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GoAnywhere MFT vs IBM Sterling File Gateway comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 8, 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
7.8
GoAnywhere MFT delivers significant ROI by boosting efficiency, reducing costs, and enhancing security with effective automation according to users.
Sentiment score
7.7
IBM Sterling File Gateway offers cost-effective, reliable file management for retail operations with user-friendly features and strong support.
GoAnywhere can perform the work of three people, leading to a decrease in manpower needs for automation and file transfer.
There is a drastic improvement in time; at least a 50% to 60% improvement in terms of effort.
We have cut down the time by 50% by utilizing this solution.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
GoAnywhere MFT's support is praised for knowledge but criticized for response delays; satisfaction ratings vary from 3 to 10.
Sentiment score
5.9
IBM Sterling File Gateway's support is responsive and reliable, despite occasional delays and complexity complaints; 24/7 availability is valued.
It's not a situation where you raise a ticket and wait for 48 hours to get a response; it's immediate.
They have their number on their website to call, and they are fast and available all the time.
The support technician who worked with me initially owned the ticket through the whole process, even after escalating to developers or higher-level support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
GoAnywhere MFT is scalable, handling increased workloads with ease, supporting diverse platforms and maintaining high performance and uptime.
Sentiment score
6.8
IBM Sterling File Gateway offers scalable, configurable solutions supporting large volumes and protocols, despite potential licensing and configuration constraints.
The scalability is ten out of ten because it works effectively even with many users, large files, and a lot of data moving at once.
I would rate the scalability of GoAnywhere MFT as a ten.
We have clients with over 600,000 users.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
GoAnywhere MFT is stable, with few issues; user maintenance and updates ensure high reliability, with responsive support.
Sentiment score
6.6
IBM Sterling File Gateway is generally stable, but can face performance issues with upgrades, high data volumes, and resource limits.
It works very well, especially when kept up to date.
It has robust stability because we have never faced any downtime.
There have been downtimes we dealt with, especially at the beginning of deployment.
 

Room For Improvement

GoAnywhere MFT users urge UI, training, documentation, CSV performance, DNS, API enhancements, and improved pricing, scheduling, and integration.
IBM Sterling File Gateway needs user interface enhancements, better stability, more storage support, and improved user management and licensing.
That's the only thing that could help if the application could log what caused the error for us to prevent it.
We had to reach out to GoAnywhere support, and they were quick to provide support within a day, so we were able to complete that use case.
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.
 

Setup Cost

GoAnywhere MFT offers flexible, competitive pricing with customizable options, appreciated for its comprehensive features and organization-friendly cost.
IBM Sterling File Gateway offers secure file transfers, considered costly yet valuable, with varied pricing based on specifications.
Azure is significantly more expensive.
There are approximately 30% to 40% savings.
The pricing is decent for mid-sized and small-sized companies.
 

Valuable Features

GoAnywhere MFT enhances efficiency with automated workflows, advanced security, seamless integration, and compliance, supporting multiple protocols and easy use.
IBM Sterling File Gateway provides secure, adaptable file transfers with strong encryption, protocol support, user-friendly interface, and centralized management.
It provides multiple cipher options for HTTPS and SFTP protocols, utilizing AES-based algorithms for secure communication and data transfer.
I can produce reports for security and have full control over secure protocols allowed on the system, making it easy to comply with security standards such as Sarbanes-Oxley.
Before, we had to write scripts and manually update them to move data around, encrypt files, or rename files. Now we just use the GUI to set the modules for transfers, encryption, renaming, and copying, allowing us to set it and schedule it to run without any user interaction.
 

Categories and Ranking

GoAnywhere MFT
Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Sterling File Gateway
Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category, the mindshare of GoAnywhere MFT is 9.2%, up from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Sterling File Gateway is 10.4%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed File Transfer (MFT)
 

Featured Reviews

Vidyasagar Gupta - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables secure and efficient file transfers with customizable automations
The biggest improvement I've seen since using GoAnywhere MFT for three to four years is in security; control over our network security is the biggest factor to consider, and the solution automatically identifies and blocks attempts to attack our system. Additionally, the transfer speed is impressive; even if files are in GBs, it doesn't take much time to transfer, increasing our organization's efficiency significantly. In my opinion, the best feature of GoAnywhere MFT is its user-friendly UI; it's very simple to use compared to other managed file transfer tools such as MOVEit and Axway, which are a bit more complicated. While we don't use any connectors for services such as Salesforce, SharePoint Online, or MS365, GoAnywhere MFT does have the capability of connecting to these systems either through SFTP, HTTPS protocols, or API-based connections. The way it works here is different; we set up a resource-based connection to connect to various services such as SAP or Salesforce. The range of connectors that GoAnywhere MFT provides out of the box is quite extensive; it covers everything from legacy tools that support AS2 connections to the latest services such as AWS and Azure Blobs. I'm very satisfied with the connectivity options available in GoAnywhere MFT; they include everything you can think of, and as long as the system you want to connect to accepts connections, we can connect using AS2, AS4, and other cloud connectors. In relation to the agents, they are crucial for extending MFT automation to remote systems. I've noticed that in my previous organization, agents were not used as we connected via network shares, which led to occasional connectivity issues. Now, using agents increases the file transfer speed by about 20 to 30%, and they provide a more stable connection compared to legacy network shares.
Vinutha Gangadhara - PeerSpot reviewer
Ability to customize on top of the inbuilt processes, user-friendly and well-categorized
I’ve been part of this client for the last seven-plus years. It’s been close to 70 to 80 continuous improvements we have delivered. The priority ones which we always shortlist are the recurring incidents or recurring issues, which came in the initial phase of the year when we took this entire landscape under our maintenance. One such incident I can recollect is with respect to performance tuning. We committed to our users 99.99% and above as the availability metrics for Sterling Integrator. This has acted as a high-availability system, but we treat it as mission-critical. When it comes to the commitment we give to users, we have to ensure the system is kept most stable. So, the majority of the problem was in the communication channels. Whenever we enabled additional logging for the communication channel, the system used to have hiccups. So we worked with the vendor, stating that the visibility channel framework needs to be changed because the moment we enable more logging, it literally brings the system down, or the system doesn’t work as it should. They took our input and delivered a better framework in their next releases, which helped us after upgrading to have that stability intact. As the system grows, we ensure to have performance tuning triggered and optimize the business process wherever required. For example, by default, Sterling Integrator business process will have full logging enabled. We took care of those things. Not all business processes or workflows require full logging enabled. Only a few critical ones require every step logs. For the rest, we categorized and reduced the logging for those workflows. That actually helped us to increase the IO overall from ten milliseconds to six milliseconds. That was a good achievement. Apart from that, in terms of queues, how we maintain the queues, how we defined all file queues across the critical business process is one thing we felt was done better. The threads we assign for the priority queues and the business processes were configured to those priority queues, whatever is critical, so that it gets high priority to allow the threads to process. So that queue thread Sterling was taken under the performance tuning. Apart from that, I think some of the best practices which IBM recommends is what we usually run through every year. We just have the health check done through IBM, and we just ensure that all the best practice recommendations are added in the system.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
36%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
 

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 for GoAnywhere MFT seems reasonable when compared to other similar services, especially cloud services. Azure is significantly more expensive.
What needs improvement with Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?
The application uses resources such as network connections to shared directories or SFTP connections. I would appreciate seeing utilization metrics for these resources. For example, when opening a ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Sterling File Gateway?
The cost-effectiveness of IBM Sterling File Gateway was a major factor in our decision to use it, in comparison to the higher costs associated with DataPower.
What needs improvement with IBM Sterling File Gateway?
The product itself wasn't very easy to comprehend. I required a lot of customization that didn’t meet my needs. I resolved more issues than IBM did. Sterling needs better testing for larger custome...
What is your primary use case for IBM Sterling File Gateway?
I utilized Sterling primarily for SFTP and Connect Direct. I have a complicated system involving ZOS mainframe, data power, and various complex rules as I was trying to replace everything with Ster...
 

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about GoAnywhere MFT vs. IBM Sterling File Gateway and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,579 professionals have used our research since 2012.