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Joshua Rule - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Integration Consultant at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
The solution can be used as an SFTP server for file transfer, but its scalability could be improved
Pros and Cons
  • "Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT supports the PeSIT protocol."
  • "The solution's support for the Unix platform and AS2 should be improved."

What is our primary use case?

We use Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT as an SFTP server for file transfer.

What is most valuable?

Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT supports the PeSIT protocol. The solution's Windows LDAP integration is excellent.

What needs improvement?

The solution's support for the Unix platform and AS2 should be improved. The solution's scalability needs to be improved as it has very limited scalability.

The solution could include some multi-factor authentication (MFA), one-time password, or secondary authentication.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT for six years.

Buyer's Guide
GoAnywhere MFT
June 2025
Learn what your peers think about GoAnywhere MFT. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT a six out of ten for stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT a four out of ten for scalability.

How are customer service and support?

I never interacted with the solution's technical support, but their website was pretty robust with knowledge articles.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

The solution’s initial setup was simple.

What about the implementation team?

One engineer and a system admin resource were involved in the solution's deployment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT is an inexpensive solution.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Before choosing Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT, we evaluated MOVEit. Compared to MOVEit, Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT had a more robust user interface, and the support was more apparent on their website, making it easier to get to.

What other advice do I have?

The solution has quarterly maintenance releases.

Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT is best used in a Windows environment with low utilization. It wouldn't be something I would use in a high-utilization environment.

Overall, I rate Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2587500 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a educational organization with 11-50 employees
Real User
Top 20
Effortless setup with excellent support ensures seamless file transfers
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution is easy to use, easy to set up, and the support is good."
  • "I would like to be able to do MFA and reset the password via email."

What is our primary use case?

The use cases would be to transfer files and send files of large sizes.

How has it helped my organization?

We have not yet collaborated with third parties. We might see benefits in the future when we have SharePoint.

What is most valuable?

Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT is easy to use, easy to set up, and the support is good.

What needs improvement?

I am not able to go in and say 'forgot password.' I need to access the admin portal to change the password from there. I would like to be able to do MFA and reset the password via email.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used GoAnywhere for less than a year. April will mark one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We hardly have any issues with lagging, crashing, or downtime.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable. We utilize it minimally, and it seems easy to scale up.

How are customer service and support?

Their customer service is good, with decent support. They get back to us within a day with answers. Their documentation is also very helpful.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used standard MFT, FileZilla, and just FTP protocol within Windows Server. We switched as we were concerned about security and wanted ease of use and setup.

How was the initial setup?

The initial deployment was easy. It took us just a couple of days to fully set up.

What about the implementation team?

We used Fortra's implementation team since it came with the package. We had to purchase eight hours of implementation time. From our end, mainly one person was involved in the deployment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing is too expensive for what we need. If we could cut it by 50%, that would be great.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at other solutions, however, it was time-consuming, and since Fortra's offers very good products, we did not pursue other options further.

What other advice do I have?

I recommend the solution for secure transfer and easy setup. Despite the pricing, it is a reliable product.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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Buyer's Guide
GoAnywhere MFT
June 2025
Learn what your peers think about GoAnywhere MFT. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.
857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Stephen Whigham - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior PBM Systems Administrator at FairosRx
Real User
Great tool for automating file transfers, encryption, SFTP, and executing internal applications
Pros and Cons
  • "I like the organization of resources, specifically listing out all of our FTPs and having a name and description to easily organize them. I also like the scheduler. The organization and the scheduling, being able to create the folders and the jobs, have been really helpful."
  • "It would be helpful to have a way to actually have a job run without notifying the email addresses you have set up and without posting to the actual FTP... when you need to make a small change to a job that is deployed to production, and test that change, you have to go back and reset everything. It's not really a great way to test."

What is our primary use case?

I'm using it for automated exports of reports, where we're running scripts and exporting data in various formats, as well as for sending notifications to clients, for FTP uploads and downloads. We have patient enrollment files that get posted to our FTP and I'm using monitors to determine when a file gets downloaded and processed, and then results posted back.

I use GoAnywhereMFT to kick off other applications which will then do most of my file conversions and transformations. I'm reading data back in, either from queries or file sets that get created, in order to handle other functions of the jobs.

We do use the API functions a little bit, although I'm doing most of that through other applications, kicked off by MFT.

How has it helped my organization?

It helps centralize the exchange of data. Controlling the syncing of databases is pretty critical for us. We need the data to be up to date. If GoAnywhere wasn't able to do it, we would either have to develop an internal solution or look for an alternative.

The solution's workflow features have definitely helped eliminate manual processes. We're still a small company, we just started up in 2020. But we're already running hundreds of jobs a day and, and without the workflow features, we would have to hire many people to be able to do those same tasks.

In addition, we are a PBM (pharmacy benefits manager) and one of the core functions that has to be done with every client is receiving patient enrollment data. We also do inbound and outbound patient accumulation files, invoicing, reports, and status jobs. Just in those few transactions with all of our clients, that's a lot of potential manual touch points that have to be done. GoAnywhere has allowed me to automate all of that, plus additional tasks that would normally go to a reporting team.

As a company, it's allowing us to hire people who can come up with innovative ideas instead of hiring people just to do repetitive work. It's allowing us to grow and focus on new things instead of just trying to keep up and tread water on current tasks.

Another benefit is that it has PGP functionality built right in, and that gives me a good way to actually manage the keys, have a list of them, and use them. This is my one repository for all of that data and it gets picked up by the jobs. Previously, I had to have a separate PGP key management tool. Anytime that we would receive a file that was encrypted, while I might have been able to automate the transfer down of the FTP, but I would have to manually decrypt the file. Having that one core functionality can save me up to an hour a day.  Now, I can come in in the morning, log in to my inbox and get a report of everything that's happening: what has errored and what hasn't, instead of spending the day actually doing those processes.

We automate about 95 percent of all our transfers, so GoAnywhere is quite a help. We'll still have unscheduled file dumps or transfers that need to happen, of course, but I immediately use GoAnywhere to set up a job for anything that occurs on any type of regular basis.

What is most valuable?

I like the organization of resources, specifically listing out all of our FTPs and having a name and description to easily organize them. I also like the scheduler. The organization and the scheduling, being able to create the folders and the jobs, have been really helpful.

Looking at the comprehensiveness of GoAnywhere’s workflow features, I use it with other applications and, so far, there hasn't been anything I haven't been able to accomplish either through GoAnywhere exclusively, or using GoAnywhere with another application to get a task done. Everything revolves around GoAnywhere. It has a really good suite of features. It would be unlikely for us to move away from GoAnywhere because it has very good core functionality that we like to augment with a couple of additional applications.

What needs improvement?

Pretty much everything we've needed to connect to has been done fairly seamlessly.

The only issue I've had with connectivity, database or otherwise, revolved around an SSH key. I tried to create a key, but it was incompatible with a vendor's SFTP. And when that vendor has tried to create a key and share it with me, I have not been unable to import it into GoAnywhere. I had to use a third-party app to create the key and find something that was mutually compatible. I've submitted tickets on that to GAMFT for consideration.

They could possibly improve the error handling on jobs. Whenever it generates error logs, sometimes the error is very generic. It takes a little work to diagnose what's really going on. It may just say "IO Exception" and that doesn't really tell you much.

For how long have I used the solution?

About 3 years now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We do have to occasionally restart GoAnywhere because a job gets stuck or we are having connectivity issues. It restarts very quickly on the server. We might have five minutes of downtime at the most every one to two months. It has been pretty reliable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

From what I've seen, it would be able to scale for everything I foresee us needing in the next five to 10 years. From my understanding, we can actually turn some of that up and add servers if necessary. I don't really expect any problems there.

I now look at any new process that needs to be considered through the lens of how I would automate it through GoAnywhere. That being said, given our size, I would call our usage moderate. We have about 300 jobs a day and at our peak I would expect about 500 jobs a day. Obviously, that would increase as we grow.

As an organization, we're still adding jobs. We don't have a shortage of things that we want to automate with GoAnywhere.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support has been pretty good. We've had some support directly through their chat service. I've had a couple of more urgent questions that needed to be answered and they were able to resolve them. We've also interacted with them via email and they've been very responsive and helpful.

They also have a queue-type ticket system that we've used a little bit.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

They got it set up pretty quickly. A HelpSystems person was available to work through the minor issues and answer questions as necessary.

A lot of the help came from doing the demo as far as seeing what we could do. The implementation itself was pretty smooth.

In terms of the intuitiveness, there's definitely a learning curve. You have to learn how a job should really be set up and that took a little more time than I wanted, but it was good to get the knowledge by going through that process. I started out with very simplistic jobs and then started adding checks and error handling as we went.

One example of the learning curve is, to zip up files, I have to first move them to a workspace and work from there instead of a network share. Nothing in the application tells you this, but I figured it out after some job failures. Encountering things like that takes a little bit of effort.

As you get the feel of how GoAnywhere expects to do things and you make the corrections to set your jobs up to match that structure, it works fine.

We haven't done a whole lot in terms of updates yet. We are trying to review how to best update without impacting our production jobs unexpectedly. We have someone who will be talking with GoAnywhere to facilitate that upgrade process.

What was our ROI?

This is hard to calculate exactly, but when I can spend time with my wife instead of staying late at work, I would say it is worth it.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Though cost was a consideration, it was not under my umbrella.  Ultimately, we found the tool worth the cost.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated another product called MoveIt but GoAnywhere seemed to be a better product in my opinion.

There are certain functions that GAMFT can support but I like to use other applications for. For example, file transformation is possible within GoAnywhere, but easier in another application we use.

I try to evaluate what GoAnywhere is better at doing than other applications and use them accordingly. It handles file movement very well and I like the workspace feature.


What other advice do I have?

As part of the implementation process it would be a good idea to have a couple of examples, actual scenarios, you want to do. GoAnywhere has templates and they're good, but they're a little simplified compared to what you can do with the solution. That's really a compliment to the software itself. The templates are all about moving files, and GoAnywhere is capable of more than that. Having examples that involve reading data in from a database and identifying certain data lines to set variables is a good idea.

I would suggest, where applicable, to spend the time to design into the job a procedure where, if a process fails, you can retry, or reset things like filenames and locations.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2557383 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Tech Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Real User
Enables easy and secure file transfers but should have more training resources
Pros and Cons
  • "Scheduling is valuable. You can schedule a transfer for any time you want. It can be hourly, daily, monthly, or yearly. You can transfer the file on AWS, Azure, or SharePoint."
  • "For training, there should be some sites or resources on YouTube or Udemy. They do not have that currently."

What is our primary use case?

GoAnywhere MFT tool is used to transfer files from one end user to another. 

Traditionally, you would transfer a file as an attachment to an email. However, that does not always work very well, especially if you want to continuously transfer files. For example, sometimes you need to transfer files every hour. In such cases, traditional ways of file transfers do not work very well. This is where GoAnywhere MFT is helpful. You can just place a file at a location and it automatically gathers the file and transfers it to the destination or wherever you want to transfer it. 

How has it helped my organization?

It provides the easiest and safest way to transfer files. There is security and multiple advantages to using an MFT tool like GoAnywhere MFT.

It enables you to easily transfer files and not bother about sending them manually through emails. You can automate it. You do not want to log in and attach files in an email. You can just place them at a specified location, and they are picked up by the GoAnywhere MFT server. If you want to transfer a file to an external vendor, you can either use the vendor's location or your own location to put the file. If the external vendor provides you with a location, you can use that. Otherwise, you can create a folder and provide access to the external vendor. There are two options. It is very easy and secure.

What is most valuable?

Scheduling is valuable. You can schedule a transfer for any time you want. It can be hourly, daily, monthly, or yearly. You can transfer the file on AWS, Azure, or SharePoint. These are the main advantages.

It is easy to use. You just need to create a template and then the sequence is already provided to you. You just have to input the details that you got from the requester. You do not need to put any code, but if you have to do PGP key and encryption, it is a little bit complicated because all users are not aware of all the cases. You have to tell them what exactly you need in a particular case and what you are going to provide them. You need to interact with them.

What needs improvement?

They should have some training courses. Usually, everything is available on YouTube today, but I have not found any videos for this solution. For training, there should be some sites or resources on YouTube or Udemy. They do not have that currently.

Feature-wise, I do not have any areas for improvement. Whenever we work for a company, they have certain restrictions, and we cannot use all the features of any MFT tool. In my previous company, we had a few restrictions, and the feature usage was limited, which made it hard to say if it lacked any features or not. I have not found any issues with most of the features I worked with. I could do whatever was required using GoAnywhere MFT.

For how long have I used the solution?

I used this solution for four years and seven months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

GoAnywhere MFT is very good in terms of stability. You would not find many issues related to stability. If there are any issues, they are rare or once or twice a year.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We can easily scale up and scale down. If they want to use GoAnywhere MFT, most companies get it for a year. People usually do not scale down. They usually scale up because it has many services.

I believe it was being used at multiple locations because we had four servers. If any one of them went down, we had other servers.

How are customer service and support?

I never contacted them. We had an on-site team for that, but I have attended calls with them. They are very prompt. They will schedule a meeting and help you out until the issue is resolved.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

In the market, there are multiple MFT tools, but I only have experience working with GoAnywhere MFT. When I joined the company, GoAnywhere MFT was already there. I was trained on that and started working with it.

How was the initial setup?

In my previous company, it was on the cloud. I was not involved in its deployment. It was already being used in my previous company. 

If you want to deploy it, you need to contact GoAnywhere. You can raise the ticket and ask them to provide that particular service. They will charge you and provide the service. 

I am not sure, but it seems that it does not require any maintenance. We just have to restart it, and we get all the updates and patching activities done.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate GoAnywhere MFT a seven out of ten.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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Technical Engineer
Real User
Top 20
Our data exchange security is now faster, easier to use, and more convenient than before
Pros and Cons
  • "GoDrive eliminates the need to use the exchange server for file sharing."
  • "Fortra needs to offer more use cases for GoAnywhere MFT during training."

What is our primary use case?

We use Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT solution to achieve file standardization through automated workflows. In this process, when a file is sent, it's first routed to an ICAP server. Think of a file transfer as simply moving a file from one location to another. However, in this case, instead of transferring the file directly, we connect it to the ICAP server first. This intermediary step allows the file to be scanned and sanitized before it's delivered to its final destination.

We implemented Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT to securely transfer and share files, as well as automate file transfers and processes.

How has it helped my organization?

GoAnywhere has significantly improved our data exchange security. It's now faster, easier to use, and more convenient than before. It has improved automation, visibility, and security.

GoAnywhere offers good visibility through its file transfer logs. This allows me to track changes within my organization, including who made them, what changes were made, and when they occurred.

GoAnywhere's automation feature has streamlined our workflows by eliminating the need for extensive coding, programming, or scripting knowledge. Its user-friendly interface allows us to create workflows simply by dragging and dropping components. Additionally, GoAnywhere offers a library of pre-defined workflows readily available for use. These pre-built workflows can be easily integrated into our workspace with a single click. While some workflows may require minor adjustments, such as specifying a CTPS certificate, link, or IP address, GoAnywhere significantly reduces the need for manual configuration.

GoAnywhere integrates with our existing IT infrastructure and systems. It also offers a feature that allows for integration with Outlook. This integration enables us to send files securely via email through a link. However, using the standard email attachment method does not provide any file protection. The Outlook plugin streamlines this process. Once installed, it provides an option within our Outlook interface to connect and send files directly from our mailbox. This eliminates the need to access the GoAnywhere platform separately, generate a link, and then send it – saving us valuable time and steps.

The training and portal videos familiarized me with the benefits of GoAnywhere. I believe someone new to the platform could grasp most of these benefits within a week or two, though not all of them in such a short timeframe.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature, GoDrive, requires an additional license. It functions similarly to Dropbox, providing a central location where all users can easily upload files. Once uploaded, the files are continuously monitored, encrypted, and inaccessible to unauthorized users. Additionally, GoDrive offers image-sharing capabilities. For instance, if we want to send a file to someone via email, we can enter their email address. Instead of sending the file through the exchange server, GoDrive generates a link. This link, when sent to the recipient, allows them to access the file with a single click. The link can be set to expire after a specific number of downloads or uploads, and we can even add a password for further security. In essence, GoDrive eliminates the need to use the exchange server for file sharing.

What needs improvement?

Fortra needs to offer more use cases for GoAnywhere MFT during training.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT for 2 months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

GoAnywhere MFT is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

GoAnywhere MFT is scalable. They have a 99 percent retention rate.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is good. Their development team releases new versions 4 times a year.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

I deployed GoAnywhere myself and found it to be easy to install. It's the simplest product I've installed so far. The process takes less than 15 minutes. All you need is the installation file. You download it, and there are almost no prerequisites for running the software.

GoAnywhere uses a web-based console for management. You'll get an HTTPS link with an IP address to access it. You can then log in to your web console to manage GoAnywhere. Even deploying it on multiple machines is straightforward; there's an agent that simplifies the process.

What was our ROI?

GoAnywhere MFT delivers a positive return on investment, as evidenced by our extensive customer base.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT 8 out of 10.

GoAnywhere allows us to encrypt our data using either TGP or AES encryption.

Depending on the use case, one or two people are required to maintain GoAnywhere.

We offer GoAnywhere to a wide range of clients, from small IT shops to large banks with thousands of employees.

I recommend reading about all the additional features, such as GoDrive. You should also be aware that GoAnywhere is highly scalable.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1855467 - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Assistant at a government with 10,001+ employees
Real User
The workflow is nicely defined, making the processes more accessible for beginners
Pros and Cons
  • "GoAnywhere centralizes data exchanges, helping to facilitate file transfers between our critical systems."
  • "The security could be upgraded to address novel cyberattacks. I'm not sure whether the product's security is being updated periodically."

What is our primary use case?

Batch jobs are defined in GoAnywhere, which interacts with multiple agencies across public safety applications. The files are transferred securely from an IBM  middleware environment like WebSphere Application Server to GoAnywhere. From there, they go to the vendors or the file consumers.

We are not dependent on any operating system. We've always worked with all flavors of OS, including AUX, Linux, and Windows. The product is multi-platform and we tend to use enterprise Linux OS, like Red Hat and OpenShift. 

How has it helped my organization?

GoAnywhere makes functions easier because we don't need to do all the scripting for managed file transfers. We can do transfers from a user-friendly UI. The solution also centralizes data exchanges, helping to facilitate file transfers between our critical systems. The workflow features enabled us to eliminate manual processes and unsecured file-transfer methods.

GoAnywhere helps the organization do jobs more efficiently. It saves time that the team can spend elsewhere. We can allocate resources to other activities or priority tasks. It also allows us to process much more data and documents.

The product can automate submissions of regulatory documentation, which is crucial for our end-users. We are responsible for setting up the infrastructure that other state agencies use. It's critical for us to transfer a variety of documents across the board.

Automated scripts running through GoAnywhere are essential because we work in public safety, which involves 24/7 transfers. Automation improved our efficiency many times over. 

It's difficult for me to quantify how much time we saved by automating scripts because this process has occurred over more than a decade. I'm certain that it saves lots of time, but I can't precisely say how much. 

GoAnywhere doesn't completely replace our other solutions. We can eliminate some custom scripts, but other agencies use different FTP solutions, such as IBM Sterling. 

What is most valuable?

It's easy to define the jobs in GoAnywhere's user interface. It's one of the easiest to use. It's comparable to other enterprise FTP products like IBM Sterling, but we find this a little more straightforward. The workflow is nicely defined, making the processes more accessible for beginners. It's critical that GoAnywhere enables us to limit access to sensitive data inside our network so that only verified users can access it.

We don't need to write custom programs or have any specialized programming knowledge. The ability to use GoAnywhere without custom scripts saves developers lots of time. We eliminated around 100 custom scripts.

What needs improvement?

The security could be upgraded to address novel cyberattacks. I'm not sure whether the product's security is being updated periodically. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I took over the team responsible for GoAnywhere in the last two or three years. My team lead has managed the solution for the last 12 to 15 years. 

How are customer service and support?

I rate GoAnywhere's support a nine out of ten. They're excellent. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

What other advice do I have?

I rate GoAnywhere MFT a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Earl Diem - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Manager - Performance and Automation Engineering at PSCU Financial Services
Real User
Key to our workflow and our workload automation strategy, helping us trade and consume files
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for trading files with partners over the internet, partners with whom we don't have a VPN connection. And we use it for internal file movement and workflows.

We are using GoAnywhere for enterprise. We have two gateway nodes in both data centers.

How has it helped my organization?

From an automation standpoint, it helps us trade files over the internet with partners with whom we don't have a VPN connection. For the most part, GoAnywhere is used between us and partners that we trade files with. We consume those files with internal, backend processes and we use it for moving files within those backend processes, in the workflow. It has become very important to us over these four years. It's key in our workflow and our workload automation strategy.

The workflow features eliminate the need for custom programs and scripts for file transfers. We write a few Python scripts here and there when we need to get fancy, but we can generally wire things up in GoAnywhere pretty quickly. It saves a lot of time and resources, making that ability pretty critical. We did a migration from SSIS to Informatica over the last two years, and my team wired up about 275 jobs during that time. Without GoAnywhere, that would have been a much more painful file management process.

With just shy of 500 jobs running in GoAnywhere, a conservative number would be half of our scripts, about 250, have been eliminated by centralizing things in this solution. And the automation of file transfers has helped to reduce workload in our organization by 20 percent.

Another thing that has been really important, with the ability to set SLAs on file arrivals, is that we have fundamentally set implied SLAs with our partners. That means that where we didn't really have a written agreement for an SLA on a given file, if over the last year a partner has sent us that file within X amount of time, we set the SLA alert to an hour later. That has meant we've pushed implied SLAs onto our providers.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been on HelpSystems GoAnywhere MFT for about four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's rock-solid. I can't remember the last time we had a GoAnywhere outage.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's well-architected. With the frontend gateway servers and the backend servers, you can scale to meet your needs. We're not anywhere near having to address that point, but if we got to a point where we needed to scale, we could just put another gateway server and another application server in play, and that would be able to take on more traffic. It's easily scalable.

How are customer service and support?

The help has always been great. Anytime we have had an issue, the response has been good and they've been on top of it. We're pretty happy with the support.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were a Cisco Tidal house before we went to Stonebranch and GoAnywhere. We made the decision to put GoAnywhere in when we bought the new automation platform, instead of going with Stonebranch's file movement platform. We went with GoAnywhere because it met more of our needs, especially when it comes to trading files with partners over the internet. That really wasn't the focus of Stonebranch, which was really just for the workflows.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was a piece of cake. And upgrading the platform and dropping the .jar files has been really painless as well. By comparison, my IBM upgrades take four hours.

What was our ROI?

The return on investment was in the initial purchase, as it was 30 percent less than the other product we looked at.

The ease of use and learnability of the interface also help. It took my guys no time to learn the interface and the product, and to start turning out value, working with it in workflows. The learning curve was short. It didn't take a lot of training. The time to value was great, and that is great ROI.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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.

GoFast is an additional license. We're not using it but we might. We're all going to be hybrid at some point in time and I'm getting my arms wrapped around it. Do I put a file replication solution in place that's bi-directional, like Peer? Or do I put GoAnywhere out in AWS with a high-speed adapter so that I can send files from on-prem to AWS where compute is happening for ETLs?

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We have three MFT platforms in-house. One is IBM Sterling File Gateway and we use that to move about 15,000 files a day. But that's really B2C, with our 2,400 or credit unions. We move files from Fiserv and other vendors, and from PSU, to the institutions through IBM File Gateway.

Before going with GoAnywhere, we looked at Axway, Ipswitch, and MOVEit. We did a PoC with Ipswitch, MOVEit, and GoAnywhere, and went with GoAnywhere. The products did the same thing but GoAnywhere had a better interface than MOVEit, and the price was more attractive. I hear that Ipswitch was bought out and is called something else now.

What other advice do I have?

Make sure you size it properly.

Also, in the grand scheme of things, what I've learned is that you don't have to be on an IBM platform or Ipswitch, or Axway—the big names, the competitors. One of the players in the industry that is a little smaller, like HelpSystems, has a product that gets the job done for less money. We're really not that big as far as revenue goes. We're less than a billion-dollar-a-year corporation, with 2,500 people. But we are a not-for-profit and we work with Fiserv so we have a lot of IBM footprint on the ground. That is not typical of a company that is doing less than a billion dollars a year. Traditionally, the mentality is to just use the big-name products, Big Blue and HPE, but that is just not necessary. That's one of the valuable things that I've learned. GoAnywhere gets the job done for a lot less money than the big traditionals.

Our users include three guys who are automation engineers and two guys who are MFT engineers. We also have a handful of folks, four or five, in the network operations center, who do ad hoc file-sends to credit unions.

Overall, it's a great product.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Prashant Fauzdar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Solution Lead at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Enables us to develop template workflows and call them from other workflows, saving development time
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the ability to call a workflow from another workflow. That really gives you an edge by increasing reusability and speeding up development time. You can create a workflow which is a type of template and then call that workflow from any other workflow... It has sped up development time by 80 to 90 percent."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

We are mostly using it for ETL-related workloads. In our organization we have a lot of different systems that need to talk to each other. Files have to be transferred from one system to another. We use GoAnywhere to automate the file transfer processes, whether it involves an SFTP system or a Windows network shared drive.

We also use it for data translation and data load, when we want to extract the data from a database system and create a CSV file and send it to a downstream system.

And we have recently started using Cloud Connectors for things like Microsoft Azure Data Lake and blob storage. Most organizations are moving to the cloud and we have a lot of cloud-related integrations now coming into the picture. GoAnywhere MFT helps to accomplish them.

How has it helped my organization?

With the automation you don't have to worry about doing anything manually. You create a workflow and schedule it. You have various options to schedule your workflow daily, or at a certain date and time, and a repeat frequency. If you have complex scheduling requirements, those can also be done. 

The very quick development time is another benefit.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the ability to call a workflow from another workflow. That really gives you an edge by increasing reusability and speeding up development time. You can create a workflow which is a type of template and then call that workflow from any other workflow. That's really helpful for us. It has sped up development time by 80 to 90 percent. All you have to do is pass the parameters from the caller and everything is done by your template.

And after using it for some time and you become very comfortable with the syntax, if you want to quickly develop something you can directly edit the XML. It creates XML for all the workflows and you can directly import and edit them. That also helps with the speed of the development.

The solution is very intuitive because all the help is built-in. When you go to Help there is a developer guide there. You can search any library or function. Also, the tooltips are helpful. You can click on any label and it shows a tooltip that describes what it does. It also provides integrated development, meaning all the development can be done in the GoAnywhere portal itself, from a browser. You don't need any additional tools or an IDE. It's very user-friendly and developer-friendly.

GoAnywhere also has a very good log through which you can track any issues. 

In addition, the workflow features are able to fulfill the requirements most of the time. Only certain, very rare scenarios are not covered. But GoAnywhere also provides a custom task feature. Apart from all the built-in tasks, if your workflow demands a special task, and you have the expertise, you can create a custom task. That's a good advantage.

What needs improvement?

They need to increase the number of Cloud Connectors and speed up their development of them.

Also, 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.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using HelpSystems GoAnywhere MFT for more than eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is very stable. In all the time I've been using it, I haven't seen any deficiencies in terms of workflows or behaviors.

Any memory issues happen because of poor workflow design. Otherwise, It's very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have gone from 40 or 50 workflows to more than 600 workflows now. But we have only slightly increased the memory footprint of the server on which GoAnywhere is installed. We haven't seen any issues. The solution is scalable.

We have around 70 to 80 users of GoAnywhere and, at any point in time, some 10 to 20 active users. Among our 600-plus workflows, there are some running every hour or every minute or daily. On average, they transfer 100,000 files per day. 

We have four environments: dev, test, QA, and production. Dev/sandbox is a single environment, while Test, QA, and Production are clustered. We have two nodes for high-availability.

Within our company there is still a lot of demand for GoAnywhere. We are going to increase our use of it by 10 to 20 percent per year.

How are customer service and support?

Their technical support is good. Responses are not really instantaneous, but they respond within their SLA. They could improve their response time.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

What was our ROI?

It's a great value in terms of our overall satisfaction. It helps automate all our processes and reduces development time, so we don't have to invest much in developing. We haven't really seen any issues using it in all this time, or challenges in terms of operations. Overall, it brings us great value.

Because every new development request requires a certain amount of effort, new development in GoAnywhere is really fast thanks to the template workflow and being able to call another workflow. It helps reduce development costs and that's a great value.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The licensing is very organization-friendly. It's a one-time license, not a monthly or recurring model. Compared to other tools it's less expensive.

What other advice do I have?

If your overall requirements are related to ETL and sending files to different systems, and you want to automate these kinds of daily processes, then GoAnywhere would be the best fit. It's one of the best solutions. It's lightweight and doesn't need heavy servers or big hardware to run, and it's very scalable. All these features really add to the GoAnywhere solution.

Overall, the solution is a nine out of 10. The ease of use is definitely 9.5 and the performance is a nine. But in terms of catching up with all the new standards, it's a little behind it. On that, I would give it an eight. It doesn't have connectors to various new systems. For development, it's a 9.5.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
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Updated: June 2025
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Managed File Transfer (MFT)
Buyer's Guide
Download our free GoAnywhere MFT Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.