SFTPPlus documentation¶
Introduction¶
SFTPPlus is a Managed File Transfer (MFT) software, with support for protocols like: FTPS, SFTP, HTTPS, AS2, and cloud providers like Azure, Google Cloud, and Amazon S3.
It operates as standalone software, running as a background service, without requiring any additional dependencies, such as a database or web server.
SFTPPlus allows from the server perspective remote file transfer clients to be securely authenticated and authorized for accessing files located on local file systems or remote file systems (CIFS/NFS) used by the operating system running SFTPPlus.
From the client perspective, it connects to remote file transfer servers to perform file transfer operations.
It is designed to be totally automated, prompt-less, and without interaction. Once installed and configured properly, it should operate in the background and need no direct attention from the user or the administrator.
The configuration is done via a text file, which can be edited using any text editor, or via an embedded web-based configuration tool, which is accessible via any modern web browser.
Security, correctness, easy-of-use, and file transfer capabilities are all important factors and we focus on them in this order.
Find out more about how to install SFTPPlus on your system and keep it up to date.
Here you can find a quick introduction to installing and using SFTPPlus on Windows, Linux and Mac systems. It also included an introduction to the web-based configuration and management tool.
This section will guide you through the main concepts and approaches on configuring SFTPPlus, help you understand the terminology used in the documentation, and provide information about the main resources available in SFTPPlus.
This section covers user and admin management in SFTPPlus, including built-in and external authentication (OS, Active Directory, LDAP, cloud SSO).
This sections describes how to configure and use SFTPPlus to implement client-side file transfer operations. Configure transfer between remote servers or exchange files with cloud providers.
Reference documentation for the server-side components of SFTPPlus.
Guides on configuring and managing the server-side components of SFTPPlus.
Reference documentation for the client-side components of SFTPPlus.
See how to use SFTPPlus to connect it to remote servers and cloud service in order to transfer files.
Event handlers allow you to implement custom file management processes, on top of than the standard file transfer operations.
Description for every event group and event ID that can be generated by SFTPPlus and used by the event handlers.
Documentation for developers, including API reference and examples of how to itegrate SFTPPlus with your custom services and infrastructure.
Documentation for setting up and managing SFTPPlus clusters, including high availability and load balancing.
This section includes various stand-alone articles which document the server and client side functionalities, and contain specific usage examples.
Find out more about the supported standards, cryptographic algorithms, and certifications obligations.
Using the documentation¶
This technical documentation includes instructions for performing installation, upgrade, configuration, and operational procedures.
The information is written for administrators of Windows or Unix-like systems, familiar with file transfer protocols.
For a less technical description of SFTPPlus capabilities, check our general website pages.
We use the following methods for highlights:
A note supplements and highlights additional information. When ignored, the information presented here will not have any negative consequences.
Below is an example of a note message.
Note
It is highly recommended to define an explicit group (other than the DEFAULT_GROUP) for each application account. This will make the configuration file much easier to understand by removing any implicit behaviour associated with an unspecified group.
A warning is information which should not be ignored. The information should be understood, as otherwise it can lead to irreversible actions and undesirable consequences.
Below is an example of a warning message.
Warning
Depending on your architecture, this could change the service to make the default administrative account accessible over the Internet. Care must be taken to ensure that the default administrative account is altered or deleted.
You will notice certain terms will be colour-coded grey or blue.
Verbatim values represent terms which should be used exactly as documented. For example, a configuration option such as home_folder_path is a verbatim value. It also describes fixed values like disabled, yes or no.
The Input values serve as an example and we expect them to be altered
before being used in a certain configuration.
For example, c:\Path\${USER} is expected to be modified to suit the
environment used by a specific deployment, like E:\FTP-Files\${USER}.
In the documentation you will find scripts, text configuration examples and commands to provide further guidance to our readers.
Example of system administrator commands:
$ ./bin/admin-commands.sh start --configuration non-root-server.ini
# ./bin/admin-commands.sh start --configuration root-server.ini
CMD> service-start.bat --configuration windows-server.ini
Example of a single configuration option defined inside our configuration file:
[section-name/03288e36-cf6b-4bd5-a9be-f421372f17e6]
rotate_count = 5
Example of a command sent to our interactive client shell:
> set username mary
Example of code in the developer documentation:
{
"account": {
"home_folder_path": "/local/path/for/account",
"uuid": "ebfbee04-17be-4d9f-b7fc-20ffed6a61a8",
"create_home_folder": true,
"create_home_folder_owner": "ude_team",
"create_home_folder_group": "partners"
"home_folder_structure": [['/some-child'], ['/another-child']]
}
}
Icons used in the documentation:
For general pages
For configuration reference
For security
For command line
For server-side only
For client-side only
For cloud services
For cluster operations
For event handlers
For HTTP API
For developer documentation
The documentation covers the features and functionality for the 5.18.0 release of SFTPPlus, and was last updated on Oct 15, 2025.