I use GoAnywhere MFT for file management, as well as for converting file extensions from one type to another.

GoAnywhere agents have helped me extend MFT automations to remote systems; for example, using schedulers, I can schedule jobs weekly, monthly, or hourly, and even halt jobs on specific holidays with cron jobs.

GoAnywhere MFT has saved us approximately 30% of the time in securely connecting with third parties, as it previously took about 50 minutes to transfer files manually, but now it takes about 35 minutes.

The best features of GoAnywhere MFT include a very seamless approach to transfer files from one location to another, providing authentication, and authorization using PGP, along with many protocols such as HTTPS, SFTP, and FTP for secure file transfers. 

I use the GoFast feature to accelerate data transmission. GoFast has generally affected my operations by helping in encryption and compression, allowing data packets to be encrypted using AES 128 or 256, and supporting optional ZLIB compression to reduce bandwidth usage while facilitating workflow integration and automation for projects and data transfers using UDP instead of just TCP, which is significant for fast delivery.

The solution is quite effective, primarily because most of the comments and commands we utilize are based on Linux commands. Additionally, there is the shell script part. We have the ability to drag and drop various elements, which generates an HTML output for us.

In GoAnywhere MFT, there are areas with room for improvement. Some areas of improvement include simpler deployment in certain environments and better documentation. It's important to note that it is proprietary software with limited community documentation.

There are some security vulnerabilities to address, such as patch delays. Additionally, there is an issue with the installation of certificates. This process is proprietary, which means that installing the certificates takes a significant amount of time, including for error logging and troubleshooting. Some reviews indicate that file transfers may fail, and the error logs or diagnostics provided are insufficient. To mitigate this, we employ a redundancy strategy using duplicate use cases. For instance, when transferring files from one location to another, we utilize both a temporary location and an archive location. This redundancy can slow down the process. The reason for this approach is that sometimes, during the transfer of multiple files, some files may get lost. Therefore, we copy files from the temporary location to the archive before completing the transfer. This means that if we attempt to transfer, say, a hundred files and only twenty are successfully transferred, we have no clear way of identifying which twenty have moved successfully since the log feature does not provide this information clearly. These are areas where GoAnywhere MFT can be improved.

I have been using GoAnywhere MFT for four years, which is a managed file transfer protocol.

I would rate the stability of GoAnywhere MFT at eight out of ten, as it is a good stable product.

GoAnywhere MFT is scalable, as I have transferred large volumes of files, ranging from a few to millions in various environments.

Initially, we bought it for development purposes, and then we used it across different environments. Mainly, the users consist of myself and another developer, so there are around 10 to 15 users in total.

I would rate the technical support that GoAnywhere provides as a seven out of ten because being proprietary software means there is limited community support online, forcing reliance on the GoAnywhere community page for problem-solving.

Neutral

I have deployed it as a standalone application, not primarily in the cloud. It was used with Java, and we had to make some changes using Fuse for deployment. So, we are not using a cloud solution; instead, it is deployed as a standalone application.

Maintenance is required. I'm not entirely sure about the details, as there is another team responsible for maintaining it.

The licensing is complex, and there are various modules and add-on features available. It really depends on what you want in terms of features and specific functionalities. The model is subscription-based, so it varies according to the type of subscription you choose.

It is cost-efficient. One of the most important aspects is that it's not solely based on TCP; it also focuses on UDP. The advantage of UDP is that it allows for faster file transfers, but consistency is not as critical in this case. However, most of the time, users prioritize consistency, which is a key consideration.

It was a direct purchase.

I haven't encountered any use cases where there were problems with GoAnywhere MFT, so I am content with the services provided.

I would recommend GoAnywhere MFT to other users if they have the budget, as it is a proprietary solution; it's essential if secured file transfer is required.

Overall, I would rate GoAnywhere MFT an eight out of ten for its ease of understanding and functionality.

My use cases for GoAnywhere MFT involve interfacing with both banks and outside vendors since it's the university. We do a lot of interfaces, and many of them come through for the banks using our GoAnywhere MFT product, and we process into our SAP system. 

It's not just banks; we also do outside vendors and outside providers. We handle both ways—into our SAP system through GoAnywhere MFT and out to outside vendors, banks, and hospitals. You name it, we do it.

The feature I find most valuable about GoAnywhere MFT is that it's intuitive. 

It has all the things needed to build robust projects, giving you different resources, SFTP, and all the different things you might need to manipulate files. It's somewhat tricky as it's intuitive, however. You have to learn the scripting language. That said, they provide fairly good help.  

We were fortunate enough when we first purchased the product to have them assist us with demos and teaching as a group. They offer online help to look things up. 

For us, it satisfies our needs. We are getting into some more complex matters that I am concerned about, as there are a couple of features I wish they had. Until now, we've been able to accomplish everything we wanted. 

We keep asking them to implement a feature for our upcoming project, which would benefit all other companies using the product.

One area for improvement in GoAnywhere MFT is that they don't have a real debugger. You have to manually walk through your projects. If you build a big scripting project, you have no way at the beginning to step through; you can't skip straight to a line, nor can you put a breakpoint and say, 'stop here' as in any normal debugging process. That makes handling complex projects very tedious. We are currently working to streamline a process for about 240 providers—our interface partners—and it's going to be very difficult because every time you run a project, you need to step through each line of code. If you're testing line 98 and are unsure what's going on, you must step through every single line each time you run it. That is its biggest downfall.

What I would love to see in GoAnywhere MFT is the ability to compartmentalize some of the code, allowing you to call different pieces. Instead of building one project all within itself, you could insert modules that you can use in multiple projects. Currently, it's not compartmentalized, and you can't take a piece of code to use elsewhere without copying the entire thing. In my humble opinion, it would be much better if they had a class-based or class-oriented system so that you could easily transfer code from one location to another or use it in other places. You want modularity within the project, but that's not available right now, and this significantly slows down our development operations.

I have been using GoAnywhere MFT for about four years, since we first installed it.

I have never seen any lagging, crashing, or downtime when using GoAnywhere MFT, and that's one of the best things I can say about it.

From my perspective, working at the university, I find GoAnywhere MFT to be quite scalable. 

We also have a hospital group that works with it, which operates differently, however, they appear to manage tasks well. Yet, it would be even more scalable and useful if they improved the ability to plug in components, allowing you to easily call pieces of code from a project and eliminate the need for repetition. 

To go off the charts and be a leader, they really need a debugger and should focus on enabling the breakdown of modules for integration with other projects. A project isn't just one thing; it should allow for calling additional resources. This would greatly enhance scalability.

If I had to rate the support, I would rate it as an eight on a scale from one to ten. I haven't dealt with them directly. That said, overall, they seem to perform at about an eight level.

Positive

The initial deployment of GoAnywhere MFT was pretty easy for us. Once everything was set up properly, it was not very hard. Out of all the projects I have been involved with over 26 years at the university, that one actually went more smoothly than most. We had a good team working to get everything handled, so I would say it wasn't difficult at all. It took us around a month to set it up.

I have looked into alternatives to GoAnywhere MFT, and I remember examining a couple of options about four or five years ago when we made our decision. There was another one we compared it to. I cannot recall the name. We looked at MOVEit as the other option we evaluated.

We do not use those connectors right now in GoAnywhere MFT. Our processes are very specific to our interface workflows. 

Currently, we're not using it for workflow-type applications, although it might be something we can explore down the line. 

We do not use the Agents or Secure Forms. Regarding data acceleration, we don't use GoFast either. 

We're using it for very specific tasks, and if they explained options for utilizing it for other purposes, I would be open to exploring it. 

I would indeed like to see better advanced documentation in GoAnywhere MFT. 

I would rate GoAnywhere MFT overall as an eight out of ten. It's a great product and could easily reach a ten if it improved certain features.