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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 April 2026, in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category, the mindshare of GoAnywhere MFT is 9.9%, up from 8.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kiteworks is 5.9%, down from 9.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct is 4.9%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed File Transfer (MFT) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
GoAnywhere MFT9.9%
Kiteworks5.9%
Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct4.9%
Other79.3%
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

"Whenever a customer has to create a case, they create a case directly through our support portal."
"When users say, 'I'm building spreadsheets that I would like to be uploaded on a regular basis into the IBM i,' we are able to accommodate that request within a matter of hours rather than the days it would take to create programs to do that. That is very useful. It has eliminated several dozens of scripts for us."
"We are a review website for enterprise IT, and we perform two main functions: First, we publish these reviews for other people to read, either publicly or anonymously; second, we work directly with vendors who are interested in understanding what users think about their product."
"GoAnywhere MFT is stable, and I have not seen any lags in the product."
"The usability is valuable because I am self-taught and have not had any formal training in the product. The help feature is quite handy."
"GoAnywhere MFT's connectors are very important to my daily operations because the flexibility to connect to different third-party applications makes GoAnywhere MFT shine compared to other MFT solutions."
"Overall, GoAnywhere MFT has been a reliable and secure solution for managing file transfers in our organization, being very helpful for our team and clients in terms of security, workflow, and automation."
"It streamlines the files. Anyone can go pick up the file that we give access to. It is great."
"The solution removes the limitations with file attachment size that is found with regular email."
"I like Kiteworks or Accellion because it's continuously upgraded. I also know that it probably works with a lot of clients."
"I can identify from which region our users are uploading or downloading files."
"The benefits that Kiteworks has provided to its customers in terms of data sovereignty."
"We can see when people are sending things. We can definitely see who is sending to whom. From the administrative logs, we can see who is sending to an outside entity, and those logs are retained for quite a while."
"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."
"The most useful feature of this solution is to share files with external parties and we can use this functionality to share files internally too."
"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."
"The solution effectively reduced large transfer file transit time across global regions by over 50%."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the security."
"The most valuable feature is that it provides 100% reliability for file transmission."
"The product has been very stable."
"Connect Direct offers Check Point functionality to ensure data integrity during transfers."
"It's a great tool because it offers secure file transfers and it has a fast and efficient protocol for very large files."
"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. 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."
 

Cons

"I'd improve the UI and the file-sharing aspect because the UI needs lots of improvement because it's very confusing and it's good for the technical person, but any non-tech person who is going to use that, they get confused."
"A drawback is that it is not as feature-rich compared to its competitor Sterling, which we used before."
"Fortra needs to offer more use cases for GoAnywhere MFT during training."
"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."
"There are a number of built-in tasks in GoAnywhere. One, in particular, the write to CSV task, is slow. If you have, say, 100,000 records in your row set and you want to write them to a CSV file, it takes a long time. That definitely requires performance improvement."
"The interface could be more customizable."
"Without knowledge, it can be challenging to manage as it uses XML files for configurations and has tricky variables. While it's not particularly intuitive for new users, it becomes easy once mastered."
"Initially, the setup was kind of hard for me. I had to take a long time to adapt to the system."
"It could be more stable. In the next release, it would be better if it was more stable with improved performance."
"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."
"There are always issues when there are bugs or upgrades. The challenge with upgrading is getting more storage from the customer. Every time we have a new version, it requires additional storage. This means that the customer would need to procure more storage for their server, which they don't like because it means additional cost to them. So, I think my request would be that the version upgrades don't require any significant storage requirement."
"In my experience, their technical support can be a little slow."
"File location could be improved."
"We have experienced some issues with stability due to bugs."
"There is one particular thing that is a nuisance."
"I would like to see immediate releases of fixes because now it takes at least a week. If that time span can be reduced to one day or two days, that would be very helpful for users so that things are sorted and transactions work smoothly."
"The resources required for this tool are costly and not easily available in the market."
"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."
"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."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"This solution cannot be deployed on a root_squash NFS, which limits superuser privileges."
"Technical support is difficult to work with."
"The user interface could be more user-friendly."
"Sometimes we face issues and can't figure out the cause of failures."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT carries a higher price tag than other MFT solutions."
"It is moderately priced. If I compare it with other products that we have been using, its price is moderate. There are approximately 30% to 40% savings."
"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."
"It has flexible and affordable pricing because of custom quotes. The prices depend on the modules one needs and the volume of data being transferred. Overall, they offer custom and flexible pricing with an annual subscription, where you pay for specific features and functionality required."
"Compared to other tools it's less expensive."
"The product is not cheap, but it is not expensive."
"GoAnywhere was the most attractively priced product that met our needs. In our PoC it really came down to MOVEit and GoAnywhere, and GoAnywhere's pricing was about 30 percent less."
"The license management is changing and confusing. If I could make one change to it, it would be better license management through the API."
"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."
"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."
"It is not really expensive. I mean, to me it's obviously expensive, but it's worth it."
"The price of Kiteworks is reasonable."
"The solution is very expensive because we are buying with Malaysian Ringgit and it's sold in US dollars."
"The price and licensing of Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct is expensive."
"The solution's licensing cost is too high."
"Annual licensing fee."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Government
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Retailer
7%
Financial Services Firm
31%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
Healthcare Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise43
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

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?
Though I was not involved in the pricing and license cost, it is fairly industry standard.
What needs improvement with Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?
GoAnywhere MFT can be synchronized with artificial intelligence so that it can briefly explain what kind of document ...
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: March 2026.
885,667 professionals have used our research since 2012.