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GoAnywhere MFT vs Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

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
Sterling Commerce Connect:D...
Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category, the mindshare of GoAnywhere MFT is 8.9%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct is 8.4%, up from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed File Transfer (MFT)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Sumit Mundik - PeerSpot reviewer
Has good file transfer speed, but licensing cost is too high
The initial setup of the solution is not straightforward because it's not GUI-based. If you are installing the solution on a UNIX server, you should have a basic understanding of UNIX. You should know how to go from one directory to another, what the config files are, how to edit those files, and how to get the backup of those files. You need a little technical knowledge for it. The developers working on the solution are very costly for the organization. Also, the complexity of having this kind of setup is very difficult. This solution is only used by giant financial companies like BNY Mellon, Barclays, and JPMorgan Chase. They cannot replace the solution because they have several files transferred internally using it. It is very difficult and cost-consuming for them to change, migrate, or upgrade their system. That's the reason they are not able to do it very easily.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is easy to use, easy to set up, and the support is good."
"GoAnywhere centralizes data exchanges, helping to facilitate file transfers between our critical systems."
"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,"
"The best feature of GoAnywhere is that transfers are straightforward if there are no other requirements from the source and destination. It doesn't require much maintenance."
"The use of this product has helped improve our organization and its ability to send or receive. It has done this by allowing us to remove any homegrown process and centralize needed actions."
"The most valuable feature is customer data transfers for traditional SFTP. Some of our biggest customers are on the platform, and it works out very well for us as a big selling point."
"If it's dealing with SFTP or any kind of secure transfer, we don't hear about it. It's good. Everything works."
"The encryption feature is very impressive in GoAnywhere MFT, and the encryption provided by the company is much stronger than other file transferring software."
"The most valuable feature of Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct is its flexibility with encryption."
"The product has been very stable."
"The solution's file transfer speed is quite high."
"Connect Direct offers Check Point functionality to ensure data integrity during transfers."
"The Security Plus feature of this solution is excellent, and allows you to send encrypted files very securely to remote destinations."
"Security is the most valuable feature of this product."
"Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct is a solution that is on the market for a very long time. There is an integrator that has been developed and evolves every year. On the roadmap, there is always a new integration. For example, it's one of the solutions in the market that out of the box can handle EBICS protocol. The file processing is done very well. By default, there are a lot of configurations that can be customized."
"For Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct, my overall rating is ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"On the platform side, I would like to see some improvements in the dashboarding and telemetry data."
"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."
"A drawback is that it is not as feature-rich compared to its competitor Sterling, which we used before."
"I would like to be able to do MFA and reset the password via email."
"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."
"Improvement in support or product relies on being ingenious, supportive, and listening to its customer base."
"The reporting could be more customizable."
"There's one persnickety issue about NAS permissions. That is a problem we have run into with GoAnywhere. I would like to see more focus on compatibility with/enforcement of user roles and access permissions across NAS, among other things. We have filed a couple of tickets on that in the past."
"The resources required for this tool are costly and not easily available in the market."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"Sometimes we face issues and can't figure out the cause of failures."
"The user interface could be more user-friendly."
"The initial setup could be simpler and better."
"Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct could improve by adding some of the functionality that some other vendors have. For example, GoAnywhere has call agents, which are small clients that can be installed on the endpoints and can be handled by the central point on the server. If I want to do this with the IBM solution, I have to sell a lot of account addresses. The price could be unprofitable for the customer. There is some small functionality that could be implemented and could be easily done to improve this solution."
"They have File Agent, which is an additional utility and a component of Connect:Direct, for automated file transmission. In that utility, there is some issue with the file name. There is a limitation on the file name, and that is being fixed by IBM."
"This solution cannot be deployed on a root_squash NFS, which limits superuser privileges."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to other tools it's less expensive."
"Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT carries a higher price tag than other MFT solutions."
"I find it to be very fair. It is very good."
"GoAnywhere's price is justified by its features and the time it saves me."
"The product's pricing is reasonable."
"The pricing is decent for mid-sized and small-sized companies. It is good for startups or mid-scale companies."
"Licensing can be expensive and it depends upon which features you want to buy."
"The product is not cheap, but it is not expensive."
"The solution's licensing cost is too high."
"The price and licensing of Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct is expensive."
"Annual licensing fee."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
43%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What is your primary use case for Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct?
The primary use case for Connect Direct is for transferring data from Linux or Unix systems to mainframe systems. I am the mainframe support person responsible for Connect Direct, Xcom, and other p...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

McKesson City of Modesto, California Kwik Trip Northwestern University Charter Communications
HZMO, Bank of Communications
Find out what your peers are saying about GoAnywhere MFT vs. Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.