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AWS Transfer for SFTP [EOL] vs VisualCron comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
VisualCron
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (15th), Workload Automation (16th), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (20th)
 

Featured Reviews

Kyle Titus - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Sourav-Dutta - PeerSpot reviewer
It's user-friendly, and I didn't need long to understand the process
We use VisualCron for all our automation needs, like connecting to FileZilla, calling APIs, generating PGP keys, creating encryption files with the PGP key login to Azure, etc. It can automatically log in to SQL Server and execute SQL script jobs in bulk. We had 2,000-3,000 users at my previous…

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."
"The solution has helped with collaboration in our organization."
"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."
"VisualCron is a very powerful program to automate different steps in your business processes. We use it to automate replacing files and inform departments about the replacement."
"We don't have to do any coding. We just plug and play and it works."
"It helped us reduce manual steps."
"The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%."
"'ve only had a few cases where I've had to request support in the past 12 years of use, but the support response time and resolution were was extremely quick."
"What I like about VisualCron is that like its name, it's a very visual tool. In my previous company, there were a lot of scripts for all kinds of services, and through VisualCron, you get to group all flows and get a nice visual overview. VisualCron also has an alerting feature, so you receive alerts from it. VisualCron makes everything clearer and easier to maintain. Every other solution that I was looking for almost always needed a programmer, but with VisualCron, you can do what you need to do without programming skills, so this is another valuable feature of the tool."
"It has improved our organization with more automation within the business departments and less administration and development in the IT department. Usually, as the IT department, we are the bottleneck for many requirements within the business. With this tool, the business departments are able to perform many task themselves."
"What I found most beneficial from VisualCron is that you can directly connect it with different databases, user accounts, and credentials. You can run queries from one machine to another using the credentials, unlike PowerShell, that's run by the machine itself. With VisualCron, you can directly ask other machines and run requests through user credentials. Suppose you have an AWS or Azure environment. In that case, you can maintain the connection between on-premises and cloud-based machines, which is the type of setup in the organization I'm working for. You can directly call some of the services via VisualCron on your local on-premises machine, and I found that an excellent feature of the tool."
 

Cons

"Could be more automated, particularly for file transfers."
"Its cost needs improvement. In addition, there could be a universal client that works on all desktops."
"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."
"The error timeout and info could be better. When making web request calls, it will time out sometimes and we won't get any useful info out of the error response."
"The documentation is a bit weak."
"VisualCron's command console is a little bit difficult to understand and needs to improve."
"An area for improvement in VisualCron is its cluttered interface. It isn't always easy to find all functionalities, so what VisualCron needs is a user interface expert who can improve the interface. There's a learning curve in terms of finding what you need from the interface of VisualCron. The technical support for VisualCron also needs improvement in terms of response time. Currently, there's no live support or hotline you can call to get quick answers, so this is what I'd like to see in the next version of VisualCron. A less cluttered and more streamlined interface, where you don't need to hunt for some of the features, is also what I'd like to see in the next VisualCron update."
"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."
"VisualCron is software, and you will experience performance degradation when you scale up. VisualCron takes too much memory or CPU power. We have to increase the hardware resources of a specific server or system."
"VisualCron seems to operate like an efficient machine when it comes to improvements and enhancements and new features. I always appreciate the quick response I get when bringing up an issue or coming up with suggestions. I've mentioned before that it would be great to see a move away from SQLCE and XML configuration files."
"I want to improve the UI in VisualCron, as it's not as user-friendly, particularly when setting up the task scheduler. If you're familiar with the tool, then no problem, but if not, you'll have a problem typing text because sometimes, the cursor points to other places, so there's an issue with text box alignment in VisualCron. That was painful for me when I was just a VisualCron novice, but when you become used to it, there won't be a problem."
 

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."
"VisualCron is correctly priced because it wasn't very cheap, and it wasn't overly expensive, so the price for it was set correctly. When my previous company bought VisualCron, it was €800 per server per year. On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing for VisualCron a five because it was just right. The tool was affordable, and it has one of the most competitive pricing in the market."
"We are fine with a rather cheap setup. Licensing with VisualCron is fair. You have a simple one-year licence in different sizes. There isn't a licensing jungle with hundreds of options and opt-ins."
"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."
"ROI is 95 percent."
"The price is a bit high."
"ROI is one month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
11%
Insurance Company
6%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
27%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Insurance Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Transfer for SFTP?
The solution has helped with collaboration in our organization.
What needs improvement with AWS Transfer for SFTP?
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.
What advice do you have for others considering AWS Transfer for SFTP?
I would rate AWS Transfer for SFTP a six out of ten. I would recommend the solution but there are other tools in the market with better UI.
What do you like most about VisualCron?
The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%.
What needs improvement with VisualCron?
The documentation is a bit weak. The tool must provide a better set of documentation.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Myriota, FINRA, Celgene, Kontor New Media, Belong, ThinkCX, BluTV
7 Eleven, ABB Sécheron SA, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Europe Core, Apple, Assa Abloy, Aston Martin, Banco Santander, BMW (Australia)
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Fortra, Progress Software and others in Managed File Transfer (MFT). Updated: March 2025.
842,690 professionals have used our research since 2012.