No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

GoAnywhere MFT vs Kiteworks vs Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category, the mindshare of GoAnywhere MFT is 8.5%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kiteworks is 4.4%, down from 10.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct is 4.3%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed File Transfer (MFT) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
GoAnywhere MFT8.5%
Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct4.3%
Kiteworks4.4%
Other82.8%
Managed File Transfer (MFT)
 

Featured Reviews

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%.
KT
Associate Consultant at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees
Streamlined global file sharing with user-friendly interface and self-service capabilities
I'm not a network expert, however, there must be some room for improvement. Perhaps there could be a notification to users about their bandwidth or network packet loss. If users receive such notifications, they can understand any disruptions are due to issues with their network or bandwidth rather than the site or Kiteworks. Additionally, I work from offshore India, and I told my client manager to communicate with the Kiteworks forum salesman regarding one feature. I noticed the Kiteworks login UI is very basic, lacking customization. Allowing more HTML tags to add hyperlinks or user-friendly information on the home page would be very useful.
reviewer1955103 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Has delivered robust secure file transfer with exceptional encryption features
Based on experience, the one area IBM can improve for Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct is the support mechanism. While support is available 24/7 whenever required, the solution time during American hours can take longer. In general, during American hours, the resource availability is not up to the standard. However, availability of support staff during UK timings or GMT timings is very good; they are supportive and helpful. Functionality-wise, they can make additional improvements to Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct. They recently improved by adding a GUI for configurations on Windows as well as UNIX platforms, which is very helpful. However, the web client is cumbersome and not as interactive as it should be. The CLI part is comprehensive, but the GUI needs improvement.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The user interface is simple."
"GoAnywhere MFT is very user-friendly and users can access logins and find issues as soon as possible while maintaining secure file transmissions."
"Overall, GoAnywhere MFT has been a reliable and value-added addition to my environment."
"The standout feature of GoAnywhere MFT is the centralized dashboard for monitoring all file transfers, which saves time and gives me a sense of reliability."
"Out of all the products I have used for file transfer MFT, GoAnywhere MFT is the easiest because everything is essentially in one place."
"The aspects I appreciate most about GoAnywhere MFT are that many things are all in one platform, as I can use it for file transfer, for security purposes, for audit purposes, managing files across my team, and managing automation-based tasks."
"The best features I enjoy about GoAnywhere MFT are its automation and workflow studio; we use its drag and drop interface for building workflows in interpreter and powerful mode, which is the best feature we appreciate about this tool."
"In its class, I'd give GoAnywhere MFT a nine out of 10; it does what it does exceedingly well."
"It’s a great product that you should seriously consider and take the first step by training."
"We could see whether the customer with whom we shared a file had downloaded it, which was not available with GitHub."
"Kiteworks is easy to manage and maintain with a user-friendly interface and I recommend it to anyone that requires a file-sharing system that supports SFTP."
"The most valuable aspect of Kiteworks is undoubtedly the private content network. This feature is particularly beneficial for us. Furthermore, it serves as a centralized platform that enables us to track and manage our information exchange."
"I can identify from which region our users are uploading or downloading files."
"The top two features are the two-factor authentication, which is pretty good. It's easily understood by the users. And their API is rather robust. We have numerous integrations that work off the API."
"Scalability is impressive."
"As a file-sharing application, it's an absolute 10 out of 10."
"The Security Plus feature of this solution is excellent, and allows you to send encrypted files very securely to remote destinations."
"The most valuable feature is that it provides 100% reliability for file transmission."
"Automation is the most valuable feature."
"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."
"The product has been very stable."
"The most valuable feature is that it provides 100% reliability for file transmission. It ensures that files get delivered in a secure manner. When you use Connect:Direct, your file 100% gets delivered to the next delivery location. If the log shows that a file got delivered, it will have all the transmitted data without truncation or other data issues."
"For Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct, my overall rating is ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the security."
 

Cons

"The technical support is slow to respond and to take action when issues arise, along with difficult-to-use user forums which complicate finding solutions on our own."
"The UI of GoAnywhere MFT could be more modern, and some advanced workflow configuration and troubleshooting steps could be made easier for administrators."
"I want to be able to use GoAnywhere to create customizable reports that I can share with the MSP containing any information related to file transfers."
"Fortra needs to offer more use cases for GoAnywhere MFT during training."
"Recently, Microsoft published an article stating that GoAnywhere MFT can be attacked by ransomware, indicating there was a vulnerability in the product."
"Sometimes file sharing gets failed. Many of the users in the last week faced the issue that the files are not delivered."
"One area where GoAnywhere MFT has room for improvement is in how the application reports issues; when the application runs on a server and encounters problems, it doesn't provide detailed information on the server issues, which could help users troubleshoot better."
"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."
"File location could be improved."
"We mainly had stability issues with kiteworks, where we were pushing the limits of its capability."
"In my experience, their technical support can be a little slow."
"It would be nice if Kiteworks could provide a free version of the platform so that it could be used for a certain number of file transfers. We could be charged a fee if we exceeded the number of allotted file transfers."
"Perhaps there could be a notification to users about their bandwidth or network packet loss."
"Kiteworks could benefit from enhancing the proposal knowledge base section, specifically regarding the type of work involved. Currently, the knowledge base seems insufficiently dedicated to this topic, making it challenging for new users to access the relevant administrative law. Improving the visual aids and providing clearer explanations could alleviate this issue."
"There is no offboarding process for end-users in Kiteworks. It's a manual process. There is no automated syncing with LDAP and checking to see if the account is still active. It's a manual process to get people out of here, which isn't the best way."
"The one feature, which I have also requested directly to Kiteworks, is to have a scheduled upgrade function. Currently, one of my engineers logs in after hours for the upgrade. We're a hospital, and we're 24/7, but the primary users are seven to five. So, we log in the early evening just to push a button to tell it to do the update. It would be nice if that could be very easily scheduled."
"I do not have any notes for improvement."
"The initial setup could be simpler and better."
"Technical support is difficult to work with."
"The resources required for this tool are costly and not easily available in the market."
"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."
"User interface is not user friendly."
"The technical support is the number one problem."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For what we pay to GoAnywhere every year, we are getting a fantastic deal. From a dollar perspective, it provides very good value."
"It would be good for the company to explore a modular approach to selling the product so it could be cheaper and more attractive to users."
"The pricing of GoAnywhere MFT is affordable compared to other similar products. It's not expensive, according to me. What influenced my purchase decision was the fact that the product was quite affordable."
"I find it to be very fair. It is very good."
"When it comes to secure systems that we have used, the price point can get a whole lot higher. You might end up saving in the short term with other solutions, but are you getting a secure product? Do you feel confident in that? Will you be able to get any support afterward? From my experience, based on the price point and the service that we got, it was a good value for our money."
"GoAnywhere's price is justified by its features and the time it saves me."
"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."
"Compared to other tools it's less expensive."
"The solution is very expensive because we are buying with Malaysian Ringgit and it's sold in US dollars."
"I believe it's a little costly, but given the faith that we put into it from a security perspective to maintain the integrity of our patient information that is being transferred through this system, that's a small price to pay. So, on the surface, it might look like a lot of money, but depending on the need for security, which is where we feel it shines, it's okay price-wise."
"The license management is changing and confusing. If I could make one change to it, it would be better license management through the API."
"The price of Kiteworks is reasonable."
"It is not really expensive. I mean, to me it's obviously expensive, but it's worth it."
"They changed it midstream. We were being charged a certain flat rate for SFTP traffic. For whatever reason, at the beginning of the year, our pricing changed, and we are now being charged more for using a feature of the product than we were when we first bought it. That has been our experience with billing. It turned out to be more expensive than when we started with it."
"The price and licensing of Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct is expensive."
"The solution's licensing cost is too high."
"Annual licensing fee."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Managed File Transfer (MFT) solutions are best for your needs.
896,942 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
31%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business110
Midsize Enterprise30
Large Enterprise56
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?
The pricing and licensing are definitely more enterprise-oriented, but the automation, security features, and central...
What needs improvement with Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?
While GoAnywhere MFT is very reliable, there are a few areas where it could be improved. The user interface could be ...
What is your primary use case for Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?
My main use case for GoAnywhere MFT is secure and automated file transfer, such as sending reports, backups, or busin...
What is Kiteworks?
Kiteworks is a secured file sharing platform that enables users to collaborate with different parties across a robust...
What needs improvement with Kiteworks?
I'm not a network expert, however, there must be some room for improvement. Perhaps there could be a notification to ...
What advice do you have for others considering Kiteworks?
Scalability is impressive. It can be highly available, resilient, and scalable infrastructure. I can confidently give...
What needs improvement with Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct?
Based on experience, the one area IBM can improve for Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct is the support mechanism. Whil...
What is your primary use case for Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct?
The majority use case for Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct is for file transfer, specifically secure file transfer.
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

McKesson City of Modesto, California Kwik Trip Northwestern University Charter Communications
United States Securities and Exchange Commission, National Health Service, Husch Blackwell LLP, NYC Health + Hospitals, Viatris, MITRE Corporation, Chubb, Kraft Heinz, KPMG, Kohler, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Purdue Pharma, AVL
HZMO, Bank of Communications
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortra, BMC, IBM and others in Managed File Transfer (MFT). Updated: May 2026.
896,942 professionals have used our research since 2012.