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AWS Transfer for SFTP [EOL] vs GoAnywhere MFT comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 8, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS Transfer for SFTP [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GoAnywhere MFT
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
85
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Kyle Titus - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at Revio
Always works, handles all types of load, and allows us to have S3 files as storage
Its cost needs improvement. In addition, there could be a universal client that works on all desktops. There could be client software that you use to connect to the server. Generally, AWS doesn't provide one for you, so you have to use either your CLI, maybe your SSH CLI, or use some kind of desktop solution. I had to find a desktop app from a third party to run this. Our clients also do the same everywhere else, so it would be nice if the SFTP Gateway solution came with a client that anyone could download on their Mac, Windows, or any other machine.
Anuj Bhagwat - PeerSpot reviewer
Dev Ops Engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Has enabled secure, centralized file sharing while saving significant time and resources
The best features in GoAnywhere MFT are that it's fast, reliable, and secure. First, the improvement is that we have resolved one of our security points with compliance. So that compliance point we resolved. And also it's a centralized file sharing system. All the users are able to access the file. There is no one-to-one sharing. It's improved about 80 to 85%. It saves about 80 to 90% resources. In terms of time, we can say 90 to 95% time is also saved because it avoids the one-to-one sharing and simply a user can put one centralized directory and all the users are able to access this solution and access the file. So it's 95%.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution offers good data recovery."
"Being able to have the S3 files as storage is most valuable. We can use S3 as storage instead of an SFTP server or a machine."
"The solution has helped with collaboration in our organization."
"The most valuable feature of MFT is the security it provides for our data. MFT allows us to add additional authorization and passwords to any file attachments we send via email, and also to limit the number of times the recipient can download the file."
"Another nice feature is that you can invoke a native program from GoAnywhere. That helps you because you don't have to get fancy with agents. If a native program runs on the server that GoAnywhere is running on, like sed or perl, you can use it,"
"When we were doing the demo, we took one project from the old system and got it running in GoAnywhere in less than 30 minutes. That says a lot. I've written queries and understand code, so I'm not a novice. Still, I think that's pretty impressive for a software product to be able to deliver a functional use case in half an hour."
"I like the organization of resources, specifically listing out all of our FTPs and having a name and description to easily organize them. I also like the scheduler. The organization and the scheduling, being able to create the folders and the jobs, have been really helpful."
"GoAnywhere makes it easy to move files around. We have quite a bit of information we have to transfer to around 300 different companies that require us to send data on a regular basis. If we did this manually, it would require several employees."
"The best features in GoAnywhere MFT are that it's fast, reliable, and secure; it saves about 80 to 90% resources and 90 to 95% time because it avoids the one-to-one sharing and enables users to access files through a centralized directory."
"The SFTP and encryption functionality works well, and SFTP is the bulk of what we use."
"All of it is valuable, but the most valuable would be the ability to release medical records without having a limitation for size and not having to deal with the fax machine."
 

Cons

"The tool's UI should be pretty easy and straightforward. I would also like to see a simple audit report of the SFTP guest account that shows the amount of data transfers and security kind enabled."
"Its cost needs improvement. In addition, there could be a universal client that works on all desktops."
"Could be more automated, particularly for file transfers."
"In some scenarios, when you are in a cluster environment, the load-balancing capabilities of the gateway need to be improved a little. This functionality needs some improvement."
"What I can suggest right now about GoAnywhere MFT is the integration of AI for chat support, as I am still trying to find my way around the app."
"I like that you can tweak the interface so much, but it would be nice to be able to tweak it some more. The ability to further tweak the interface would be advantageous, as our end users had some questions about modifications that we could not address."
"One area for improvement in GoAnywhere MFT is that they don't have a real debugger. You have to manually walk through your projects."
"We did have some issues a couple of months back where we were having some unscheduled outages, and the support team worked with me closely and provided a solution that appears to have fixed the problem."
"The biggest weakness I have seen in the product is scheduling. It is very limited in that aspect. It needs more flexibility and more ways to schedule."
"The application uses resources such as network connections to shared directories or SFTP connections. I would appreciate seeing utilization metrics for these resources."
"The cloud connectivity of GoAnywhere MFT to connect to different applications such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon, or Google Cloud could improve, as it's a little bit patchy right now."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's $249 per month per instance. It's not great; it's pretty pricey. We've got multiple users on that one instance. If we had to build it by hand, we would win on cost there, but obviously, there is effort and time. In terms of the additional costs, they do have some specific pricing, but for our use case, we don't end up going over $249. They do specify in their pricing what they're charging for."
"Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT pricing is competitive."
"I find it to be very fair. It is very good."
"The pricing is decent for mid-sized and small-sized companies. It is good for startups or mid-scale companies."
"The cost was definitely within reason and it has definitely been worth the cost, based on how much we can automate. It has exceeded my expectations."
"Pricing is based on a one-time license."
"The cost of GoAnywhere versus the value it brings to our data transfer operations is reasonable... The cost is relatively expensive but, back to the car analogy, that's to be expected with a Ferrari."
"For what we pay to GoAnywhere every year, we are getting a fantastic deal. From a dollar perspective, it provides very good value."
"The product is not cheap, but it is not expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business58
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise43
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?
GoDrive eliminates the need to use the exchange server for file sharing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?
GoAnywhere MFT pricing is fine for me. I do not have any complaints regarding the pricing because SFTP is the most valuable asset in the organization.
What needs improvement with Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?
I believe that GoAnywhere MFT can be improved because the initial setup is somewhat challenging for a new user, so they need to make the initial feature easier for everyone, whether new or experien...
 

Also Known As

No data available
HelpSystems GoAnywhere MFT, GoAnywhere MFT, GoAnywhere Managed File Transfer,
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Myriota, FINRA, Celgene, Kontor New Media, Belong, ThinkCX, BluTV
McKesson City of Modesto, California Kwik Trip Northwestern University Charter Communications
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortra, BMC, IBM and others in Managed File Transfer (MFT). Updated: February 2026.
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