Signiant vs. SolarWinds Serv-U

Quick workflow and data swapping, we use it extensively to get large data volumes out to users work from home and then back in.

For anyone who needs to receive/send files between themselves and others, in an organized fashion, I would strongly recommend Serv-U as a great tool at a sensible cost. In our line of work, we can get several customers signed in at once, each sending in hundreds of Megabytes of data simultaneously. Serv-U has never struggled with this. We don't use the Quota set up for sending/receiving data but I can see it is useful where an exchange of information is the point.

• Quick easy transfer
• Easy to set up
• Easy management

• The Wizard allows us to create new user accounts very easily and quickly. We do not have a formal IT department so those of us "mere mortals" can use this easily.
• Using the Web Client has made it very simple to set up and instruct our customers on getting to the server from any device with a minimum of fuss. We have many customers with ESL, and school students including middle and high school. Most of them are not computer experts, just regular users so the simplicity allows to do the whole setup over the phone in minutes.
• The newer version of Serv-U does not appear to be very resource-hungry so our computer runs nice and fast, without having to be a top of the range powerbox. We concentrated on large storage to cope with the file sizes we receive daily.

• Improvements are being made all the time.

• The user interface on large screens becomes tiny and nearly unreadable without the aid of Windows Magnifier.
• Active Directory integration is either absent or not straightforward.
• Settings and configuration aren't always intuitive.

Very easy to admin and allow non experienced users control their portals, lots of stats and helpful info on usage and users accessing the portals

Support was the biggest hurdle for us. It definitely needs improvement, but not to the point of being a deal breaker.

Incentivized

Signiant Media shuttle in particular allows us to easily manage changing workflows, we also heavily use it's portal service to allow many companies to download and upload large data files extensively who have no way of delivering or downloading themselves

Previously we have used FileZilla and Microsoft FTP services, but neither out-performed Serv-U. although it was easy to use, FileZilla required constant attention from IT staff and did not live up to security protocol in place. The Windows Server FTP was difficult to configure for clients due to the tight integration with Active Directory. This also limited who could help administer the server.

• With our current workflows we couldn't do this with Media shuttle
• It has been hugely impactful in allowing a lot of workflow changes to happen during covid and allowing us to easily accomplish them

• I have been using it for over 10 years so the ROI was there for sure.
• It is not a constant attention needing program.
• Set up and it does its job.