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Control-M vs GoAnywhere MFT comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.4
Control-M reduces long-term costs through automation, efficiency, better resource management, and enhanced integration, leading to workforce optimization.
Sentiment score
7.8
GoAnywhere MFT enhances efficiency and cost savings by automating tasks, quickly returning investment and supporting revenue streams.
The main return on investment with Helix Control-M has been a reduction in downtime and minimization of manual interventions, which has improved our operational efficiency.
You can run a million batch jobs or tasks at night when all of your highly skilled people are at home sleeping.
It has reduced the total cost of ownership by 30% to 40%.
GoAnywhere can perform the work of three people, leading to a decrease in manpower needs for automation and file transfer.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.4
Control-M technical support is praised for responsiveness and expertise, despite rare criticisms for slow ticket processing and response delays.
Sentiment score
7.3
GoAnywhere MFT support is highly rated for knowledge and responsiveness, but documentation and response time improvements are suggested.
The technical support is very polite, helpful, and available 24/7.
If something fails at 3 AM in the morning, you need to fix it and get it back up and working really quickly.
They do not always provide timely support.
They have their number on their website to call, and they are fast and available all the time.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Control-M efficiently scales with minimal issues, handling extensive workloads, though resource enhancement is necessary for optimal cloud integration.
Sentiment score
7.7
GoAnywhere MFT excels in scalability, platform compatibility, and seamless integration, enabling effective vertical and horizontal expansion without capacity concerns.
It can absorb more workload wherever needed.
As the workload on Control-M increases, its scalability is much higher.
I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.
We have clients with over 600,000 users.
With the scaling of the company, it was absolutely capable of handling all the data and databases.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Control-M is stable and reliable, efficiently handling large workloads with regular updates and minimal disruptions.
Sentiment score
8.1
GoAnywhere MFT is stable and reliable, with minor disruptions mainly due to external factors and occasional server restarts.
The downtime is higher compared to AWS.
The stability of the Helix Control-M solution is good.
It was very stable compared to other solutions we have used.
 

Room For Improvement

Control-M users desire enhanced features, integration, reduced costs, seamless upgrades, better customization, and improved support and documentation.
Users recommend improvements for GoAnywhere MFT in support, interface, costs, compatibility, training, performance, cloud integration, security, and accessibility.
They could provide more documentation and tutorials to make the initial setup easier to understand.
There should be an automation system for developers to set it up more easily and quickly.
What they've done about scheduling, other people are still trying to figure out.
A drawback is that it is not as feature-rich compared to its competitor Sterling, which we used before.
 

Setup Cost

Control-M's high pricing suits enterprises needing robust automation, but challenges smaller organizations with complexity and additional feature costs.
Enterprise users appreciate GoAnywhere MFT's value, citing robust features and flexibility, despite occasional higher costs from additional features.
Pricing is generally affordable, though some features cost a bit more.
The best cell phone will always be more expensive.
The pricing is moderate, not too low or too high compared to other solutions.
The pricing is decent for mid-sized and small-sized companies.
 

Valuable Features

Control-M excels in automation, integration, and user interface, enhancing workflow management with scheduling, file transfer, and API capabilities.
GoAnywhere MFT simplifies secure file transfers with advanced workflows, automation, and integration, enhancing efficiency and user experience.
Automation is more advanced, deployment is fast, and version control has been simplified.
The user interface is comprehensive and lets me view all my jobs on one page, monitor everything, and access the job history.
Control-M provides workflow orchestration, including scheduling, deploying, managing, and monitoring workflows.
It provides multiple cipher options for HTTPS and SFTP protocols, utilizing AES-based algorithms for secure communication and data transfer.
The encryption feature is very impressive in GoAnywhere MFT, and the encryption provided by the company is much stronger than other file transferring software.
 

Categories and Ranking

Control-M
Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (3rd), Workload Automation (1st)
GoAnywhere MFT
Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)
2nd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category, the mindshare of Control-M is 4.5%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GoAnywhere MFT is 8.6%, up from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed File Transfer (MFT)
 

Featured Reviews

Pedro Fuentes - PeerSpot reviewer
Cost-effective, excellent support, and centralized access and control
They have a department that handles requests for enhancements. I talked to Control-M guys back in October or November when they had a gathering here in Atlanta. We talked about not being able to go back in history in Helix Control-M for more than two weeks. We submitted a request for enhancement. They told us that they are working on it, and they are thinking of expanding that to 30 days. We would like to see it expand to 90 days, but they are working on it. In Control-M, we were able to go back 180 days, but that was on-prem. The storage of that data was on our own servers. We know that storage is money, and we do not expect them to store that much of the data, but at least 30 to 60 days seem proper.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Control-M compare with AutoSys Workload Automation?
Control-M acts as a single, centralized interface for monitoring and managing all batch processes, which is helpful because nothing gets left unattended since it is all visible in one place, and th...
What do you like most about Control-M?
First of all, the shift from manual to automation has been valuable. We have a tool that can automate.
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 decent for mid-sized and small-sized companies. It is good for startups or mid-scale companies.
What needs improvement with Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?
A drawback is that it is not as feature-rich compared to its competitor Sterling, which we used before. It has fewer features, though it is more intuitive. This was the compromise we had to make du...
 

Also Known As

Control M
HelpSystems GoAnywhere MFT, GoAnywhere MFT, GoAnywhere Managed File Transfer,
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CARFAX, Tampa General Hospital, Navistar, Amadeus, Raymond James, Railinc
McKesson City of Modesto, California Kwik Trip Northwestern University Charter Communications
Find out what your peers are saying about Control-M vs. GoAnywhere MFT and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.