GoAnywhere MFT vs VisualCron comparison

Fortra and SMA Technologies are both solutions in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category. Fortra is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.5, while SMA Technologies is ranked #20. Fortra holds a 7.8% mindshare in MFT, compared to SMA Technologies’s 2.3% mindshare. Additionally, 99% of Fortra users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of SMA Technologies users who would recommend it.

GoAnywhere MFT

Read 119 GoAnywhere MFT reviews

9,419 Views
8,948 Comparison Views

99% willing to recommend

VisualCron

Read 11 VisualCron reviews

3,896 Views
1,052 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

GoAnywhere MFT

VisualCron

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

GoAnywhere MFT and VisualCron both operate in the file transfer and automation space. GoAnywhere MFT edges out with its robust security features and encryption standards, excelling particularly in secure file transfer capabilities.

Features: GoAnywhere MFT offers advanced encryption for both data in transit and at rest, automation capabilities that streamline complex processes, and centralized control with efficient project-based workflows. It supports various secure protocols such as SFTP and HTTPS, aiming for reliability and easy integration. VisualCron shines in visual task management and efficient scheduling, reducing the coding effort while simplifying task automation for users without an extensive technical background.

Room for Improvement: GoAnywhere MFT could improve user experience by simplifying its UI design and reducing the learning curve for new users. The response time for customer support is another area highlighted for enhancement. VisualCron might benefit from better interface usability and more comprehensive documentation. The absence of real-time support and limited CI/CD integration are noted as potential growth areas.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GoAnywhere MFT offers deployment versatility across Public Cloud, Private Cloud, and On-premises environments, demonstrating its flexibility. Its customer service is generally praised for being quick and effective, though delays in support have been noted by some users. VisualCron's deployment capabilities are less clear, with some users suggesting the setup process could be improved with better documentation and support accuracy.

Pricing and ROI: The pricing for GoAnywhere MFT is considered substantial but justified due to its comprehensive feature set, contributing significantly to ROI through enhanced security and automation. While its licensing options are viewed as complex, they offer value through effective workload management and significant time savings. VisualCron, on the other hand, is seen as cost-effective and straightforward, targeting small to medium-sized companies by avoiding complex pricing structures. Its straightforward licensing and functionality provide a budget-friendly solution without sacrificing essential automation capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed GoAnywhere MFT vs. VisualCron Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

GoAnywhere MFT vs. VisualCron

August 2026

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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)

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

119

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VisualCron

Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)

20th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Workload Automation (25th), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (30th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category, the mindshare of GoAnywhere MFT is 7.8%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 2.3%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed File Transfer (MFT) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
GoAnywhere MFT	7.8%
VisualCron	2.3%
Other	89.9%

Managed File Transfer (MFT)

Featured Reviews

Anuj Bhagwat

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%.

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Sourav-Dutta

Technical Lead - Database Administrator at SMART ENERGY SYSTEMS LLC

It's user-friendly, and I didn't need long to understand the process

We use VisualCron for all our automation needs, like connecting to FileZilla, calling APIs, generating PGP keys, creating encryption files with the PGP key login to Azure, etc. It can automatically log in to SQL Server and execute SQL script jobs in bulk. We had 2,000-3,000 users at my previous…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"For what we pay to GoAnywhere every year, we are getting a fantastic deal."

"GoAnywhere MFT has been a reliable and secure solution for managed file transfer, and its automation, security, and monitoring capabilities have helped improve operational efficiency and reduce manual effort."

"The cost of GoAnywhere compared with the value it brings to our data transfer operations is more than fair."

"The solution is easy to learn and user-friendly, which makes it accessible even to those without programming backgrounds and extensive scripting training. Newcomers can quickly get to grips with the platform, and as it's a more object-oriented application, it's easier to use and program."

"Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT offers robust security as its most valuable feature."

"The SFTP and encryption functionality works well, and SFTP is the bulk of what we use."

"The most valuable features are the automatic processing of files and scheduled execution of the files."

"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."

More GoAnywhere MFT pros

"'ve only had a few cases where I've had to request support in the past 12 years of use, but the support response time and resolution were was extremely quick."

"VisualCron has enabled us to efficiently automate and maintain many tasks with minimal effort from our internal IT resources."

"What I like about VisualCron is that like its name, it's a very visual tool. In my previous company, there were a lot of scripts for all kinds of services, and through VisualCron, you get to group all flows and get a nice visual overview. VisualCron also has an alerting feature, so you receive alerts from it. VisualCron makes everything clearer and easier to maintain. Every other solution that I was looking for almost always needed a programmer, but with VisualCron, you can do what you need to do without programming skills, so this is another valuable feature of the tool."

"What I found most beneficial from VisualCron is that you can directly connect it with different databases, user accounts, and credentials. You can run queries from one machine to another using the credentials, unlike PowerShell, that's run by the machine itself. With VisualCron, you can directly ask other machines and run requests through user credentials. Suppose you have an AWS or Azure environment. In that case, you can maintain the connection between on-premises and cloud-based machines, which is the type of setup in the organization I'm working for. You can directly call some of the services via VisualCron on your local on-premises machine, and I found that an excellent feature of the tool."

"VisualCron is a handy tool that we (the IT department) provide for the business departments to obtain easy access when automating and scheduling."

"We don't have to do any coding. We just plug and play and it works."

"It has improved our organization with more automation within the business departments and less administration and development in the IT department. Usually, as the IT department, we are the bottleneck for many requirements within the business. With this tool, the business departments are able to perform many task themselves."

"The most valuable feature of VisualCron is its ability to schedule interactive jobs so that you can have interdependencies within the job and interdependencies of a job on another job, and so on."

More VisualCron pros

Cons

"Improvement in support or product relies on being ingenious, supportive, and listening to its customer base."

"I think the pricing for GoAnywhere MFT is expensive."

"I believe that GoAnywhere MFT can be improved because the initial setup is somewhat challenging for a new user, so they need to make the initial feature easier for everyone, whether new or experienced users."

"Deployment of GoAnywhere MFT was very challenging because the trial request process and response time caused delays."

"GoAnywhere MFT can be improved as the UI could be more modern, and some advanced workflow configurations and troubleshooting steps could be much easier for administrators."

"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 highlight the user interface as an area for improvement in GoAnywhere MFT, as it is slightly difficult to understand."

"I experience occasional downtime and some glitches."

More GoAnywhere MFT cons

"The error timeout and info could be better. When making web request calls, it will time out sometimes and we won't get any useful info out of the error response."

"There are some conditions in the mail trigger, but you can only use them as an "AND" condition, not as an "OR" condition. This is an improvement that could be useful. For example, some people put "invoice" in the subject and others put "invoice" in the body. If I want to make a trigger for everybody whose sending invoices, I have to make two jobs for this now."

"The only problem I face when I use the tool is that it doesn't contain much documentation or it doesn't have many video tutorials on its features."

"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."

"VisualCron is software, and you will experience performance degradation when you scale up. VisualCron takes too much memory or CPU power. We have to increase the hardware resources of a specific server or system."

"VisualCron seems to operate like an efficient machine when it comes to improvements and enhancements and new features. I always appreciate the quick response I get when bringing up an issue or coming up with suggestions. I've mentioned before that it would be great to see a move away from SQLCE and XML configuration files."

"Some preferences and permissions are not quite self-explanatory, but those are rather advanced features."

"I want to improve the UI in VisualCron, as it's not as user-friendly, particularly when setting up the task scheduler. If you're familiar with the tool, then no problem, but if not, you'll have a problem typing text because sometimes, the cursor points to other places, so there's an issue with text box alignment in VisualCron. That was painful for me when I was just a VisualCron novice, but when you become used to it, there won't be a problem."

More VisualCron cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The pricing is not favorable when we use it for a few people."

"GoAnywhere's price is justified by its features and the time it saves me."

"HelpSystems GoAnywhere MFT is very reasonably priced for the value it brings."

"The cost is fine. It is probably the best software that I've had for the money that we spend for it. I am not aware of any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. I don't pay for it. IT pays for it."

More GoAnywhere MFT pricing and cost advice

"ROI is 95 percent."

"The price is a bit high."

"ROI is one month."

"VisualCron is correctly priced because it wasn't very cheap, and it wasn't overly expensive, so the price for it was set correctly. When my previous company bought VisualCron, it was €800 per server per year. On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing for VisualCron a five because it was just right. The tool was affordable, and it has one of the most competitive pricing in the market."

"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."

"We are fine with a rather cheap setup. Licensing with VisualCron is fair. You have a simple one-year licence in different sizes. There isn't a licensing jungle with hundreds of options and opt-ins."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Outsourcing Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

25%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	116
Midsize Enterprise	34
Large Enterprise	58

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	5

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?

Our experience with GoAnywhere MFT's pricing, setup cost, and licensing structure has been highly positive because it is completely module-based. Instead of hitting us with a rigid, monolithic ente...

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What needs improvement with Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?

Regarding the reporting about the logs, sometimes there is too much information. When looking for the exact way to find and troubleshoot different errors, the log can be very difficult to understan...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?

My usual use cases for GoAnywhere MFT are for automatic processes with SFTP.

See all answers

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Comparisons

MOVEit vs GoAnywhere MFT

Compared 8% of the time

Kiteworks vs GoAnywhere MFT

Compared 7% of the time

Control-M vs GoAnywhere MFT

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Sterling File Gateway vs GoAnywhere MFT

Compared 6% of the time

JSCAPE by Redwood vs GoAnywhere MFT

Compared 6% of the time

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ActiveBatch by Redwood vs VisualCron

Compared 10% of the time

UiPath Platform vs VisualCron

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Power Automate vs VisualCron

Compared 7% of the time

Control-M vs VisualCron

Compared 7% of the time

More VisualCron Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

GoAnywhere MFT

July 2026

Download GoAnywhere MFT product report

Buyer's Guide

VisualCron

July 2026

Download VisualCron product report

Also Known As

HelpSystems GoAnywhere MFT, GoAnywhere MFT, GoAnywhere Managed File Transfer,

No data available

Overview

GoAnywhere MFT offers an intuitive interface with advanced workflows, robust security, and seamless integration across platforms. It automates file transfers, supports multiple protocols, and ensures strong encryption and centralized management for secure and efficient data exchange.

GoAnywhere MFT provides automation for secure file transfers using SFTP, FTPS, and HTTPS protocols. It supports comprehensive logging, auditing, and threat protection. The platform's encryption and scalability enhance data exchange and operational efficiency in sectors like finance and healthcare. Users appreciate its integration capabilities with AWS, Azure, and Salesforce, reducing manual tasks and maintaining security with robust encryption through connectors.

What are GoAnywhere MFT's most important features?

Intuitive Interface: Easy navigation, facilitating better user experience
Advanced Workflows: Streamlines processes to save time
Robust Security: Strong encryption and threat protection
Seamless Integration: Connects with platforms like AWS, Azure, and Salesforce
Automation Capabilities: Reduces manual tasks, improving efficiency
Multiple Protocol Support: Utilizes SFTP, HTTPS, and FTPS for secure transfers

What benefits should users expect in reviews?

Enhanced Efficiency: Automation reduces manual processes
Data Security: Features strong encryption and comprehensive threat protection
Scalability: Supports large data volumes efficiently
Compliance Support: Meets industry-specific data regulations

GoAnywhere MFT is widely implemented in industries like finance and healthcare for secure data transfers and workflow management. It simplifies internal processes and enhances communication between systems, integrating seamlessly with platforms such as AWS and Salesforce, thus ensuring speed and security.

Fortra

VisualCron offers task automation through a visual interface, eliminating the need for programming skills. With capabilities like alerting and variable usage, users benefit from integration with databases, timely task execution, and cross-platform operations.

VisualCron empowers users by simplifying complex workflows. It allows seamless task automation through features like interactive scheduling and role-based operations. Users appreciate its integration capabilities, replacing multiple tools with a comprehensive automation solution. The support system ensures quick assistance, making it a reliable choice for workflow visualization and task execution. However, areas like error handling and interface design require enhancements for improved user experience.

What are the key features of VisualCron?

Visual Interface: Users automate tasks without needing programming skills.
Integration: Connects with databases and multiple systems to streamline operations.
Alerting: Notifies users about tasks and system statuses.
Task Scheduling: Allows interactive management of automated tasks.
Credentials Management: Enables cross-platform operations securely.

What benefits can users expect when evaluating VisualCron?

Increased Efficiency: Reduces the time spent on manual processes.
Cost Reduction: Eliminates the need for multiple tools by consolidating functionalities.
Enhanced Support: Offers robust post-sales support for quicker assistance.
Streamlined Workflows: Simplifies complex task automation.

Organizations leverage VisualCron in industries like finance and logistics to automate tasks such as encryption and secure file transfers. It's also integral in managing data operations, facilitating communications between systems, and executing SQL jobs, enhancing operational efficiency across sectors.

SMA Technologies

Sample Customers

McKesson City of Modesto, California Kwik Trip Northwestern University Charter Communications

7 Eleven, ABB Sécheron SA, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Europe Core, Apple, Assa Abloy, Aston Martin, Banco Santander, BMW (Australia)

Buyer's Guide

GoAnywhere MFT vs. VisualCron

August 2026

Free Report: GoAnywhere MFT vs. VisualCron

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