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…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It helps me keep all my sensitive data and files secure and safe. The software's user interface is friendly and intuitive, making it easy to use and navigate without any hassle."

"By centralizing everything in GoAnywhere, we're able to eliminate 100 or so custom programs and scripts, and if I had to quantify it, I would estimate that it cuts our workload by about 80 hours a week."

"I have not seen any lagging, crashing, downtime, or any sort of instability with GoAnywhere MFT."

"Whenever a student has uploaded his or her data on our website, it is automatically sent to the universities, and no manual work is needed anymore, so I appreciate this as the best feature in GoAnywhere MFT."

"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."

"We also use the Secure Folders module and the Web Client a lot. For example, we set up external vendors to come in and review files or folders in a Secure Folder. That way they can go in and review whatever information or data they need to do."

"The aspects I appreciate most about GoAnywhere MFT are that many things are all in one platform, as I can use it for file transfer, for security purposes, for audit purposes, managing files across my team, and managing automation-based tasks."

"The 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."

More GoAnywhere MFT pros

"The ability to clone jobs to shorten the time it takes to implement a process has been invaluable, but its flexibility also gives us the ability to create a job that can handle a multifaceted process with a complex workflow."

"VisualCronv is currently handling so many different critical processes for our company, it's become a key factor in our livelihood and success."

"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."

"I love VisualCron because we previously spent a lot of time writing Power switches to connect to SQL Server. VisualCron makes it easier to execute services or connect to FileZilla by only adding the credentials to the master credentials stored in the solution."

"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."

"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."

"VisualCron is a very powerful program to automate different steps in your business processes. We use it to automate replacing files and inform departments about the replacement."

More VisualCron pros

Cons

"I think GoAnywhere MFT can improve in UI/UX redesigning and better cloud-native deployments."

"GoAnywhere MFT is a strong and reliable platform overall, but there are a few areas where it could be improved, including the initial setup and configuration experience for organizations that are new to managed file transfer solutions."

"GoAnywhere MFT is almost perfect, but I feel that the initial setup takes some effort."

"There's one persnickety issue about NAS permissions. That is a problem we have run into with GoAnywhere."

"GoAnywhere MFT could be improved in some areas. Overall, the product works well, but the user interface could be more modern and intuitive."

"In terms of scalability, I would rate it around five, as it needs further scaling. The interface built should be more stable, as performance varies across different browsers and deployed versions."

"I would like to be able to do MFA and reset the password via email."

"Initially, the user interface was a bit complex, but after two weeks of training, I fully understood it."

More GoAnywhere MFT cons

"An area for improvement in VisualCron is its cluttered interface."

"I want to improve the UI in VisualCron, as it's not as user-friendly, particularly when setting up the task scheduler."

"The documentation is a bit weak."

"There are some conditions in the mail trigger, but you can only use them as an "AND" condition, not as an "OR" condition."

"VisualCron's command console is a little bit difficult to understand and needs to improve."

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

"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."

"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

"Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT pricing is competitive."

"It would be good for the company to explore a modular approach to selling the product so it could be cheaper and more attractive to users."

"The product is not cheap, but it is not expensive."

"Its pricing is fair. It is not the most expensive, and it is not the cheapest. For what we get in our environment, the pricing model works pretty well."

"Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT carries a higher price tag than other MFT solutions."

"Pricing is based on a one-time license."

"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."

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

More GoAnywhere MFT pricing and cost advice

"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."

"ROI is 95 percent."

"The price is a bit high."

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

"ROI is one month."

"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

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

JSCAPE by Redwood vs GoAnywhere MFT

Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Power Automate vs VisualCron

Compared 7% of the time

Control-M vs VisualCron

Compared 7% of the time

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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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