September 20, 2017

    Secure FTP Solution Price Comparison: What’s Your Best Option?

    If you need a new FTP solution, you’ve probably noticed that there are plenty of options on the market to choose from – perhaps too many! Because you have so many choices, it might seem like a challenge to select the best one to invest in.

    A common mistake companies make in the buying process is basing their decision solely on secure FTP solution price. While price is an important aspect to consider, opting for the cheapest option never leads to the best results. Instead, you need to choose a solution that provides the greatest value for its price.

    To truly gauge the value of a solution, you need to weigh the importance of a few different features. By determining which features are vital to your business, you’ll be able to identify which provider offers the greatest value for the secure FTP solution price.

    Determine Which FTP Features You Need

    Number of Users

    Do you run a small business with a handful of employees? Are you searching for an FTP solution that can accommodate an unlimited number of users for your large corporation? The number of users your solution needs to facilitate is an important feature you should consider.

    Not only do you need an FTP solution that accommodates the number of users you have today, you also need a solution that can scale to grow alongside your business. When you have rapid growth, you want an FTP solution flexible enough to scale instantly to meet the demand of new users.

    Security

    Security is a paramount concern for many businesses. Whether you’re working with confidential health information or sensitive client payment details, you want to ensure the file sharing solution you choose has the defenses in place to protect this data and your reputation.

    In fact, it’s mandatory that numerous companies have file sharing solutions that are HIPAA, PCI-DSS, ITAR, GLBA, and SOX compliant. That means, without the most secure file sharing solutions, your data is at risk of a breach and your company faces the risk of non-compliance consequences. While all file sharing solutions have some form of security in place, these measures may not be enough for your company.

    Since having a highly secure solution is an essential for many companies, you never want to pay an unfair price for it. In addition to a secure FTP solution price evaluation, you also need to ensure you’re investing in a solution that can effectively defend your crucial data.

    Access Controls

    For many companies, having granular control over who is able to upload, download, and delete files from their FTP solution is imperative. While many file sharing solutions provide basic control capabilities, few give you the comprehensive administrative controls needed to truly keep your files safe and organized.

    As part of these granular controls, your file sharing solution should also be able to authenticate users with passwords or public SSH keys and restrict by IP address or country. Having these restrictions in place are essential for maintaining usability and control over your valuable information.

    Branding Capabilities

    Branding capabilities for your file sharing solutions have benefits beyond “looking nice.” When you point users and clients to your new file sharing solution, you want a seamless transition from your website to your solution.

    With a custom domain name, dedicated IP address, and a custom SSL certificate, your solution garners trust from your users. Including custom colors and your logo to the site only add to the branding alignment.

    Secure FTP Solution Pricing Options

    Once you’ve evaluated these features and weighed which ones are most important to you, it’s time to look at secure FTP solution price options. With your list of priorities, you can determine which solution provides the greatest value for your investment. (You can also evaluate solutions with this easy-to-use pricing tool.)

    Each solution offers different tiers to accommodate your business needs, usually ranging from a handful of users to unlimited users.

    ShareFile Pricing

    ShareFile provides users with four tier options to choose from, ranging in price from $16 to $295 per month. Though $16 might be an enticing monthly price, don’t be fooled. That only provides a single account for file sharing. Even their most secure options lack complete security failures, like an inability to restrict access by country or IP address, or apply comprehensive folder access permissions. ShareFile has no SFTP capability either, which is the most common protocol for automating file transfers securely.

    SmartFile Pricing

    While SmartFile does have plans with an affordable price tag (from $6 per user per month), you can’t truly achieve the usability and security that most businesses need, unless you pay at least $10 per user per month.

    Let’s put it this way, for 10 users you pay $100 per month on SmartFile. You could pay the same $100 for the Sharetru solution and get a plan with unlimited users plus optimal security measures. While the SmartFile solution provides most of the capabilities your business needs, it doesn’t hold the same level of value Sharetru does.

    ExaVault Pricing

    ExaVault has pricing tiers ranging from $20 to $200 per month. While these prices are pretty comparable to other solutions on the market, you won’t receive any of the security compliance measures that you would with other top solutions. However, ExaVault does have granular folder access controls that appeal to many businesses. Where ExaVault hits the target on some file sharing necessities, it falls short on some of the most crucial needs.

    Brick FTP

    Even Brick FTP’s most basic files sharing plan comes with a large price tag. Their plans range in price from $99 to $999 a month. While they do accommodate an unlimited number of users for each of their three plans, the prices of the solution plans diminish their value. In fact, you have to pay the highest price – $999 – for a plan that enables regulatory compliance.

    Sharetru Pricing

    Sharetru offers plans ranging in price from $50 a month to $400. And, you’ll benefit from unparalleled security capabilities for the price. Sharetru's pricing plans enable you to create user accounts for as few as ten users, ideal for small businesses, to unlimited users for large enterprises. You can also select plans that enable a variety of branding capabilities, and granular controls. With Sharetru, you can choose a plan that meets all of your needs, not just some, and you won’t have to break the bank to pay the monthly fees.

    When you weigh the secure FTP solution price options before you, it’s easy to see that Sharetru provides all of the file sharing capabilities you need, with exceptional security measures, all at a nominal price. It’s clearly the solution that’s the greatest value for its price.

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    Martin Horan

    Martin, Sharetru's Founder, brings deep expertise in secure file transfer and IT, driving market niche success through quality IT services.

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