speed up a lot if I didn't have to worry so much about software setup.

Any NAS with less than 2.5GbE is a non starter in 2024 (or more like eveb 2-3 years ago, looking at you Synology).

I'm sticking on my DS920+ for several more years.

Used supermicro systems on eBay are out of this world and just crush Synology. It's real Enterprise technology at amazing price.

I am a relatively new NAS consumer and decided to go with Synology. Buy now I am happy with it because of DSM and because I do not have the need for ultra fast hardware and access the NAS from outside my local network. Let’s see what future will bring. Maybe Synology will be not the No.1 for consumer anymore.

I think you are selling TrueNas a bit short. Yes they have a very big and well supported community base, but there are vendors like IXL Systems that sell TrueNas Scale NAS systems as turnkey solutions. How small they get I am not sure, but they are available

The 453E and 253E just became live for QUTS HERO. Gonna migrate now.

I’ve never had anything but success running Synology for my clients but a Ugreen 6 bay + TrueNAS Scale has been a winning hardware and software combination for my home lab this year. I wouldn’t change it for Synology at home.

Anyone knows why obsolete WDMyCloud devices are so overpriced?!. Particularly PR2100 & PR4100

I'm really disappointed and have concern on the direction of Synology.

The video didn't really answer the question in it's title, it just gave the same options any watcher of this channel would know are available. The insinuation, whether intentional or not, was that Synology are the best which kind of defeats the point.

For me the exciting one would be Ubiquiti, I already run the network hardware and love it.

I've had Terramaster, they aren't there yet (running TOS 5). QNAP have suffered too many security issues, UGreen are too new and lack availability. So I considered Asustor and self-build as the only viable options. My choice for now is the 6 bay Lockerstore gen 2 but I'm still looking at setting up a test self-build to see if I like it.

Synology are done for prosumers in my opinion, the weak hardware has overtaken their software advantage... and they appear keen to chip away at that software advantage in recent releases.

I echo roocrew86: I dont understand how Synology has fucked this up

Where can we buy ugreen in uk ?

I would have completely understood if you had not included DIY solutions. But I was sure glad to see the inclusion of DIY/BYO ! Thank you!

I've been a Synology customer since 2009 but recently they've been really disappointing. I was hesitating to try QNAP and I'm getting more and more tempted. If they really are now focusing on businesses, I will most likely look somewhere else...

By by Synology from home market🤕

I think a good video would be to show apps competition.
I mean, ACB in another brands, how it would work ?
Hyperbackup, snapshot replication, usb-copy.
And how much these other solutions are reliable..

The longer I have my Synology NAS, with all the questions that I’ve had and the elusive answers, I think I’m just going to forego remote access and go back to a portable usb drive. I just can’t be bothered with trying to understand the complex world of NAS and all the drawbacks. In my case, the learning curve and knowledge required to run a NAS are overkill. In fact I’m relieved to realise that I’ll exit the NAS and the headaches.

I’m same looking at alternatives so this vid was helpful thanks. Iam waiting for asustor flashstore gen 2!

I’m a home user. Sadly, my next NAS (5 years away) is unlikely to be Synology.

Terra Master will take over Synology in coming years.

I wish one of these brands would go to the market and actually ask them what we want in a device.
Then we would finally see 10GbE and devices with ECC RAM.

I have looked at many different options but come back to Synology for one software that nobody else matches.

Active Backup for Business

Hi,
Is QNAP TS-253D 8gb ram (used) for 140 usd a good deal???

What about a DIY hardware and Xpenology?

I love my Synology 1821+. This is a great, easy to use machine. If you’re a prosumer, you should just be building your own NAS with Unraid or TrueNAS anyways. I have one DIY NAS with Unraid and my 1821+. Love them both. I would have no issue buying another Synology to supplement if needed.