storage for video teams, compared · june 2026
Same workflow. Different bill.
Suite, Shade, and LucidLink sell the mounted-drive workflow by the seat and the terabyte, forever. JuiceMount is the open-source alternative: the same workflow on hardware you already own. So this page leads with the part that actually differs: the bill, dated and sourced, with what each side does better underneath.
Not (yet) a team-wide collaboration platform. This is the indie filmmaker's cut of this category: the raw performance of those tools, none of the cost, your own hardware to tinker with.
demo 01 · the year-one bill
What you'd pay this year.
Pick a team size and a library. The bars settle on year-one totals: published SaaS prices against the calculator's default hardware bill, computed by the same code the calculator runs.
annual cost · year one
SaaS subscription JuiceMount one-time JuiceMount power + mirror$75/TB/mo, 5 seats included, then +$10/seat · checked June 2026
$40/TB/mo mount software + your own B2-class bucket at $6/TB/mo · checked June 2026
$27/seat/mo (annual, a promo off the $32 list price) + $8 per 100 GB beyond 400 GB/seat included · checked June 2026
$29.75/seat/mo (annual billing, $35 monthly) includes 500 GB active storage per seat: 2.5 TB at 5 seats, so a 10 TB library is past the published tier · checked June 2026
$0 software (Apache-2.0); seats don't change this bar. After year one the hardware is bought; it runs on at $73.14/mo (≈$878/yr) power + offsite mirror · calculator defaults
The calculator adds growth, payback month, and your real hardware quote, and says so plainly when SaaS is cheaper for your shape.
demo 02 · the exit
Leave whenever.
Moving in and moving out are the same built-in tool: JuiceMount Manager, the web UI in the server stack. Below, it makes both trips: the share you already have copied onto the volume with live progress and junk files filtered, then a delivery folder copied out to S3-compatible storage. The cost to enter and the cost to exit are both $0. Toggle the two endings, then see the exit priced below.
UI mock, condensed from the shipped Migrations tab; names, sizes, and times are illustrative. The tabs, directions, options, and destination kinds are the real set.
Dropbox and Google Drive are not sync targets here, and they don't need to be: the volume is a real mount. Drag from /Volumes/JuiceMount into your Dropbox or Drive folder in Finder and it's just files.
Leaving JuiceMount costs nothing. Your bytes sit in an open, documented format on hardware you own, and the stock juicefs client reads the volume with no JuiceMount involved. Leaving a cloud library is a re-download you pay for; pulling 20 TB out, at published rates:
the exit, priced · pulling 20 tb out
Published rates, checked June 2026; sources collapsed under the SaaS table below. On B2, R2, or Wasabi, leaving is free; iconik charges credits to hand media back. Either way the wire is the long pole: 20 TB at 1 Gbit/s is about 2 days of transfer, whoever you're leaving.
the map · the three-way trade
The trade, in one picture
LucidLink, Suite, Shade: the streaming-mount workflow, rented per seat and per TB for as long as the library exists.
The same streaming-mount workflow on your own NAS, and neither meter runs.
Your hardware, no real cache: every read round-trips the wire, and offline means nothing opens.
The rent pole is metered at Suite managed: $75/TB/mo × 10 TB = $9,000 by month 12 (checked June 2026; the year-one meter above derives the same figure). The wire pole is category behavior, with author-measured numbers and methodology on the performance page. The lanes below price both sides.
lane 01 · the storage saas suites
The storage SaaS suites
LucidLink, Suite, Shade, plus Iconik, the adjacent media asset manager (MAM) that runs on storage you already have. These products proved the mounted-drive workflow; the bill and the lock-in are the product. JuiceMount is the same workflow on a NAS you already own.
juicemount vs. the storage saas suites · pricing checked june 2026
fetched 2026-06-11| JuiceMount | LucidLink | Suite | Shade | Iconik MAM, adjacent | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Your files live | your NAS / your bucket | their cloud (AWS) | their cloud ($75/TB/mo) or a bucket you bring ($40/TB/mo on top) | their cloud | storage you already have: a MAM layer, not a filesystem |
| Partial-file streaming | yes, block-level | yes | yes | yes (ShadeFS) | n/a, not a filesystem |
| Offline pinned files | yes | yes | pre-caching documented; offline use not clearly documented | yes, documentedtheir docs, checked June 2026 | n/a |
| Pricing model | $0: bring your own NASApache-2.0; you supply the hardware | $27/user/mo annual (a promo off the $32 list), + $8/100 GB beyond 400 GB/userchecked June 2026 | $75/TB/mo managed, +$10/user after 5; BYO $40/TB/moBYO: 20 TB minimum, and your cloud provider's storage + egress billed separately on top · checked June 2026 | $29.75/seat/mo on annual billing ($35 monthly), 500 GB active storage per seatextra storage unpublished, quote · checked June 2026 | $9 Browse / $65 Standard / $120 Power per user/mo; storage via credits (quote)egress billed via credits · checked June 2026 |
| Exhaustive metadata/AI search | roadmap (filename search today) | no | no | yes | yes, that's the product |
| Open source | yes, Apache-2.0 | No | No | No | No |
| Cost to migrate out | $0 + wire time: copy files off an open-format volume; the bucket stays under your control | no exit fee documented: a re-download project | managed: none documented; BYO: your cloud provider's egress on the whole library | none documented: a re-download project | egress billed via credits: getting media back out costs money |
The familiar anchors: Dropbox and Google Drive
Cheaper per seat than the video tools, and many shops already pay for one, so here's the architectural reason they're not in the lane above: both download the whole file on open. A 100 GB clip means 100 GB before the first frame.
juicemount vs. the general-purpose clouds · pricing checked june 2026
| JuiceMount | Dropbox Advanced | Google Workspace Business Plus | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your files live | your NAS / your bucket | their cloud, pooled, starts at 15 TB | their cloud, 5 TB/user, pooled |
| Open a 100 GB clip | streams the blocks you touch | downloads the whole file; online-only files "automatically download" on opentheir help page, checked June 2026 | downloads the whole file into the Drive cache on opentheir help page, checked June 2026 |
| Pricing model | $0: bring your own NAS | $24/user/mo annual, 3-seat minimumchecked June 2026 | $22/user/mochecked June 2026 |
| Open source | yes, Apache-2.0 | No | No |
| Cost to migrate out | $0 + wire time | re-download everything | re-download everything |
Where these numbers come from
- LucidLink: lucidlink.com/pricing, checked June 2026. Business $27/user/mo annual is a promo off the $32 list; 400 GB/user included; $8 per 100 GB extra; "best up to 10 TB" in their words.
- Suite: suitestudios.io/pricing and their BYO terms, checked June 2026. Managed $75/TB/mo, 5 users included, then +$10/user/mo; BYO $40/TB/mo with a 20 TB minimum and your cloud provider's fees billed separately.
- Shade: shade.inc/pricing, checked June 2026. Growth $29.75/seat/mo on annual billing, $35 monthly; 500 GB active storage per seat, up to 15 seats; extra storage unpublished. Offline pinning: academy.shade.inc.
- Iconik: iconik.io/pricing, checked June 2026. Collaborator $0, Browse $9, Standard $65, Power $120 per user/mo; storage metered in pay-per-use credits (quote); egress billed via credits (their cost docs).
- Dropbox: dropbox.com/business/plans-comparison, checked June 2026. Advanced $24/user/mo annual, 3-user minimum, pooled storage from 15 TB. Whole-file semantics: help.dropbox.com.
- Google Workspace: workspace.google.com/pricing, checked June 2026. Business Plus $22/user/mo, 5 TB/user pooled. Whole-file-on-open semantics: support.google.com.
- Strada: strada.tech/pricing, checked June 2026. Basic $8/user/mo (250 GB transfer/mo), Unlimited $24/user/mo; transfer pricing, Strada stores nothing.
- Egress and exit math: aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing and backblaze.com/cloud-storage/pricing, checked June 2026; the 20 TB worked example is computed from those published rates.
Strada: transfer, not storage
Strada sells peer-to-peer access to drives you already own: $8/user/mo for 250 GB of transfer a month, $24 unlimited (checked June 2026). It stores nothing: there's no storage bill, no central copy, and no volume when the source machine is off. Where it fits better: handing a remote collaborator direct access to the drives on one desk, no always-on NAS in the picture. JuiceMount is the shared always-on volume Strada doesn't try to be.
Preload the calculator with a vendor's June-2026 pricing: Suite managed · Suite BYO · LucidLink Business · Shade Growth · generic S3 bucket
lane 02 · self-hosted sync
Self-hosted sync
Nextcloud, Seafile, Mountain Duck. Right instinct, own your storage. Wrong primitive for video: these tools sync files; editors need to stream blocks.
Open a 100 GB clip to check one shot and a sync tool moves 100 GB; JuiceMount streams only the blocks your NLE touches. On the wire, JuiceMount rides your connection up to 10 GbE; sync-class tools are documented around a gigabit, so they won't move hundreds of GB in an editor's afternoon. (Author-measured, methodology on the performance page.)
juicemount vs. self-hosted sync · category behavior, june 2026
| JuiceMount | Nextcloud | Seafile | Mountain Duck | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open a 100 GB file to check one shot | streams the blocks you touch | syncs the file | fetches the file | fetches the file |
| Throughput on your LAN | rides your connection, ~7 Gbit/s at 10 GbE (author-measured) | gigabit-class | gigabit-class | ~0.8–1 Gbit/s (author-measured) |
| Offline files + fail-fast offline mode | yes | sync model | sync model | cache, no pin semantics |
| Finder-native NLE workflow (identical paths, scrub-in-place) | yes | — | — | partial |
| Cost | $0, OSS | $0, free to self-hostpaid Enterprise support starts at 100 users (≈€68/user/yr), not a 3-editor concern · checked June 2026 | $0 community | $49 one-timechecked June 2026 · source |
And plain SMB or NFS straight to the NAS?
The third corner of the trade: speed and ownership, and nothing else. No offline files, no cache, no WAN story, and Finder grinds on a 100 K-file library. JuiceMount keeps the LAN speed and adds the missing parts: directory listings answer from local SQLite in 15–120 ms on a 100 K+-entry volume, pinned projects survive the network, and the same volume mounts over a WAN (hotel Wi-Fi with pinned files and the write spool is a supported shape).
Mountain Duck is a fine generalist, $49 one-time to mount almost any bucket for everyday files; it isn't built for scrubbing OCF over the wire and doesn't claim to be. What the rest of this lane does better, maturity, clients everywhere, share links, is named plainly in the compromises section below.
Longer read: LucidLink alternatives in 2026, including the one we built.
the honest outs
Compromises you'll make with JuiceMount
Consistent with the README's "What JuiceMount is not": naming these up front saves everyone time. Each one ends with the tool that doesn't ask it of you.
- You administer your own NAS. There's no managed service and nobody to call; a failed disk is your failed disk. We make the admin as easy as we can (about 10 minutes on TrueNAS, walked through step by step), but if nobody wants to babysit a NAS, managed SaaS is the right call. That trade is what makes this free.
- No collaboration or review layer, yet. Frame.io-class review and approvals aren't here, and a small library with collaboration-heavy work is exactly where a suite's bill earns itself. Suite's streaming engine now ships inside Frame.io Drive (announced 2026-04-17); that lane pairs fine with JuiceMount, and richer metadata views are acknowledged roadmap.
- No compliance certifications. Shade carries SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA attestations (their pricing page, June 2026). JuiceMount has none to show you.
- Filename search today, not content search. Shade's neural search covers faces, transcripts, and scene descriptions; it is Iconik's entire product, and Iconik runs on storage you already have, including on top of JuiceMount. Content-aware search here is acknowledged roadmap, not a current feature.
- macOS-only client. The server stack runs on any NAS with Docker, but mixed Windows or Linux rooms need LucidLink (mature, cross-platform, zero-knowledge encryption) or the sync tools, whose Windows, Linux, and genuinely good mobile clients cover everything, today.
- Media first, not documents. Whole-file sync is the right primitive for a contracts folder, and a share link you can hand to anyone is built into Nextcloud and Seafile, and JuiceMount has nothing like it. Plenty of shops should run one of them for docs next to JuiceMount for media.
- Pre-1.0, and says so. Nextcloud and Seafile carry years of production deployments and huge communities. JuiceMount is younger than the tools it compares itself to.