FreeNAS

FreeNAS® first made the leap onto the internet in 2005 and over the last decade, has become a household name with over 10 million downloads and 1 million deployments worldwide. For many years, FreeNAS and TrueNAS® grew alongside each other at iXsystems, Inc. FreeNAS as the community-supported software edition and TrueNAS as the enterprise edition for mission-critical storage applications. The two were maintained separately despite having much in common, including a near-identical codebase.

In 2019, we decided to unify both projects as TrueNAS, focused on delivering Open Enterprise Storage. What was originally known as “TrueNAS” is now TrueNAS Enterprise – sold as turnkey enterprise storage appliances, ie. fully integrated software and hardware handling both conventional and mission critical applications around the world. The FreeNAS capabilities are now delivered as the TrueNAS Community Edition. This naming convention and distribution strategy allows us to innovate rapidly by consolidating our efforts behind one product family. In 2025, to further simplify branding, iXsystems, Inc. transitioned to doing business as TrueNAS.

From its origins as FreeNAS through its continued evolution as TrueNAS, our commitment remains the same: to deliver the best storage solution that the global community can rely on daily to protect their most important data. As there is a global focus on both Data Sovereignty and Digital Sovereignty, TrueNAS is demonstrating its ongoing commitment to security and transparency by making source code available for public review – hence the term Open Enterprise Storage.

We’re proud to say that the same technology and spirit behind FreeNAS will always be at the core of TrueNAS, providing the same features that you know and love, as well as much more. We’re excited to see TrueNAS is deployed in over 60% of the Fortune 500, as well as throughout schools and universities, corporations of all sizes, governments, security services, churches and religious organizations, museums, major sports leagues, casinos, data centers, cloud services, online gaming, and NGOs. TrueNAS is chosen in use cases as diverse as AI, Analytics, CCTV and Video Surveillance, CAD/CAM, Media and Entertainment, Broadcast, Disaster Recovery and Backup, Virtualization, File Services, Archival, Scientific Research and beyond. The elegance of TrueNAS is it can be test driven on TrueNAS Community Edition and a TrueNAS user can then know how to operate any TrueNAS Enterprise product – one storage solution, many commercial platforms, including turnkey HA. TrueNAS is ideal for devops organizations looking to manage their storage through API integration.

TrueNAS Enterprise and TrueNAS Community Edition have a rich set of storage capabilities and product integrations. If you haven’t joined the open enterprise storage revolution yet, download TrueNAS Community Edition and get started today!