Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT for Linux (BYOL)

I am still trying to figure out my use cases for GoAnywhere MFT  as I am still learning how to use it and determining the best way to utilize the software.

What I can suggest right now about GoAnywhere MFT  is the integration of AI for chat support, as I am still trying to find my way around the app. I would appreciate seeing an AI assistant for GoAnywhere MFT . For a first-time user, instead of struggling to learn how to use it independently, you could ask, 'GoAnywhere MFT bot, can you help me with this? Can you help me with that? How do I do this? How do I do that?' Just quick, on-the-spot assistance.

I feel everything that is there is sufficient. I do not think there is a need to add anything. People always say there is always room for improvement, but for me, it is enough, so it does not appear that everything is clashing. I feel there is nothing to improve right now. However, as time progresses, perhaps because of innovation and new technology, they will find new things to implement. The only thing I believe they should implement is what I mentioned about the assistant, where users can ask questions and get answers immediately.

I started using GoAnywhere MFT about a week ago, having seen the review, so I just registered for the review. It has not been more than a week since I began using it.

I have not seen any lagging, crashing, downtime, or any sort of instability with GoAnywhere MFT. By now I would have complained about that.

The user interface is fine. I do not know if they have integrated any chat support or chatbot where you can ask quick questions and get answers within 24 hours. For me, the user interface is understandable; it is not something that required extensive effort to use. I am the type of person that, if I have an issue, I search on YouTube or Google or ask ChatGPT, 'How do I understand this better?' It is not difficult for me, but I feel a 24-hour chatbot would be beneficial instead of using external resources.

Positive

I have never used any other alternatives to GoAnywhere MFT.

The initial installation for GoAnywhere MFT was easy for me because I could use YouTube, so it was straightforward to follow and implement. However, not every first-time user might find it easy. For me, it was not so difficult.

Regarding GoAnywhere MFT's pricing, I think it is quite affordable since it was subscribed for me by my boss.

The main reason behind getting GoAnywhere MFT was that it was recommended to me by my boss, so I am still trying to learn how to use it. It is software that was recommended for me to learn; to learn how to use, find out the details of the whole software, how it works, and implement it because I work as a full-stack developer.

On a scale from one to ten, with ten being the highest, I rate GoAnywhere MFT a seven. I am just a user of GoAnywhere MFT; I do not have any partnerships with them. I have no problem if the GoAnywhere MFT team wants to contact me if they have any questions about this review. I am always available and okay with being a reference for GoAnywhere MFT, which allows their marketing department to contact me later.

As I said, mainly for secure automated file transfer between our internal systems and the databases such as MySQL  and the external business partners. We use GoAnywhere MFT  for secure protocols such as Secure File Transfer Protocol, File Transfer Protocol, and HTTPS. I have used it for securely transferring the files.

As a core data engineer, I used to transfer the files over the databases with GoAnywhere MFT . I haven't used any other tools to transfer the files. This is the first software I'm using to transfer files as a tool, so I don't know very much about other tools.

I appreciate the features of GoAnywhere MFT  such as advanced workflows to automate all the transfer and reduce manual effort. The logs and reporting are very helpful for checking all the compliances. The encryption is quite good. The main feature which is very useful is connectors to connect it with cloud services such as AWS , Azure , GCP.

The automation in GoAnywhere MFT  really helps us because it reduced the manual work significantly. We can transfer hundreds of files with zero manual interventions. The audit trails also help during the compliance audits. It has given stakeholders more confidence in the security of file transfer. It also helped developers to securely transfer the files. Overall, the impact was very good and positive in our business and personal improvements.

Overall GoAnywhere MFT is good, but I would love to see more AI-driven analytics for monitoring. In our company, the data analyst used to monitor it for transfer patterns and they require some more modern UI and smoother upgrades with less downtime. This feature could be improved to make it better.

The transferring with GoAnywhere MFT is not visible during maintenance. We have to monitor it manually, so there is a need for a dedicated team to manually monitor it. It needs some maintenance.

I am a data engineer professionally and I have been using GoAnywhere MFT for around six months, as I have started a new job in Cognifize. I use it mainly for secure automated file transfer. I am still learning it because it's a little bit complex at the start.

At the start, the process of deploying GoAnywhere MFT and the learning curve was very difficult. Currently, it feels quite easy. The deployment is quite easy for me now, but at the start, there were difficulties to deploy it.

Both stability and scalability of GoAnywhere MFT are strong points as it's a very scalable file transfer tool. Stability is good. We started with a few jobs and scaled it to 100 without any issue. Stability is excellent, downtime is rare, and even large files can be transferred completely without any problem.

Both stability and scalability of GoAnywhere MFT are strong points as it's a very scalable file transfer tool. We started with a few jobs and scaled it to 100 without any issue. Stability is excellent, downtime is rare, and even large files can be transferred completely without any problem.

The technical support for GoAnywhere MFT is very responsive. We have raised many tickets, and the support engineers had deep product knowledge and they are very helpful. I would rate them an 8 out of 10.

I haven't started working on agents in GoAnywhere MFT.

Sometimes we use GoFast in GoAnywhere MFT because there are many failures or server issues. We use GoFast because the protocol sometimes doesn't work properly.

There are 30 to 35 members in my overall data engineering team who use GoAnywhere MFT.

GoAnywhere MFT saves a lot of time because it automates approximately 20% to 30% of manual work. In terms of money, it really saves 30% to 40%. We can make it 30% to 40% time saved with GoAnywhere MFT.

I think the price of GoAnywhere MFT is moderate because it's not much on the higher side and not also on the lower side. It's quite good, but it's a choice of my company's.

As of now, I have used only Salesforce  as a CRM  with GoAnywhere MFT and some databases such as MySQL . I haven't started any ERP  yet, but I am working on CRM  such as the Salesforce  platform.

When I was working as a full-stack developer at the start, I used Secure Forms once with GoAnywhere MFT, but not currently because I totally changed my career to data engineering.

I really want to recommend GoAnywhere MFT to others because it's really good for transferring files securely. There are many other tools available in the market, but this is affordable. We can afford it for small organizations. I have rated this solution 9 out of 10.

My use cases for GoAnywhere MFT are that we are basically using it to automate all our inbound and outbound file transfers that we have with different clients and different users through the HTTPS protocols, FTP, et cetera. 

We transfer files internally and externally using various different means such as the FTP server, so that we can easily transform our day-to-day file transfer from one source to another.

What I appreciate most about GoAnywhere MFT is that it has all the features we require, with comprehensive security features being the most notable. 

I find that agents work very perfectly whenever they are required. Whenever we have to call any kind of file transfer protocols, the agents are activated very instantly and are working perfectly fine.

Their CLI or command-line interface is very good, and the automation of all the file transfers that we have is fantastic. 

I saw the benefits of GoAnywhere MFT within 15 to 21 days, as we are using it to automate all the processes. The secure forms are highly secured, as they follow all the security protocols such as HTTPS and FTPS, so we are not worried about the security concerns. 

In terms of secure forms that allow you to fill out and submit information online through a custom-made form, they always prompt for the required permissions to initiate any kind of transfers. The user credential is always required for that.

In the areas where GoAnywhere MFT could improve, I find that for a few tasks, sometimes it becomes more complex because the workflows they have are complex to understand. 

Their product documentation is very hard to learn. It requires deep knowledge of technical expertise or prior product expertise to learn more about this product. 

Sometimes we see that the product has some bugs in some stages while we are automating the file transfers from our systems, and we have seen some bugs where the output is not generated as expected. 

The Fortra or GoAnywhere team could provide training material or product documentation in a very easy format or make it easily available to the end-users. If they simplified their work logic or the workflows within Fortra, it would be great. Otherwise, it is always a challenge for the users.

I have been using GoAnywhere MFT for 2.6 years.

Except for the few bugs that we have identified, everything is fine and stable.

Regarding the bugs I have encountered, we have seen cases where we have initiated the file transfer from one source to another, however, it was interrupted in the middle and prompts some messages that are unable to be read by humans. These are encrypted messages, which indicate that the operation was interrupted in between.

Scalability is something we generally don't require. Once upon a time, we did require it because we had a large amount of data to transport from one location to another, but except for that, I can say that it is highly scalable.

I have contacted the technical support or customer support many times. The quality of support is fine, however, I can say that they are not very technical professionals. Whenever we see or observe any kind of bugs, they simply say to just log the ticket or email our customer support, and they will get back to us. By following their resolution methods, we are unable to find those steps, so ultimately, we have to troubleshoot from our end and look after all these things from our end only.

Neutral

It took me the first seven to ten days to fully set it up.

It does not require any maintenance on my end, as it is managed by Fortra, and it is a managed service.

A team of generally six to seven people was required initially, and after the initial setup, they left this group to work on some other operations. Initially, there were six to seven, and later on, it is supported by three to four members.

Their pricing is not so high; it is moderated, and we can easily afford it.

I have used alternatives to GoAnywhere MFT, including TeamViewer and some open-source software such as FTP transfer. Within MS-DOS, we have tried, and for cloud-based solutions, we have used AWS file transfer services.

The learning curve for GoAnywhere MFT is hard if you are going through the product documentation and manuals. However, if you are doing hands-on and practical learning, then it is easy. One or two persons who are very non-technical are functional guys, but they are now able to work on this by giving them the initial hands-on training or practical training, while those technical people always follow them.

Overall, GoAnywhere MFT is fine, and I would rate it nine out of ten. We are only customers of Fortra, as we are using the product. We are not providing any kind of reselling or acting as a software vendor.

We manipulate data in XML format. We parse the XML file and make modifications using shell scripting in the GoAnywhere MFT  tool itself. After that, we place the files using FTP and SFTP protocols.

My favorite feature is shell scripting. When there is compatibility with the GoAnywhere MFT  tool, we can implement shell scripting with respect to the functionality. 

I use Amazon S3  bucket connectors, FTP and SFTP connectors, and several DB connectors. All necessary information can be found in the GoAnywhere MFT documentation. If I am unfamiliar with any connector, I first consult the documentation. After reviewing the documentation, if changes or scripting are needed, I opt for shell scripting. Otherwise, I proceed with the existing configuration. I used SSL security certifications for security purposes.

Regarding data parsing on files such as XML and JSON, we mostly perform manipulations on the files themselves. I am unable to accomplish this with the predefined functions provided by GoAnywhere MFT , which is why I use shell scripting. It would be better if more predefined functions were included for these operations.

I have used GoAnywhere MFT  for approximately 1.5 years.

When running in production, it operates smoothly, but on a local system, there might be issues due to load balancing.

The scalability was very good.

Initially during my training period, I contacted the technical team. However, I didn't receive responses as quickly as expected, possibly due to limitations in L1 support.

Positive

I have used APIs as alternatives. In such cases, I use REST calls to pass the data, perform manipulations, get the response, and then continue with the flow.

The deployment was very good. There wasn't any complexity. It was an easy process.

Pricing was handled by my project management and higher management team. I personally used a 30-day free trial account. I didn't take any subscriptions.

I would rate GoAnywhere MFT a nine out of ten because it's quite good and easy to learn. If someone in IT is picking it up, they can typically master it within 10 to 20 days, so that's not a concern. The documentation is also well-written, which makes the learning process much simpler.