SolarWinds Serv-U

I believe that SolarWinds Serv-U is well suited for small to medium businesses that do not require an expensive high-end FTP server. Also, once the server is configured the daily administration can be handled by less experienced IT personnel. In my opinion this product may not be the right solution a large enterprise with heavy FTP traffic.

• 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.

• 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.

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

Incentivized

The overall interface of SolarWinds Serv-U was better in my opinion than that of Cerberus. We had several outside users demo both and the SolarWinds desktop client was the selling point for them. Both had an option, but SolarWinds was more user friendly, which was a big plus. Everything else was pretty close between the two.

Incentivized

• Crucial for intercompany file transfers.
• Trustworthy system that comes up every time after server reboots without fail.
• Must keep paying yearly maintenance fees.