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BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer vs Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Aspera Managed File Transfer
Sponsored
Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)
13th
Average Rating
7.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
BMC Control-M Managed File ...
Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT
Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)
3rd
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category, the mindshare of Aspera Managed File Transfer is 3.4%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is 4.5%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT is 7.0%, up from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed File Transfer (MFT)
 

Featured Reviews

Michele Illiano - PeerSpot reviewer
Beneficial quick protocol, powerful, but limited use cases
Aspera Managed File Transfer should be packaged into another solution. Explaining to customers you need to have multiple solutions from multiple vendors for their use cases can get complicated for them to understand. The best way to propose a suite is to have an integrated suite where the customer could choose to license part of it. This solution could be one solution not two choices between 10 or 12 different solutions. The main feature of Aspera Managed File Transfer is the communication protocol, which is fast. There are a lot of different clients that are offering features related to these fast protocols. It's possible to create one unique suite that can handle this base protocol. It will be quite easy to propose to the customers.
Alan Arnold - PeerSpot reviewer
Stable, straightforward to deploy, and works as advertised
The most valuable thing is that it works as advertised. We don't take advantage of some of the features like we should because that's not our primary role and responsibility in the environment that we manage. We only want to make sure that a file gets to where it was supposed to go, or we pull in a file and it comes to us correctly. There are some GUI interfaces that we take a look at that tell us the number of transfers and the servers that are being utilized the most for capacity management and performance management. That's about it.
Earl Diem - PeerSpot reviewer
Key to our workflow and our workload automation strategy, helping us trade and consume files
File monitors are one of the most valuable features. We have about 400 file monitors running in GoAnywhere. They monitor the NAS locations where files arrive, and they kick off workflows. When a file arrives, GoAnywhere will identify that the file is there, move it to a consumption zone, then reach out to our enterprise scheduler through a REST API call. The solution helps centralize the exchange of data between systems, employees, customers, and trading partners. It's very central and that's pretty important. We generally move about 3,000 files a day, between our partners and internal workflows. My team really likes the intuitiveness of GoAnywhere's user interface. For example, my automation team has a file coming in from a bank, a file that needs to be unzipped, reformatted, re-zipped up, and then put into another folder where another team is going to consume it. Because of all the progressive elaboration—the project started a year ago—the format of the file is not the same. We addressed it with GoAnywhere instead of having the producer of the file change the format. That's how flexible it is for us. And looking at the comprehensiveness of GoAnywhere's workflow features, we use it pretty extensively for working with files. Stonebranch is our enterprise automation platform, but we don't really do any file work with Stonebranch. We chose to use GoAnywhere, our MFT tool, to move and manipulate files. The solution also connects to popular ICAP servers and that's pretty important to our security guys when it comes to preventing malware and other malicious content from entering our organization. The connection to popular ICAP servers, so that content is inspected for sensitive information like credit cards, is pretty important. We're a financial institution and a lot of the data we work with has PAN data and card numbers in it, coming in from partners.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Aspera Managed File Transfer is an optimal solution for customers who want to transfer large files to remote sites with lower bandwidth and in less time."
"Good user interface and ability to set up multiple file transfer jobs."
"The main feature of Aspera Managed File Transfer is that it's an incredibly fast protocol, you can use all the bandwidth available. If I need to send large amounts of data this is the fastest protocol on the market. I have been using it for some minor projects and it is very powerful."
"The GUI is good if I'm comparing it to other scheduling products."
"The most valuable thing is that it works as advertised. We don't take advantage of some of the features like we should because that's not our primary role and responsibility in the environment that we manage. We only want to make sure that a file gets to where it was supposed to go, or we pull in a file and it comes to us correctly."
"The solution is stable."
"What I like best about BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is that it makes transfers more secure and faster. It has a recovery feature during failed file transfers."
"The file transfer, database, and integration features are the most valuable."
"The most valuable features of BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer are the ease of use and the ability to watch the files as they transfer called Watch File Transfer. There is a separate monitoring window that is useful."
"The product works very well with the modules. If you have MFT, Managed File Transfer, or the old AFT, you can link that to processing jobs."
"Our customers find the self-service feature the most valuable. Control-M offers great value to businesses by providing an option to see different flows and control and orchestrate the sequence of the execution. It is easy to use and integrate with different solutions. It is a good solution that is easy to implement and deliver."
"The most valuable features are the automatic processing of files and scheduled execution of the files."
"GoDrive eliminates the need to use the exchange server for file sharing."
"Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT supports the PeSIT protocol."
"The security and vendor management features are helpful in terms of providing access to data."
"We like that GoAnywhere helps to centralize the exchange of data among our systems, employees, and customers."
"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 most valuable feature is the ability to call a workflow from another workflow. That really gives you an edge by increasing reusability and speeding up development time. You can create a workflow which is a type of template and then call that workflow from any other workflow... It has sped up development time by 80 to 90 percent."
"Transactions transfer in close to real time. Sometimes it takes a little bit of time because of the volume that we have, but the transactions transfer in seconds to the external platform."
 

Cons

"The solution's pricing is high and should be reduced."
"Deployment is complex and it was difficult to get support."
"Aspera Managed File Transfer should be packaged into another solution. Explaining to customers you need to have multiple solutions from multiple vendors for their use cases can get complicated for them to understand."
"Before we transfer files we have to make the connection profile first for MFT. If we did not have to do this and send the transfer files directly, that would be useful."
"The solution should improve the out-of-the box conversion tool for migrations so the percentage result isn't so low."
"The structure between the Control-M/Server and Control-M/Agent could possibly be improved."
"There are eight different kinds of dashboards in Workflow Insights, but there could be more because there is third party software that provides more dashboard styles."
"An area for improvement in BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is integration. It should be compatible with more solutions. It should have integrations with newer applications as well."
"We're only using the functionality that we need to use. However, we've had an opportunity to work with one application owner here who wanted to do some transfers in the cloud and things like that. I know that there were some challenges on that, but they finally got all that set up. There was a learning curve though."
"We'd like it to be easier to maintain the administrative side."
"One can opt for either a job-based license or a job execution-based license, which sometimes can be troublesome. If the job count exceeds a limit, you may need to procure additional licenses from BMC."
"For us, it is perfect. It is a good solution that we are using, and we are going to continue to do so. However, it should be advertised more as a solution. I did not see it out there beforehand."
"When a monitor invokes a project to accomplish something, that gets logged as a job. I've had a little difficulty figuring out where to look to see the monitor's activities itself, to see if the monitor is having a problem. For instance, if an account on a secure FTP server has expired, the monitor that uses that account doesn't announce to us that it's having a problem. I want to work with them on this to get it fixed."
"API functionality wasn't part of our initial unit testing because it wasn't necessary then. However, shortly after implementing GoAnywhere, two different vendors approached us to do API transactions. We checked to see if GoAnywhere could do this and found that it was supposed to have that capability, but it broke down."
"Improvement in support or product relies on being ingenious, supportive, and listening to its customer base."
"Its user interface can be improved. The current user interface is a little basic for some of the use cases. We have to use an external component to enhance it. When we need a more appealing user interface, we use an additional component, and that works okay."
"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 solution's support for the Unix platform and AS2 should be improved."
"There is a function referred to as write CSV, to write a general text file. In this scenario of creating a simple text file, I ran into a situation where, if the product saw a quote or a double-quote in the data, it started wrapping all the text fields in double-quotes. The request I put in asks them to provide a feature that leaves my data alone and does not interpret anything."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Aspera Managed File Transfer is not an inexpensive solution. I am not aware of many competitors to determine how affordable the price is overall."
"It was a little bit pricey. They were proud of the product. A particular module was not free. However, BMC was able to negotiate that particular module into our whole contract itself without having to negotiate an individual price for that module. All that was included in a one-time negotiation, and we've signed a five-year contract on that."
"I switched to this solution within the last year. I switched from the servers payment package to the job payment package, and it is very expensive."
"BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer has reasonable pricing. What you pay for is the task or job, and as it's a module, it's complimentary, so you save about twenty percent of the job cost."
"I rate the solution's price a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is low or really affordable, and ten is high or really expensive. It is a really expensive tool."
"This solution is very expensive compared to others in the market. Previously it was the only solution in our country to offer this kind of functionality. However, technology has caught up and many competitors offer the same at a lower price."
"Yearly licenses are based on the number of jobs."
"BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is expensive."
"Apart from the standard license, if we avail any additional features, there's an extra cost. For example, Workload Archiving is an additional feature from the standard product, so we pay extra for that."
"For what we pay to GoAnywhere every year, we are getting a fantastic deal. From a dollar perspective, it provides very good value."
"To have a solution like this for the price we're paying makes it cheap. Considering the time that it has saved us, and considering the development that we don't need to do, such as connectors and handling servers, the price is really affordable."
"I get the invoices, and its price is fine and appropriate. It is well priced. Even if it was double the price, we'd use it. For us, it is indispensable. We're not going to go anywhere else. There are no additional costs. Its licensing is good. There is just one charge that we get. That's it."
"Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT is an inexpensive solution."
"Licensing can be expensive and it depends upon which features you want to buy."
"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."
"The product is not cheap, but it is not expensive."
"GoAnywhere's price is justified by its features and the time it saves me."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
32%
Computer Software Company
11%
Insurance Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Aspera Managed File Transfer?
Aspera Managed File Transfer is an optimal solution for customers who want to transfer large files to remote sites wi...
What needs improvement with Aspera Managed File Transfer?
The solution's pricing calculation needs revision to be more competitive
What advice do you have for others considering Aspera Managed File Transfer?
Aspera Managed File Transfer has superior technology. Overall, I rate Aspera Managed File Transfer a nine out of ten.
What do you like most about BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer?
It is a highly scalable solution...I rate the product's initial setup a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is d...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer?
We are not paying separately for MFT. It comes included with the contract, license, and software package. In addition...
What needs improvement with BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer?
Improvements could be made in naming conventions, such as adding dates and timestamps to filenames after replacing th...
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?
The pricing is too expensive for what we need. If we could cut it by 50%, that would be great.
What needs improvement with Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?
I am not able to go in and say 'forgot password.' I need to access the admin portal to change the password from there...
 

Also Known As

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

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Gwinnett County Public Schools, Evonik, Voith, BITMARCK, Oracle
British Sky Broadcasting
McKesson City of Modesto, California Kwik Trip Northwestern University Charter Communications
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer vs. Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.