MFT Pricing: Comparison of Top 3 MFT Vendors' Pricing
Managed File Transfer (MFT) solutions vary widely in terms of pricing, depending on the features and deployment options you choose.
Vendor | Trial period | Price |
|---|---|---|
25-day | Professional: $2,004 /year Enterprise: $4,380 /year | |
SolarWinds Serv-U FTP Server | 14-day | Serv-U File Transfer Protocol Server: Starts at $634 per server |
IBM Aspera on Cloud | 14-day | Pay as you go: $0.95 / GB Essentials: $250.20 / year Standard Plus: $10,405 /year Lite: $15,664 /year |
Understanding MFT Pricing Models
Before comparing specific vendors, it’s worth understanding the three main pricing structures you’ll encounter in the MFT market.
- Per-server licensing is still common among on-premises vendors. You pay per machine running the software, which keeps costs predictable as long as your infrastructure doesn’t change much.
- Tiered feature bundles are the norm across most vendors. Entry-level plans cover the basics, secure protocols, basic user management, and scheduled transfers, while upper tiers unlock compliance tooling, automation, high availability, and priority support.
- Volume-based or consumption pricing has become the standard for cloud-native MFT platforms. You pay based on how much data you transfer, which works well for variable workloads but can get unpredictable if transfer volumes spike unexpectedly.
One structural shift worth noting: several vendors, including Cerberus, offer multi-year subscription terms with meaningful discounts. Cerberus’s 3-year term saves 20% compared to annual billing. Monthly installment options are also available for organizations that prefer to spread costs rather than pay upfront.
MFT Pricing for different companies
1. Cerberus FTP Server
Cerberus offers three subscription tiers tailored to different organizational scales, all priced per server with unlimited users and connectionsa genuine differentiator, since most competitors charge per seat or per connection.
Pricing (1-year term, billed annually):
- Professional: $167/month (~$2,004/year)
- Enterprise: $365/month (~$4,380/year)
- Enterprise Plus: No published list price
3-year term pricing (20%):
- Professional: $133/month (~$1,596/year)
- Enterprise: $292/month (~$3,504/year)
Source: Cerberus FTP 1
Key Features
- Security controls in Cerberus are granular. Administrators can define password complexity rules, configure authentication methods per user or group, whitelist or blacklist specific IP ranges, and set geoblocking restrictions by country. FIPS 140-2 validated cryptography, TLS 1.3 support via OpenSSL 3, and public-key authentication for SFTP round out a robust security posture.
- Automated file retention lets you configure folder monitors to delete files based on age or custom criteria, useful for maintaining compliance without manual intervention.
- The 25-day free trial is one of the longer evaluation windows in the market.
2. SolarWinds Serv-U
SolarWinds offers two distinct products that are often confused: the Serv-U FTP Server and the Serv-U Managed File Transfer Server. They’re not the same product at different price points. The MFT version adds substantial capabilities around automation, compliance, and web-based access.
Source: SolarWinds Serv-U
Pricing (per server):
- Serv-U FTP Server: Starting at ~$634/server
- Serv-U MFT Server: Starting at ~$3,827/server
The 14-day free trial gives you enough time to evaluate the platform in a real environment.
Key Features
- The Visual Workflow Designer is one of Serv-U MFT’s more practical differentiators. Rather than requiring scripts or command-line configuration to set up automated transfers, the graphical interface lets administrators build workflows visually, making it useful in organizations where IT capacity is limited or file transfer operations are owned by operations teams rather than developers.
- Serv-U Gateway addresses a real compliance gap that simpler FTP servers can’t handle: it terminates inbound connections in the DMZ before they reach internal servers, ensuring no data sits at rest in the DMZ. This is a meaningful feature for organizations pursuing PCI DSS compliance, where the cardholder data environment has strict boundaries.
- Mobile and web access are built in. Users can upload and download files from any browser or mobile device, with support for files over 3 GB, drag-and-drop, and folder synchronization. This removes the need for external clients in most use cases.
On the compliance side, Serv-U MFT supports FIPS 140-2 validated cryptography, detailed audit trails, and log forwarding to SolarWinds SIEM tools for centralized security monitoring, a practical integration for organizations already running SolarWinds infrastructure.
3. IBM Aspera on Cloud
IBM Aspera takes a fundamentally different approach to file transfer. Where Cerberus and Serv-U are built for predictable, server-based deployments, Aspera is designed for organizations that need to move very large volumes of data quickly across any distance, over any network. Its patented FASP technology bypasses the bottlenecks of traditional TCP-based transfers, delivering speeds up to 100x faster than standard FTP or HTTPS under comparable network conditions.
Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise plans include 10-500 TB of cloud provider egress pass-through annually, along with built-in IBM Cloud Object Storage. Both annual and monthly billing are available for precommitted plans.
The free trial runs for 14 days or 50 GB of transfer, whichever comes first. It starts at the Standard Plus tier, and you can switch to a different plan when converting to a paid plan. No credit card required.
For organizations that prefer to manage their own infrastructure, IBM also offers self-managed licensing through:
- IBM Aspera Enterprise: The full platform for on-premises or cloud object storage deployment, with HA scaling
- IBM Aspera Lite: A lighter option for smaller organizations or individual business units
- IBM Aspera Endpoint: For adding nodes to existing Aspera deployments
- IBM Aspera faspio Gateway: A bidirectional streaming solution for database replication and migration use cases that need to bypass TCP limitations
Self-managed products are priced by quote.
Key Features
- FASP technology is designed to make full use of available bandwidth rather than being constrained by TCP’s congestion control behavior, which degrades significantly over long-distance or high-latency connections.
- Automation and workflow integration: Aspera supports over 200 plug-ins, REST and SOAP APIs, and integrates with AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and on-premises data centers without requiring migration to a single cloud ecosystem. Workflows for common tasks can be built and scheduled through the interface.
- Security and compliance cover end-to-end AES encryption, user authentication, access controls, and detailed audit trails. The platform supports HIPAA, GDPR, and other regulatory frameworks, and IBM maintains certifications relevant to regulated industries.
The main practical limitation is that Aspera’s pricing model rewards high-volume users significantly more than low-volume users. For organizations transferring modest amounts of data, say, under a terabyte a month, the cost-per-GB can be hard to justify against simpler alternatives. Aspera delivers value when transfer speed and volume are genuine constraints, not hypothetical ones.
Hidden Costs Worth Factoring In
The headline price from any vendor is rarely the full picture. Several cost categories tend to surface after purchase:
Implementation and setup vary widely depending on the complexity of your environment. On-premises deployments typically require professional services for initial configuration, particularly if you’re integrating with Active Directory, existing SIEM tools, or custom applications. Cloud-native platforms like Aspera reduce this burden but don’t eliminate it.
Training is a real cost, particularly for MFT platforms with rich feature sets. Vendors that offer strong documentation and onboarding support reduce this, but you should still budget time for your team regardless.
Compliance overhead auditing, documentation, and policy reviews are ongoing and don’t appear on any vendor invoice. The more regulated your industry, the more you’ll spend here regardless of which platform you choose.
Infrastructure hosting applies to on-premises deployments. Cerberus and Serv-U run on your own servers, which means hardware, OS maintenance, and IT time are your responsibility. Cloud and SaaS options trade that operational burden for a higher per-unit cost.
Protocol Support
All three vendors support the standard secure transfer protocols:
- FTPS (FTP over SSL/TLS) encrypted command and data channels
- SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol), SSH-based secure transfer
- HTTPS web-based transfers with TLS encryption
Shared Features of MFT Tools
Regardless of vendor, mature MFT platforms share a common core of capabilities that distinguish them from basic FTP servers:
Automation beyond simple scheduling: event-triggered transfers, folder monitors, conditional logic, and API-driven workflows are standard in enterprise-tier products. The quality and flexibility of automation tools is often a meaningful differentiator between tiers within a single vendor’s lineup.
Compliance and auditing infrastructure: detailed, tamper-resistant logs of all transfer activity, user access events, and administrative changes. These logs are required for HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOX, and GDPR compliance.
High availability and failover: production MFT deployments need redundancy. Most enterprise tiers include server replication, load balancing, or failover configuration, though the specifics vary significantly between vendors.
Data integrity verification: checksums and hash validation confirm that files arrive intact. Combined with encryption at rest, this addresses both accidental corruption and deliberate tampering.
Integration capabilities: REST/SOAP APIs, prebuilt connectors for cloud storage platforms, and plug-in ecosystems enable MFT platforms to integrate with existing enterprise workflows rather than operate in isolation.
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Cem's work has been cited by leading global publications including Business Insider, Forbes, Washington Post, global firms like Deloitte, HPE and NGOs like World Economic Forum and supranational organizations like European Commission. You can see more reputable companies and resources that referenced AIMultiple.
Throughout his career, Cem served as a tech consultant, tech buyer and tech entrepreneur. He advised enterprises on their technology decisions at McKinsey & Company and Altman Solon for more than a decade. He also published a McKinsey report on digitalization.
He led technology strategy and procurement of a telco while reporting to the CEO. He has also led commercial growth of deep tech company Hypatos that reached a 7 digit annual recurring revenue and a 9 digit valuation from 0 within 2 years. Cem's work in Hypatos was covered by leading technology publications like TechCrunch and Business Insider.
Cem regularly speaks at international technology conferences. He graduated from Bogazici University as a computer engineer and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.
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