GoAnywhere MFT Reviews

We use it for data transfer with certain software vendors and partners. We also use it for back-and-forth customer data transfers for deposits. We also send data back to our customers for statements and reconciliation. We use it for system-to-system integration internally and we also use their secure upload feature for secure file sharing between teams and customers. We use it for just about every use case available.

It has been a couple of years since we started doing data transfer directly with our customers. We started with system integration, so we were just moving data back and forth between us and our software vendors. We stepped into the customer side of it in the last six years or so.

We use SecureForms for things like mortgage closings and secure document uploads from customers who have loans in progress. We also use it for internal operations for data handoffs between teams to securely send files. We do an encryption layer on top of that, so it works very well for us in sending data back and forth all over the company.

GoAnywhere MFT has saved us time in connecting securely with third parties for different resources. We can typically get set up with a new vendor after getting through security protocols in about two days. It works pretty well for us.

It probably saves us anywhere from four to eight hours a month in operations. We onboard new platforms once or twice a quarter. For customers, we upload the data to them versus them downloading from us. It is the same thing. We do five or six of those per month. It works out pretty well. It allows us to set things up, and if we have to make a tweak, it is quick. For example, if a customer makes a change, it is a matter of quick config change rather than us spending hours refactoring code to handle that. It works pretty well. We get four to eight hours per month of time savings as compared to other platforms.

The most valuable feature is customer data transfers for traditional SFTP. Some of our biggest customers are on the platform, and it works out very well for us as a big selling point. 

On the platform side, I would like to see some improvements in the dashboarding and telemetry data. We take a lot of that data today, and we end up writing some custom dashboards so that we can run the day to day operations. We are sending and receiving millions of dollars a day, and for us, the dashboards are a bit lacking. It works great if you have one job that needs to run successfully. However, depending on how you build it, there may be dependencies that fail, and you may need to do certain alerting to teams and things of that nature. What we are looking at right now is potentially rebuilding our dashboard a second time to improve it a little bit further based on the operations of the team. We would love to see some improvements there. That is one area where they could improve. Everything else is the best of the business from what I have seen.

We have been using MST for over ten years. 

Its stability is fine. I run architecture in addition to integration. We look at how critical applications are to our environment and our business. GoAnywhere MFT is in the top three most critical ones for us in terms of what has to run consistently and resiliency. We send and receive data all day long. GoAnywhere is, knock on wood, bulletproof for us. It works very well. In the last two years that I have run the platform, we have had one major outage, and that was something we did. It was not the platform's fault.

Its scalability has been very good. We have not run into a lot of issues with that. We just implemented clustering to preemptively get in front of that, but from a scale perspective, we never get complaints from our customers on the speed of upload or download. We consistently have 99.9% or 99.99% uptime. It works very well for us.

Their support is good. We have a good relationship with customer support, our account manager, and the consulting arm. We leverage all three. From the last several years, we know how to do the dance and navigate support challenges. Sometimes there are things that we spend consulting hours on. If it is a bigger problem and we have a production incident and the services would not turn back on, we know that we can count on Fortra to get back to us. Normally, it takes less than a couple of hours to fix an issue, so we lean on them pretty heavily for things of that nature, and then we meet with our consulting arm every week for improvement opportunities and long-range planning-type items.

I would rate them a nine out of ten. I would give them a ten if the resolution on the first call was better. That is the only improvement area right now. With as many customers as they have, that is probably not going to happen. They cannot justify it.

Positive

It was already in place when I got here. I have used IBM Sterling Integrator and Amazon AWS S3 in previous organizations.

IBM Sterling Integrator is closest to GoAnywhere MFT. It is a lot older. It does not have as modern architecture as GoAnywhere MFT, but it is close from an operational perspective. It basically works with everything, which is what you want in file transfer, but the management of IBM Sterling Integrator is difficult as compared to GoAnywhere MFT. With GoAnywhere MFT, once we have built a job five or six times, we can do it pretty fast. Things like clustering and high availability and the fact that it has got web components put it over the edge for us.

We are still one of their old-school on-prem clients. We like having control.

It was already in place when I got here. We went through an upgrade and a clustering implementation last week. The engagement was very good. It was a lot faster than a lot of the other vendors we have worked with in the past. I was expecting that it would take us three months, but we got the implementation done in about a month. We had all the servers and the other things ready which saved time, but for what we were looking at doing, I thought it would take three times longer, so it was good.

From the stories I have heard of onboarding or from the secondhand information based on my talking to some of the other engineers in the past, it took us about three months to get comfortable with the solution. We onboarded another team member to the solution this year. It took him about two months of being trained by our other engineers to get the hang of it. He has never worked on file transfer before, so there were some basics that we had to get out of the way in the first few weeks.

It requires pretty routine maintenance. We do things like security patches. We take all the updates that Fortra pushes out, and then there are the occasional security tweaks or things of that nature to the platform itself. A lot of that has to do with the way we deploy it. We are in a highly regulated environment, but not all Fortra customers have to deal with that. 

If I were to give a TCO number on the maintenance side, maintenance licenses are pretty competitive in the market. Our maintenance total is probably around 50,000. From an FTE perspective, managing that infrastructure requires probably half of an FTE, so our TCO for a given year is probably 100,000, which is not bad for a solution of its size and capabilities.

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.

With file transfer, if you were to move to an S3 pricing model where you are paying for the storage, for large organizations, that tends to be cost-prohibitive because technology is often viewed as a cost center. So, you do not have a way to offset those things unless you start charging fees. We charge a very small fee for file transfer services, but if we were to change to a platform that did pay-for-consumption instead of pay-per-seat licensing, we would have to rethink our file transfer ops for sure.

We reviewed other solutions on the market during renewals but found GoAnywhere to be the best fit for us.

From what I have seen, other teams that run file transfer platforms for other organizations of our size normally need at least one extra FTE to manage what we do. We do it with about an FTE and a half, whereas other teams need three or four engineers. They often need one person dedicated to running the system itself, let alone building out any automation. We have one guy who does all that.

Overall, based on the other players in the market, GoAnywhere MFT is a ten out of ten for us. They have the right blend. While there are always going to be improvement areas, especially for the price, it is a slam dunk. It is hard to say to go with another solution because it is very stable.

Our business is, as far as corporate computing goes, is IBM i-centric. Because of that, some of the main use cases for the GoAnywhere product are for uploading data into the IBM i, from our finance department and other departments, and downloading data from the IBM i to a user or to our FTP server to be sent to a business partner. And when it comes to downloading data for users, it's typically in the form of Excel reports.

At this point, we are only accessing resources within our organization. We don't reach outside of our organization, even though the solution enables interaction with many things, such as Amazon and Google. The exceptions to that are one or two processes that do reach out to a business partner by way of SFTP.

One of the things GoAnywhere can do for us that our previous product could not is error handling. If something doesn't work properly, we can be alerted to that fact and act on it more quickly, versus the old product.

The workflow features eliminate the need for custom programs and scripts for file transfers. They simplify activities surrounding the movement of data. There is a concept within IBM i of normal tables and an aspect referred to as the integrated file system or IFS. Our older processes would typically create data in a table and run special commands that might make it troublesome to copy that data from the table to the IFS. From there, the old product would grab it from the IFS and send it to some other server. Now, we can eliminate that step of having to bother with the IFS, since GoAnywhere can reach directly into our tables. It's one more aspect of this product that helps simplify these sorts of tasks. 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.

And when it comes to file uploads into the IBM i, this is only a guess, but it has saved us on the order of five hours per week.

We're able to craft solutions to little challenges faster, and that makes us more productive. One of the GoAnywhere projects that I was just helping a person with yesterday was updating an old program that produces a report for a user. I helped her create an SQL view and then make use of that view with GoAnywhere, which now emails a simple spreadsheet to the user. She was able to accomplish that in a fraction of the time it would have taken to modify the original program.

Additionally, the workflow features have helped to eliminate manual processes. One example is an upload process that is being done regularly by the payroll department. It typically involved a little more manual activity on the part of our payroll user to get us the data. Whereas now, with GoAnywhere, we are able to create something using what GoAnywhere calls a Secure Form. It enables us to present a very quick, very rudimentary webpage to the user where they do a few clicks and the file is provided to us. That is in contrast to their having to take the file from their desktop, find the network share that they're supposed to copy it to, followed by calling us to say they've copied it over there. It makes it easier for users to do things on their own, once we've created that ability for them.

One of the most valuable features is the ability to reach into our database tables on the IBM i, and other platforms, and extract data. That is most useful for us.

It's also easy to use. I was training somebody yesterday on some of the finer points of GoAnywhere, and she found it very easy to interact with and understand. We like the interface.

The workflow features are very comprehensive, from our point of view. GoAnywhere uses the term "project" for a job that we create within it. The projects can be run from our IBM i CL [command language] programs. They can be scheduled within the GoAnywhere Scheduler to run once an hour or whenever we need them to run. A process can also be triggered by a file showing up. It is robust in terms of how the GoAnywhere projects can be invoked.

It doesn't need much improvement, other than tiny idiosyncrasies. I've run into one or two things for which I've put in change requests to the software developers at GoAnywhere, but they are very minor things, the types of things that don't come up much. We've created in the neighborhood of 80 to 90 projects in GoAnywhere and, out of all of those, there have only been a couple where we've run into something and that made us say, "I wish they could improve this little thing here."

For example, when it comes to interacting with files, there is a function referred to as write CSV, to write a general text file. In this scenario of creating a simple text file, I ran into a situation where, if the product saw a quote or a double-quote in the data, it started wrapping all the text fields in double-quotes. The request I put in asks them to provide a feature that leaves my data alone and does not interpret anything. If I don't want double quotes, please don't put them in. It should have the option, on certain write CSV operations, of not inferring anything.

We have been using HelpSystems GoAnywhere MFT for about a year.

It seems pretty stable. Like other Windows platform solutions, every once in a while the Windows platform needs to be rebooted, but otherwise it has been very stable.

Scalability has been a non-issue for us. It seems like we could double or triple the number of projects we've got, which might happen over the next five or 10 years. We do not expect any issues with the scalability.

We don't have any plans, per se, to increase our usage of GoAnywhere, but something that we haven't talked about is another product we have that is going to have some competition from GoAnywhere. This other product, which I believe is owned by HelpSystems as well, is a reporting tool called Sequel Viewpoint. I've used it in a similar fashion to the way we use GoAnywhere: A user needs a report and I create an SQL view, go into Sequel Viewpoint, make use of that view and output a PDF or Excel document, and email it to the user. Doing the same thing in GoAnywhere is easier.

It's not so much that there are any specific plans for increased usage, but those types of tasks just come up from time to time. When a user in our finance, buyers, or our supply chain and planning department needs some data from our system, we have a solution for them very quickly using GoAnywhere to produce a simple Excel report.

The technical support has been fine. It has been useful each time we've reached out to them, unless we find a little bug, like the one I mentioned where the product had decided on its own to put double quotes around all of the text fields. Short of little idiosyncrasies like that, they've been able to solve problems for us.

We migrated off of a very rudimentary product that was little more than a file moving product. It was "garage software," meaning it was made by a very small organization. It was called Second Copy. It could move or copy a file from one server to another within the same file system, but it was very basic. There was no error handling, no ability to deal with FTP and IBM i, HTTP,  databases, Amazon, and Azure. All those capabilities were nonexistent in Second Copy. GoAnywhere is like a Ferrari versus a Volkswagen Beetle. Our old product was a single-function tool, and GoAnywhere helped us to eliminate it.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward except for one feature, which was an integration to the IBM i. As luck would have it, we've never actually ended up using that feature. It's what is called setting up an agent on the IBM i, and that took a bit of work with one of their tech support people. That allows for a little tighter integration with the IBM i when the product has been installed off of the IBM i. In our case, we installed the product on a Windows Server, as opposed to the IBM i itself. We figured that if we make use of the agent, it might give us a little better integration. Now, eight or nine months later, we've never made use of that IBM i agent. What made adding that agent complex was due to the nuance. The instructions were not clear enough and I was not able to do it by following instructions in the manual.

Not counting that agent, we had GoAnywhere up and running on the same day that we started installing it. The agent was just an add-on, and that dragged on for a few more days with interaction back and forth with their tech support.

We were replacing an existing product. Our implementation strategy was a matter of setting up GoAnywhere and doing a couple of pilot projects to see how easy it was and how it worked. We then started the process of converting 70 or 80 tasks out of the old product, slowly but surely, into the new product. That was doled out to half a dozen developers who looked at the existing tasks and implemented something similar, and/or better, in GoAnywhere.

Our user community for GoAnywhere is relatively small at the moment. We are a medium-size retail business. Our corporate headcount would be somewhere between 400 and 500 people, and the total headcount within the company is 1,100 to 1,200 people, including stores and warehouses. Out of all of them, there are just a handful of departments that we interact with a lot. Our finance and our planning/supply chain departments are two of our major users among our user community of about a dozen users.

As for maintenance of GoAnywhere, our IT department has three groups: web development, back office development, and technical support. This product can be used by, and of value to, all three IT groups. It is almost exclusively used by just the back office department, which I'm part of. Our focus is the IBM i, versus our customer-facing web pages which are handled by our web development folks. In our back office group, we've got about 20 developers and any one of them can do a project in GoAnywhere. We don't have anybody dedicated to maintaining the product. As a task comes up, somebody gets assigned to do it and takes care of it.

We didn't use a third-party. It was a straightforward install for the most part.

The cost of GoAnywhere versus the value it brings to our data transfer operations is reasonable. When I compare it to what we were using, that product called Second Copy, and how robust it is and how productive we can be with it, the cost is commensurate. The cost is relatively expensive but, back to the car analogy, that's to be expected with a Ferrari.

They provided a variety of options for pricing. "If you want just this basic feature, here's the price. Or you can have this add-on and that add-on." That variety of add-ons is useful because we are not using it to its fullest capabilities. Some of those other capabilities are licensed extra options.

One of the extra add-ons that came to our attention that we ended up purchasing, and that has provided value and will continue to provide value, is the Secure Forms. We use them to very quickly provide a web page interface for a user to make file transfers easier for them. It's also very useful when there's a report that they need but we need some input from them to produce it, like the date range of the data they want to see, or the particular stores they want a report for. Secure Forms are an extra cost and we went for that extra cost months after buying the initial product. We started with not much in the way of extras, and then added onto the product.

We use Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT to facilitate our data exchanges.

Implementing GoAnywhere MFT has significantly improved our data exchange processes, particularly through automation. This allows us to send large files as single attachments via email.

The Secure Folders feature of Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT software strengthens our file transfer security. It provides detailed information about every user who accesses the data. Granular permissions can be set, allowing some users to only upload files, while others can only download them. These permissions extend to the entire HTTPS service, including the hosted drive.

GoAnywhere MFT centralizes the exchange of data between our systems, employees, customers, and trading partners. This eliminates the need for multiple applications for administration.

The GoAnywhere MFT's UI is user-friendly. I was able to understand how the solution works in under one hour.

GoAnywhere MFT's workflow feature stands out because it doesn't require programming knowledge. This flexible feature is also easy to set up.

GoAnywhere MFT's workflow feature eliminates the need for custom programs and scripts for our file transfers. Since I started using it I have eliminated over 100 scripts.

GoAnywhere MFT's workflow feature has streamlined previously manual processes, benefiting both us and our clients. For instance, we now receive automated notifications summarizing office hours and can easily collect any valuable information from the administrator. Before implementing GoAnywhere MFT, these tasks had to be done manually at the end of each shift.

I'm familiar with the ICAP process. We've also installed it for some of our existing clients. This allows for normal operation without needing to go elsewhere. It provides various functionalities, including automation, testing on Virtual LAN Providers, and the ability to limit access based on factors like extension numbers. This means we can restrict access to confidential information, regardless of whether someone is visiting or working within our organization. The ICAP process allows for this control without hindering regular operations. We can further enhance security by implementing our internal processes alongside antivirus protection offered by ICAP capabilities.

ICAP plays a vital role in keeping malware out of our organization, especially in high-volume traffic environments.

GoAnywhere eliminates the need for single-function tools and unsecured file transfer methods. It can automate application upgrades, providing organizations with both protection and efficiency. This means GoAnywhere can launch applications for specific tasks, eliminating the need to develop custom applications that often require additional licenses. Additionally, GoAnywhere can potentially reduce costs compared to other solutions in our environment.

Automating file transfers has significantly reduced project workloads for our organization. Manual client interaction is now automated, streamlining a previously five- to ten-step process into one or two steps.

GoAnywhere helps our staff save time to focus on other tasks. By automating many manual processes that previously supported web users and ensured security, GoAnywhere frees up valuable staff resources.

The most valuable feature of MFT is the security it provides for our data. MFT allows us to add additional authorization and passwords to any file attachments we send via email, and also to limit the number of times the recipient can download the file.

I want to be able to use GoAnywhere to create customizable reports that I can share with the MSP containing any information related to file transfers.

I have been using Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT for two and a half years.

GoAnywhere MFT scales to meet the needs of organizations of all sizes.

The technical support is good.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward and took two or three hours.

Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT carries a higher price tag than other MFT solutions. The comprehensive features it offers justify the cost, provided we can utilize its full process and functionalities.

I would rate Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT nine out of ten.

We have approximately 100-150 users.

I recommend conducting a proof-of-concept for Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Positive

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

We acquired GoAnywhere MFT to help us with our connection to Oracle. We then had a request from our company to put data onto Azure. It was perfect timing. We started creating the connection and the configuration for Azure using GoAnywhere, and we are now exporting close to 2 million transactions per day into Azure. Any activity happening in our core application is being forwarded to the Azure platform, into a data lake.

We have another project in the pipe to connect Hyphen Solutions BuildPro, which is another cloud service, one that helps us in our field of business, which is construction. We are exploring transferring data to BuildPro using GoAnywhere, and that is going to be XML, mostly.

We deployed connectivity with our Oracle CRM to download data, but that was a temporary solution because now we're doing it in real time. After that, we went after another project, which was to put data into Salesforce, which is our new CRM. GoAnywhere helped us incredibly because it was pretty simple, using Cloud Connectors, to define the Salesforce server and to put the data into objects without any major development on our side.

The previous transmission we had with Salesforce was scheduled to run every two hours. That was the most we could get. Right now it is taking seconds to get there. Not only are we saving time, but the data is immediately useful to the business. Previously, in some cases, it was delaying a purchase of a house by our customers. For example, sometimes a customer wants to put in a particular flooring or a particular kitchen. If those options were not available, they couldn't complete the purchase. But now, with GoAnywhere, they have the information right there. They can complete it right away.

GoAnywhere helps us to distribute data. We are on the iSeries platform, using JDEdwards and  Db2. But because our business is now distributed into cloud applications, such as Salesforce and Azure and Google, we help ops to export the data into those platforms.

The Cloud Connectors are amazing and have saved us a lot of time because we don't have to do any programming. It just puts the data there. We haven't been able to 100 percent eliminate custom programs or scripts, but it has helped save a lot of lines of code. That is immensely important, not only because of the coding issue, but also because of security. If you need authentication or key information, it's better to have it encrypted in GoAnywhere, than having this information in the source program, because anybody can see the source and see the authentication information. GoAnywhere handles that more securely.

The other day we needed to export data into SharePoint. We had not done that before, so we needed some examples. We went to the internet but we couldn't find much information. So we contacted HelpSystems and they gave us a link. We then called our SharePoint administrator and he gave us the information we needed and we can now put data into SharePoint.

Previously, that SharePoint process was manual, one where the user had to run some services every two hours. Now that we have automated it, he doesn't have to do it anymore. It has saved a lot of time.

GoAnywhere has also helped us to allocate staff to other work. By using GoAnywhere, we don't need people or a programmer involved in managing security or server configuration anymore. We set them up in GoAnywhere. I'm the one doing the administration for the tool and I just defined the resource so the developer doesn't need to ask questions like, 
"How do I connect? What is the password and the user ID?" As soon as I give the guidelines, that this is the resource, we just create a Project and that's all.

Transactions transfer in close to real time. Sometimes it takes a little bit of time because of the volume that we have, but the transactions transfer in seconds to the external platform.

When it comes to workflows we use the Projects and the scheduler. We don't have Monitors or many Triggers at the moment. The Projects are the bread and butter of this application; they are the way you put data into the different platforms. Projects are very straightforward and we can create them pretty fast. We define the resource, which could be SharePoint or Azure or Google or any of those API servers. We then create Projects. We put those into production and after that we see the data flowing. The way we did it for Azure, for instance, which is our biggest one, was that every time a user press Enter on the screen, meaning the user is creating a community or home site, that information is captured through a Trigger. Once we get the information into our program, we call the Project workflow in GoAnywhere and it is the middleware that puts the data into the target server, in this case, Azure. It takes microseconds to complete.

I have been using HelpSystems GoAnywhere MFT for about four years.

If you define the tool correctly and you give it the appropriate memory and priorities, it works perfectly.

We are a little concerned because the maximum number of open connections allowed is 200, and we are pretty much maxed out. I don't know if they will expand that in the future.

We are extensively using GoAnywhere and we're planning to keep it. To give you an idea, sometimes we have 2.7 million transactions per day, exported from our JDE core to other platforms. And I'm constantly looking for problems to which GoAnywhere can be a solution.

Because of the volume of transactions we have per day, I sometimes get a little concerned that we may run into a scenario where the tool will fall behind our needs. The server where GoAnywhere is installed is a powerful machine, it is the latest iSeries. But it's still 2.7 million transactions or packages to deliver, and that is a lot. Maybe if they expanded the number of open connections allowed, we would be better off.

I'm afraid that when we get the new integration with BuildPro, we may fall behind. We may not be delivering the data as fast as we are now. One of the files we produce, the purchase order, is very dynamic. It's close to 600,000 transactions per day. If the business requires us to send some other table that is as dynamic as that one, we may fall behind. As it is now, the purchase order is sometimes delivered hours after its completion. We don't mind because we don't have a separate application waiting for its data in real time, like we have for Salesforce and SharePoint. But in the future, if the business requires something as big as that, we may not be able to deliver it in GoAnywhere.

The support from them has been amazing. They're always on top of things. We call whenever we need something, and if it's urgent we go through the manager and they immediately reply to us. We have had conference calls with their developers, the most knowledgeable ones, and they are always top-notch. We have no complaints about that.

We do wish they had more centralized documentation, because sometimes it's difficult to obtain it, but eventually we get it. We contact our sales manager and that person helps us to obtain the information from the technical people. 

The same type of thing is happening now for Box. We run some processes that create PDF reports and those reports are going to specific users in Box. We are working on that now. We're waiting for information from GoAnywhere on that. 

We were using another solution, from our iSeries platform, to connect with external applications such as Oracle CRM. We started having problems with that because of the Java version and we didn't have any help whatsoever or any support because it was a freebie we downloaded from the internet.

I knew GoAnywhere from my previous company and I recommended it to my supervisor. I told him it would help us with the connection to Oracle. So we acquired the tool and explored it.

The initial setup was a little complex, not because the tool was complex, but because we didn't have experience doing it.

The user interface of GoAnywhere is pretty straightforward. We took the 12-hour training course but still, sometimes we need to obtain more information. We go to their website and try to get samples. Their communication is outstanding. Whenever we request some examples, "How do we do this?" they reply immediately to us.

There is some maintenance from time to time when there are upgrades, as well as whenever we have an encryption key that needs to be applied. Also, every other week we shut down the application to release memory and to start fresh.

The other day we had to upgrade GoAnywhere and the problem we had was that we had moved our location from Miami to Las Vegas. It was tough because when we started testing GoAnywhere we defined certain settings. We tuned the application. When we moved and we had to reinstall GoAnywhere, we forgot that we were using 12 gigabits of memory. We forgot to do the Java 64-bit. We forgot the priorities of the jobs that were defined. We needed to do the job queue tuning and the class. There were a lot of details that we had forgotten. So we had problem after problem. Hopefully, we will not be moving again anytime soon.

For the Las Vegas move, it took us a couple of hours to install the application. That part was easy. Because we had the resources and the workflows defined in the old server, we just downloaded those via XML and uploaded them to the new server. It was pretty straightforward, except for the things that we forgot. But the installation of the application took two hours, maximum.

We have definitely seen a good return on investment from going with GoAnywhere. We have even found it inexpensive, to be honest. 

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.

I vouched for GoAnywhere because I had used it where I was working before. We did some research and we got some documentation, as well as information people had written about MFT solutions, and GoAnywhere was at the top. The business side of our company is satisfied that we're doing what needs to be done.

This is the best solution you can get. Do some research, and if you're totally unbiased, you're going to find that GoAnywhere is definitely what you need.

They've been creating Cloud Connectors, according to industry developments. Whenever there's a new cloud service, they create a Cloud Connector. We're using three of them: Box, SharePoint, and Salesforce. 

We are trying to replace Robo-FTP, but the information that we're transferring there is critical, it is treasury data for banking, and the business has not yet decided to use GoAnywhere for that. But that was the original plan. We did have some SSH servers to land the data using FTP and that is no longer required because we can put the data directly into Salesforce.

With the tool itself, so far so good. Everything that we needed to do has been done with GoAnywhere. We haven't found anything where we have had to say, "Oh, that's not possible with GoAnywhere." We're good with the product.

We are in the healthcare industry and we use GoAnywhere for file transfers in our finance, HR, clinical and logistical processes

GoAnywhere has helped improve our organization through the centralization of file transfer management, as well as standards enforcement. The error reporting and file auditing capabilities make troubleshooting problems and issues a fairly straightforward process.

GoAnywhere is the perfect tool to help centralize the exchange of data between systems, employees, customers, and trading partners. This is of critical importance to us because in previous implementations, where we've had trouble connecting with our partners and vendors and such, from a troubleshooting perspective it could take a day to solve an issue, but using the GoAnywhere tools & capabilities, we can address  most issues in minutes, instead of hours.

The user interface is intuitive, although someone who's not familiar with coding may have a little bit more of a challenge with it. I have a background in programming and infrastructure, and I found that it was logical & well designed. 

The comprehensiveness of GoAnywhere's workflow features is fantastic. 

The workflow features almost completely eliminate the need for custom programs and scripts for file transfers. I would estimate that we have cut out custom scripts by about 95%. For the remaining 5%, we use the OS integration feature to allow us to interface with a given system and run OS native commands/scripts/operations from within GoAnywhere.

The elimination of custom scripts for every transfer was an important and valuable step for the organization from an operations, maintenance & support perspective.  We can build out a Managed File Transfer process in GoAnywhere with none of the hassles and headaches associated with scripts in an hour vs. custom scripting processes that would take significantly longer to develop and deploy.  we are doing the same work that existed prior to implementing GoAnywhere, but now the processes are faster, simpler, more supportable and secure.  With GoAnywhere, we are able to service our customers much faster and in a much more dependable, consistent and reliable manner.

The automation of file transfers has helped to reduce our workload for file transfers, freeing us up to focus more on the business requirements. For example, in the past, my customers would come to me with, "Hey. I can't find my files, they haven't been downloaded today."  With GoAnywhere we are able to give them a notification via email processes we build into our GoAnywhere jobs, allowing them to see the status of their respective file transfers.

Within the specific context of an organization-wide project, we managed to accomplish MFT request turnaround in a few days where previously, it may day weeks with our previous toolset.

I find the entire solution to be useful for what I do.

Specifically, the encryption & certificate functions, the ability to reuse a defined resource (SFTP server/Network share, e.g.) across multiple transfers and the granularity of the audit logs functionality is a solid tool for troubleshooting.

The support desk has room for improvement. I keep opening tickets and they keep telling me that they're closed, but they're not resolved.

Customer service is an area in need of improvement.

We have been using HelpSystems GoAnywhere MFT since the spring of 2018.

Since we implemented GoAnywhere in the spring of 2018, there has been one bug that has caused us any issues. It was readily addressed by contacting the help desk.

Overall, stability has been rock solid.

I transfer tens of thousands of files per week and scalability is not a problem. I honestly think I would have difficulty scaling GoAnywhere to a point where a point where I would be concerned.

The users we have are GoAnywhere admins and they build managed file transfers. There aren't any functionalities that our customer community has access to.

At this point, more than 70% of our Managed File Transfer processes are utilizing GoAnywhere. The goal, although it may never be fully attained, is to get the rest of those outliers doing file transfers through the secure and dependable enterprise-grade system that is GoAnywhere.

In 2018, 2019, I would have rated the support a ten out of ten. As previously expressed, I would now give them a four.

Prior to GoAnywhere, we used native operating system shell scripts and, worse, daily human processes.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. Their installation methodologies and their architectural configuration are pretty much laid out for you in their marketing documentation. From an implementation perspective, everything is there for you.

The installation took a couple of hours but from that point, it took probably two weeks before it was in functional production.   The strength of GoAnywhere is in the vary rich toolset.  Unfortunately, that also means that there can be a learning curve as one starts to implement it into Production.

I was the implementer of this product and I didn't require the help of a third party. Any issues or concerns I had during the implementation phase were readily addressed by the vendors (then) support staff.  At the time, they were very good at answering quickly and responding to the implementation issues that I encountered.  At the present time, I would suspect that the support is not to the level it was when we implemented GoAnywhere in 2018.

For the first three years, our GoANywhere implementation was really a one-man band in terms of managing the system, including implementing functionality.  As we have grown i to the systm a second administrator has beendrafted into the MFT Team.  

For what we pay to GoAnywhere every year, we are getting a fantastic deal. From a dollar perspective, it provides very good value.

We reviewed three other products prior to implementing GoAnywhere. One that I recall is MOVEit, which was an Ipswitch product at the time.

The user interface that MOVEit had was abysmal. In contrast, the user interface that GoAnywhere has is intuitive and although it obviously depends on each individual user, overall, it's great. The ability to employ the functions and build out what needs to be built out is not a difficult process. It can be complex in some instances, but it's not difficult.

We are not running the latest version; however, it is only because we are too busy with other things at the moment.

For me, this solution is fantastic. I'm able to solve a lot of problems for my organization by using the whole collection of features in GoAnywhere.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The most common use case is secure file transfer. Fortra's web client provides that. SecureMail also helps them send emails with large file attachments.

We realized the benefits of GoAnywhere immediately. So many threats affect the most commonly used types of file transfers. One common way to transfer files is to put them on a flash drive, which is risky. Webmail also has limitations. You can only send around  25 MB through Outlook and Gmail. GoAnywhere is helpful and secure because it allows different protocols and encryption supported by the strongest, most secure encryption algorithms.

GoAnywhere saves time when connecting to third parties because it's easily configured. It saves more time than other kinds of file transfer applications. It's user friendly and easy to configure.

I like the versatility GoAnywhere provides, allowing transfers through HTTPS and different protocols. It can also transfer through a server and a client.

GoAnywhere's connectors are helpful for connecting and integrating various products, such as Google Cloud, AWS Cloud, Azure, and SharePoint. This makes it much easier for our clients to achieve their targets. The connectors are critical because production processes need them to connect between two applications. It helps to maintain a smooth connection between two products.

We use GoAnywhere's agents instead of the more commonly used Samba or network share. The agents are good for a company with branches globally or nationwide. It allows the branches to connect to the head offices.

The secure forms are helpful. One of my clients is in the HR department, so using secure forms to collect details from job applicants is easy. They can be compiled in a specific folder or directory so that HR can easily navigate and manage all the details of prospective employees applying to a certain company.

For some clients, we recommend GoFast for companies that need transparency between the first and second clients. If they both use GoAnywhere, we suggest GoFast since it will speed up the file transfers between them.

I tried to copy a file from an S3 bucket to another storage class. I don't know if it is a limitation from AWS, not the MFT. If I copy a file from the AWS S3 bucket to that storage class, it can't be transferred. It says that I can't remember the exact error, but it cannot be processed. I want MFT to be more compatible with cloud-based applications or services like AWS. 

I have used GoAnywhere for almost two years.

GoAnywhere MFT doesn't have any stability problems. Any crashes are related to the client's services or problems with their database. We sometimes encounter lags when there is so much data that the donor cannot trust.

GoAnywhere is easy to scale up. It isn't time-consuming to scale GoAnywhere MFT up.

I rate Fortra's support nine out of 10. I've reported bugs to Fortra support. The issues take time and can't be fixed with a press of a button. It would be helpful if Fortra's support would regularly update us since our partners and clients in the Philippines have problems that require expertise on the backend. There are some cases they cannot provide answers. 

Positive

Our clients have different platforms. We deploy in cloud, hybrid, or sometimes on-premise because other clients do not trust a hybrid or cloud environment. We haven't encountered difficulties with GoAnywhere itself. We've had much more problems on the client's side. 

We typically assign at least two resources for the deployment so we have a backup. Implementing GoAnywhere itself takes half a day, but setting up the client's environment requires an entire day. The only maintenance after deployment is upgrading the solution and migrating it from one environment to another.

Even if you think the price is high, I would recommend GoAnywhere because it is secure and easy to use and configure. It supports different kinds of protocols. It resolves the limitations of common types of file transfers. 

I rate Fortra GoAnywhere MFT 10 out of 10. 

I deploy Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT for our clients and provide presentations to prospects.

Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT allows our clients to securely share confidential files and create a web portal for external partners. This portal enables partners to search, upload, and download files, integrating with services like Google Drive. Additionally, GoAnywhere offers a secure mail feature for sending large attachments.

Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT provides an almost complete range of connectors.

GoAnywhere's agents allow us to extend MFT automation to remote systems, which is helpful for our clients with branches in different countries. By using the agent along with the automation service, we can interact with remote servers, thereby increasing productivity and transfer times between those servers and the head office.

GoAnywhere MFT has improved our client's KPIs. Before implementing GoAnywhere MFT, our clients didn't receive notifications when there were errors in the file process and now they are instantly informed.

To ensure a safe data collection process during the pandemic, our clients transitioned from Google Forms to GoAnywhere Secure Forms. This allowed them to securely fill out digital forms upon entering the building, with the option to attach them directly to their database.

Before GoAnywhere Secure Forms, our clients had to rely on third-party solutions but now they only have to use the MFT for their use cases.

The Go Fast feature improves the data transfer speeds for our clients.

GoAnywhere MFT saves our clients time connecting securely with third-party collaborations. Removing the manual intervention has saved around 90 percent of their time.   

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

The technical support has room for improvement. It takes between three to five days to get a resolution from them.

I would like better integration between GoAnywhere MFT and other MFT solutions.

We request the ability to customize the user interface of Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT, specifically by incorporating our company logo. This feature would provide greater flexibility and brand recognition within the software.

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

For the most part, Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT is stable. Sometimes we run into critical problems that require a new patch to fix. Developing and implementing these patches can take up to a week.

Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT is highly scalable. We can scale by increasing the memory.

The technical support is delayed in providing a resolution. It can take up to five days to resolve an issue.

Neutral

The initial deployment is straightforward. Connecting the servers and the GUI is simple. The instructions are easy to follow. Once we input the values and the IP address, Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT is easy to install.

The deployment takes five days and can be completed by one technical person.

On average, our clients see a return on investment within three years of implementing Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT.

I would rate GoAnywhere MFT nine out of ten.

Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT doesn't require coding for everything under the input values for the workflows, unlike other solutions.

Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT requires minimal and easy maintenance.

Our clients usually assign four people in each organization that utilize Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT.

Based on the features provided by Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT, the price is reasonable. There is no need to purchase additional tools to monitor and maintain the data.

I recommend Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT to other users.

Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT provides peace of mind.