Shopping for shared storage as a small post house goes like this. You search, and the results split into two piles: $700 NAS reviews written for people building a Plex box, and vendor pages for systems that will not tell you what they cost. Between “here’s a Synology” and “Request a Quote” there is… nothing. The industry writes for hobbyists and broadcast facilities, and a three-editor shop is neither.
So this guide is a ladder, with a real on-the-page price on every rung I could get one for, all pulled from live retailer and reseller listings in late July 2026. It runs from $0 to about $44,000, and most small shops should stop climbing far earlier than the storage industry wants you to. The first rung is free, and it does the one thing people think they need a $20,000 server for.
Last updated: August 2026. Some links below are affiliate links; buying through them supports the site at no cost to you. Prices at the upper rungs move constantly, so treat every number as a late-July snapshot and check the listing.
TLDR
If you just want the answer: a Resolve shop should set up DaVinci Resolve’s free Project Server before spending a dollar, because it adds automatic bin and timeline locking on whatever storage you already own. If the storage itself is the bottleneck, the QNAP TS-855X at $1,549 is the small-team default. If you need more speed than a prosumer box can push, six machines with public prices sit between $4,499 and $16,309, in the tier every article skips. Post-specific storage, meaning Avid bin sharing and a bundled MAM, starts at $19,499 with the SNS EVO 8-Bay. Above that, nothing has a price tag, and the buying process involves an integrator and a network map.
Rung 0: the free one (start here)
Before you spec anything, be clear about what you’re shopping for, because “we need shared storage” is usually two problems wearing one trench coat. Problem one is bandwidth: enough sustained throughput to feed several timelines at once. Problem two is coordination: two editors opening the same project and silently overwriting each other’s afternoon. Vendors like to sell both problems in one box. But the coordination problem is solved in software, and the software costs nothing.
Blackmagic’s own wording: “DaVinci Resolve Project Server is free so you can share the same project or timeline with people simultaneously around the world.” And that’s the free version of Resolve doing the collaborating, not the $295 Studio license; BMD’s product page says it outright: “The free version includes multi-user collaboration and HDR grading!” You get automatic bin and timeline locking (bins and timelines go read-only until the current user releases them), live save, shared markers, built-in chat, and visual timeline comparison for merging two editors’ passes.
Run the free Project Server app on any machine on your network, point every editor’s Resolve at it, and a $1,549 NAS becomes a real multi-user system. Multiple people in the same project, on the same timeline, without a single “FINAL_v7_JakesCopy.drp” in sight. Once that’s running, the reasons to spend $20,000 shrink to two: raw bandwidth, and Avid. Hold that thought for rung 3.
Rung 1: the prosumer NAS ($700 to $3,100)
This is ground the site has already walked, so I’ll summarize and point. The budget build lives in our editing-server-on-a-budget guide, the brand decision lives in QNAP vs Synology, and the wiring (switches, adapters, when 2.5GbE is enough) lives in the 10GbE guide. The short version for this ladder: the small-team default is the QNAP TS-855X, an 8-bay with a 10GbE path for $1,549 at Adorama (Special Order status, so plan a lead time).
A well-built rung 1 setup carries two to four editors cutting ProRes, DNx, or camera-native media through one 10GbE switch. Stack the free Project Server from rung 0 on top and you have a functioning multi-editor shop for under $2,000 in server hardware. That’s not a compromise setup. For a lot of small houses it’s the finish line, and I’d rather you knew that before a sales rep doesn’t tell you. The ceiling is real, though: generic SMB file sharing, no asset management beyond your folder discipline, and no Avid bin sharing at any price.
Rung 2: the middle everyone says doesn’t exist ($4,499 to $16,309)
Read any shared-storage roundup and you’d believe the market jumps straight from a $3,000 prosumer NAS to a $20,000 EVO. It doesn’t. Six machines with public, on-the-page US prices live inside that gap, and I have never seen anyone put them in one table. So here’s the table. Stock is the asterisk on it: as of late July only the Cloud Store Mini and the Cloud Store Max are sitting on a shelf, the two QNAPs and the 20TB Cloud Store are special order with an August 12 ship estimate, and the Ultra is pre-order. All six are orderable at these prices; four of them come with a wait.
| Product | What it is | Price (July 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| QNAP TS-h1277AFX | 12-bay desktop all-flash, ZFS (QuTS hero) | $4,499 |
| Blackmagic Cloud Store Mini 8TB | Rack flash, 10G Ethernet, Blackmagic Cloud sync | $5,059 |
| QNAP TS-h1290FX | 12-bay U.2 all-flash, AMD EPYC, 2 x 25GbE | $8,999 |
| Blackmagic Cloud Store | RAID 5 flash with a built-in Ethernet switch, 4 x 10G | $15,065 |
| Blackmagic Cloud Store Max 24TB | 100G Ethernet plus 4 x 10G, 12 x M.2 flash core | $15,745 |
| Blackmagic Cloud Store Ultra | 2 x 100G Ethernet, RAID 5 support | $16,309 |
Blackmagic is the sleeper on this ladder. It is the only vendor here that publishes a price for every storage product it makes, from the $445 Cloud Pod up to the $16,309 Cloud Store Ultra, and Adorama carries the family at exactly Blackmagic’s numbers. (One flag: Adorama lists the Cloud Pod as Closeout, so I’m keeping it off the ladder until its future is clearer.)
If I were speccing a rung 2 room today, the Cloud Store Mini at $5,059 is the pick for a Resolve shop: rack flash on 10G with Cloud sync built in, from the company that makes your NLE. If you’d rather have twelve flash bays and the ZFS toolbox, the TS-h1277AFX undercuts it at $4,499. And the TS-h1290FX at $8,999 is the bandwidth monster of the group; QNAP’s spec sheet claims 14,208 MB/s of sequential read across six 25GbE links, which is more throughput than most small shops’ entire switch fabric.
What rung 2 does not add is workflow. These are faster versions of rung 1. Same file sharing, same “the Project Server handles coordination” story. You’re paying for flash and bigger pipes, and that’s the right thing to pay for… right up until you need the thing only rung 3 sells.
Rung 3: storage that understands post ($19,499)
Here the product category changes. You stop buying a disk array and start buying software that knows what a project is. The reference machine is the SNS EVO 8-Bay, and its entry price is lower than every write-up quotes: $19,499 for the 32TB configuration at a US reseller, with the line stepping up through 64TB at $27,999 and 96TB at $35,999.
What does the jump from $9,000 to $19,499 get you? Three things, and they’re specific. First, Avid bin and project sharing: SNS’s feature page says “Use Avid’s native Project and Bin sharing functions!”, meaning multiple Media Composer editors inside one Avid project with shared bins. A QNAP or Synology cannot do this, and for an Avid shop this single line item is the whole ladder. Second, a bundled MAM with, in SNS’s own phrase, “no per-seat software licensing”: ShareBrowser for search, proxy preview, and tagging, Slingshot for transcode and automation, Nomad for remote and freelancer access, all included with the box. Third, direct connection: up to 26 direct-connect Ethernet ports, so the 10GbE switch leaves both your bill of materials and your failure domain. If block-vs-file and the rest of the SAN vocabulary are new words, the concepts live in our SAN vs NAS explainer.
A word on prices at this altitude. The same 96TB EVO 8-Bay lists at $35,999 at one reseller and $31,999 at another. That’s a $4,000 spread on an identical SKU, sitting in public. The range is real, the number is not fixed, and nobody at this tier will quote you the same figure twice. Treat every price from here up as an opening position.
The Resolve-first alternative at this rung is OWC’s Jellyfish Studio, the descendant of the LumaForge Jellyfish: up to 14 direct user connections, up to 3500MB/s, 128GB of ECC RAM, and an integrated DaVinci Resolve collaborative database, preconfigured. The asterisk is that OWC publishes no price at all. The page ends in a “How to Buy” button, which tells you which half of this market they’d rather talk to.
Rung 4: the facility tier (one paragraph, on purpose)
EditShare, Facilis, and Avid NEXIS exist, they’re serious systems, and if you need one you already know, because an integrator is drawing your network map right now. The public numbers, where they exist: an Avid NEXIS F2 runs $23,995 to $27,295 at a US reseller as hardware-only-for-subscription depending on capacity, and the same F2 100TB bought outright with NEXIS FS Foundation and ExpertPlus support is $43,995. That $18,000 difference between two listed prices for the same box is the licensing, plain arithmetic, and it’s the clearest reason a six-person shop shouldn’t shop here. Facilis publishes no system price at all (the $6,000 figure on its promo page is a trade-in credit against an Avid NEXIS, not a price), and EditShare is quote-only by design. If your shop is Avid-first but facility budgets aren’t happening, you have two ways back down the ladder: the EVO’s native bin sharing at rung 3, or Indiestor’s Mimiq at $299 an activation, which adds Avid bin sharing to a plain rung 1 NAS.
The ladder side by side
| Rung | The hardware | Price | What it adds | Who it’s for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | DaVinci Resolve (free) + free Project Server | $0 | Bin/timeline locking, live save, shared markers, chat | Every Resolve shop, before anything else |
| 1 | QNAP TS-855X and its prosumer NAS peers | $700 to $3,100 | 8 bays, 10GbE, RAID | 2 to 4 editors on ProRes/DNx |
| 2 | Six machines, TS-h1277AFX through Cloud Store Ultra | $4,499 to $16,309 | All-flash, 25G to 100G pipes | Shops that are out of bandwidth, not out of workflow |
| 3 | SNS EVO 8-Bay 32TB (or OWC Jellyfish Studio, quote-only) | $19,499 | Avid bin sharing, bundled MAM, 26 direct-connect ports | Avid and mixed-NLE shops, 5+ editors |
| 4 | Avid NEXIS F2, Facilis HUB, EditShare EFS | $23,995 to $43,995 listed; mostly quote-only | Facility scale, Fibre Channel, a licensing tail | Facilities with an integrator on speed dial |
How to decide (three questions)
What do you cut in? This question outranks every spec. A Resolve house gets multi-user coordination free at rung 0, so it climbs for bandwidth only, and most stop at rung 1 or 2. An Avid house that needs bin sharing has exactly three options on this whole ladder: EVO at rung 3, NEXIS at rung 4, or Mimiq bolted onto a rung 1 NAS. Everything else is the wrong aisle.
Are you out of bandwidth or out of organization? Dropped frames with three editors on the timeline is a bandwidth problem: rung 2, or sometimes just a switch upgrade from the 10GbE guide. Nobody can find anything and every drive is a mystery folder named ARCHIVE_OLD2? That’s an organization problem, and ShareBrowser at rung 3 is a real answer for it… but so is a naming convention, which is free and available at rung 0.
Who fixes it at 11pm before a delivery? At rungs 1 and 2, you do. That’s fine for a shop with a tech-inclined owner and good backups. Part of what rungs 3 and 4 charge for is a vendor who answers the phone, spare drives in the box, and redundant power. If your clients are networks with delivery penalties, the support contract is a big part of what you’re buying, and it should be.
FAQ
Can the free version of Resolve really do multi-user collaboration?
Yes. This surprises people, so here’s Blackmagic’s page verbatim: “The free version includes multi-user collaboration and HDR grading!” The Project Server app is also free, and the collaboration feature set (bin and timeline locking, live save, shared markers, timeline compare) carries no Studio gate. Studio’s $295 pays for other things. Collaboration is not one of them.
Why does every article jump from $3,000 straight to $20,000?
Because the people writing about the top of the market sell the top of the market. Integrator guides start where their products do, and NAS reviewers stop where consumer retail does, so the $4,499-to-$16,309 middle falls between two publishing models. The six machines in the rung 2 table are all orderable from ordinary retailers at a price printed on the page. The tier exists; the coverage doesn’t.
We’re an Avid shop. Do we need NEXIS?
Not at small-shop size. The EVO does Avid’s native project and bin sharing at rung 3, and Mimiq does bin sharing on ordinary NAS hardware for $299 an activation. NEXIS is the native, facility-grade answer, and it’s priced like one: the entry PRO+ 40TB engine lists at $16,643 (backordered at the reseller listing it as I write this), and the F-series carries the licensing structure covered in rung 4. When you’re big enough that those numbers make sense, you’ll be having this conversation with an integrator, not a blog.
Why won’t OWC, Facilis, or EditShare just print a price?
Because at that tier the price is the negotiation. Systems are configured per shop, margins live in the config, and published numbers would anchor every deal. The closest thing to public data is integrator ranges; KeyCode Media’s 2026 guide puts SNS EVO at $20,000 to $80,000+, Facilis HUB at $40,000 to $200,000+, and EditShare EFS at $60,000 to $250,000+. The ranges hold up against what resellers list. Just remember the identical EVO SKU with a $4,000 spread between two of them, and negotiate accordingly.
In conclusion
Climb only as far as your problem. A Resolve house with the free Project Server and a QNAP TS-855X is a real multi-editor shop for under $2,000, and no one selling storage has a reason to tell you that. Out of bandwidth, buy bandwidth: the rung 2 table runs $4,499 to $16,309 and every machine on it has a public price. Need Avid bins or a bundled MAM, that’s the $19,499 EVO, and it’s worth it for the shops that need it. And if rung 4 is where your projects live, congratulations on the facility… you stopped being this article’s audience about $25,000 ago.
And that’s it! There’s one more escape hatch worth knowing: not building a machine room at all. Remote and cloud-based collaboration is its own path, and the Suite Studios story shows what that looks like in practice. What you see here is what I’d spec for my own crew at each size; if your shop sits somewhere weird on the ladder, describe it in the comments and I’ll point you at a rung.
