AWS Transfer Family is the default choice for S3 ingestion on paper. It’s Amazon, it’s scalable, and it supports SFTP, FTPS, and FTP to S3 natively.
But when we tried scaling it for high-volume B2B file transfers (specifically those with many external contributors), we found it overkill in complexity and underpowered in actual utility. It forces you to build your own Managed File Transfer (MFT) solution from scratch.
If you are hunting for an AWS Transfer Family alternative, here is how Rilavek compares. We also explain why the "raw infrastructure" approach might be costing you more than just money.
1. The Philosophy: Protocol Server vs. Managed Data Ingestion
AWS Transfer Family is a protocol server. It gives you an SFTP, FTPS, or FTP endpoint, and that’s it. It doesn’t understand your business logic. It doesn’t know what a "partner" or "vendor" is. It just moves bytes.
If you need to onboard 50 new data contributors (e.g., fintech partners, healthcare providers, or logistics vendors) and map them to specific S3 buckets with isolated permissions, you have to build that logic yourself. You are responsible for managing IAM roles, writing Lambda functions for custom authentication, and maintaining complex policy documents.
Rilavek is a dedicated Data Ingestion Platform. We solved the problem of "One Pipe, Many Senders."
- AWS: You manage users, SSH keys, and server infrastructure.
- Rilavek: You manage sources and destinations. We decouple the ingest (the external partner) from the storage. This means you can onboard a new vendor in seconds without touching IAM policies or provisioning new infrastructure.
2. AWS Transfer Family Pricing: The "Idle Tax" of Cloud SFTP
AWS Transfer Family has a pricing model that often catches businesses off guard, especially those with fluctuating transfer volumes.
- The "Idle" Tax: AWS charges $0.30 per hour just to have the SFTP endpoint active. That is $216–$223/month per server ($0.30 × 24 × 30 days) even if no one uploads a single file.
- The Data Tax: On top of the hourly fee, you pay $0.04 per GB for data transfer.
If you are spinning up servers for specific projects or maintaining an "always-on" endpoint for sporadic partner uploads, you are burning budget on empty air.
Rilavek is designed for efficient B2B file exchange. We focus on the value of the transfer, not server uptime. You get the enterprise-grade reliability of a cloud MFT solution without paying rent on an empty building.
3. Vendor Lock-in: AWS Ecosystem vs. Multi-Cloud File Transfer
AWS Transfer Family is strictly an entry point into the Amazon ecosystem. It is designed to get data into AWS S3 or AWS EFS. If you want to route data to Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob, or a cost-effective S3-compatible provider like Wasabi, Backblaze B2, or Cloudflare R2, you are locked into building custom Lambda functions or additional pipelines to forward data out of AWS.
Rilavek is storage-agnostic. As a true multi-cloud file transfer solution, we don't care where the data lives. We just ensure it gets there safely.
- Bring Your Own Storage: Connect Rilavek to any cloud provider. Use AWS S3 for one project, Google Cloud for analytics, and Wasabi for low-cost archiving.
- No Migration Headaches: If you decide to switch your backend storage from AWS to Azure next year, you simply update the destination in Rilavek. Your external partners won't even notice the change.
4. Secure File Transfer and Vendor Onboarding
In a secure enterprise environment, granting external parties access to your cloud storage is risky.
- AWS Approach: To secure AWS Transfer Family, you typically need to manage SSH keys manually or integrate a custom identity provider (IdP). If a vendor loses a key or an employee leaves a partner company, your DevOps team must intervene immediately to rotate credentials, creating a bottleneck.
- Rilavek Approach: Rilavek handles authentication and routing at the application layer. We provide a secure, managed interface for your partners. You can revoke access or expire credentials instantly without needing to redeploy server configurations or touch your core cloud security policies.
5. Visibility, Compliance, and Audit Logs
- AWS: Logs are sent to CloudWatch. To answer the question "Did Vendor X upload the Q3 report?", you have to write queries in CloudWatch Insights or build a custom dashboard on top of raw logs. It is data, not actionable information.
- Rilavek: Rilavek provides Compliance-Ready Audit Logs out of the box. You can see exactly which file came from which source, when it arrived, and where it landed. It’s designed for operations managers and compliance officers to verify delivery, not for sysadmins to debug connection strings.
The Verdict: When to Choose Rilavek
Use AWS Transfer Family if:
- You are deeply committed to a 100% AWS infrastructure and have no plans to use other providers.
- You are a DevOps engineer who prefers writing Terraform scripts over managing business logic.
- You need a permanent, static connection for a legacy application (e.g., a mainframe).
Use Rilavek if:
- You need a turnkey SFTP cloud storage solution that works with any provider (AWS, Azure, Google, Wasabi, etc.).
- You manage multiple external contributors (clients, contractors, partners) and need a centralized "traffic controller" for data.
- You want a fixed, predictable workflow that eliminates the "undifferentiated heavy lifting" of managing cloud servers.
Stop building the pipes. Just let the data flow.