The real cost of running SFTPGo in 2026

The short version

• SFTPGo is free, open-source software. The AGPL community edition ships every transfer protocol, every storage backend, and both web interfaces, and it costs nothing to download.
• The operation is what costs money. A production-class VPS runs $24/month in hardware plus 5 to 10 hours of setup, and the official SaaS plans start at €50/month (25 GiB) and reach €850/month.
• Managed hosting of the community edition on DANIAN is €9/month flat, storage above the included 30 GB at €0.50/GB, with updates, backups, monitoring, and human support included.
• At a five-user workload moving 500 GB per month, the realistic totals are: self-hosted VPS around €100 to €280 per month once your hours are counted, the vendor SaaS €50 to €230 per month depending on tier, and managed hosting on DANIAN €9 to €14 per month.

The software is free. The running of it is not.

SFTPGo is a single Go binary that serves SFTP, SCP, FTPS, WebDAV, and HTTPS from one process, with local, encrypted, S3-compatible, Azure Blob, Google Cloud Storage, and remote-SFTP backends. Nicola Murino, a member of the Go team who maintains the SSH library underneath it, has developed it since 2019. The GitHub repository holds 12.7k stars, and the project lists sponsors including WP Engine and Jump Trading. Downloading and running it costs nothing, forever.

Nobody pays for the binary, though. They pay for the things around it: a server that stays up, certificates that renew, a database that does not lock, backups that somebody verifies, and a person to call at the moment a transfer fails. This page prices those things honestly across every way you can run SFTPGo in 2026, with each number sourced at the bottom.

The four ways to run SFTPGo, priced

The table below holds the whole answer for a common shape: a five-person team exchanging files with partners, moving roughly 500 GB per month. Every path is legitimate. The numbers are what they are.

For completeness: the authors also license SFTPGo Enterprise for your own servers from €619 per year (Starter tier, local filesystem, up to 20 concurrent transfers), and third-party managed-SFTP services that are not SFTPGo at all start at $50 to $150 per month. If you are comparing the wider market, those are the fences on the field.

Path one: the VPS

A 2 vCPU, 4 GB production-class VPS costs about $24 per month, and SFTPGo itself is happy there. The project documents comfortable single-instance operation on 1 vCPU and 512 MB for 50 to 300 active users. The binary saturates a gigabit link on adequate hardware without tuning.

The invoice line is not the cost. The cost is the 5 to 10 hours of first setup: DNS records, TLS via Let's Encrypt with auto-renewal, an SMTP relay if you want notifications, a database decision, a firewall, passive port ranges if FTP matters, a backup job, and something that alerts you when any of it stops. Then 1 to 2 hours every month for patches, certificate checks, backup verification, and the occasional 3 a.m. container that will not restart. Priced at a freelance sysadmin's €60 to €120 per hour, that is €60 to €240 of time on top of $44 of infrastructure every single month. We keep the fuller version of this math, including the home-server breakdown, on the self-hosting comparison page.

Path two: the home server

SFTPGo runs fine on a NAS or a small tower, and a used business server is cheap. The honest monthly math for a production file exchange that partners depend on: hardware amortized over 36 months at €18 to €55, electricity at €17 to €32, business-grade internet with a static address at €40 to €80, an off-site backup target at €10 to €20 because a backup on the same machine is not one, and your 2 to 4 monthly hours. Total: €210 to €667 per month effective. It is a fine path for a hobbyist. It is an expensive path for a business.

Path three: the official SaaS and Enterprise licenses

The SFTPGo authors sell a hosted service with dedicated instances, static IP addresses, and datacenter regions you select. Displayed prices in October 2026: Tiny at €50 per month with 25 GiB of storage, Small at €100 with 50 GiB, Standard at €230 with 1 TiB, Professional at €450 with 2 TiB, and Premium at €850 with 4 TiB. Every plan runs the Enterprise edition with its full feature set, and the company behind it is ISO 27001 certified. For teams that need the Enterprise-only capabilities or vendor-direct support, this is the correct product, and it is priced accordingly.

Prefer your own infrastructure with those capabilities? The Enterprise on-premises license starts at €619 per year for the Starter tier, which covers local filesystem storage and up to 20 concurrent transfers, with higher tiers adding capacity and features.

Path four: the managed community edition

This is the lane DANIAN occupies. You get the same open-source edition you could install yourself, operated by somebody else: deployed in your choice of 21 datacenter regions, running on PostgreSQL as the data provider rather than the default SQLite, updated, backed up daily off-site, monitored, and supported by the engineers who run it. It costs €9 per month flat. Storage above the included 30 GB bills at €0.50 per GB, so the five-user, 500 GB workload lands around €11 to €14 per month all-in. There are no per-user fees, a 7-day trial needs no card, and you can export everything and leave at any time. The managed SFTPGo hosting page starts the seven-day trial.

The trade is stated plainly: the community edition does not include the Enterprise-only features, and new headline features land in the Enterprise edition first. What you are buying at €9 is not a discount SaaS. It is the free edition, run properly.

What the community edition actually includes

The free edition is not a crippled teaser. It carries the full protocol set, every storage backend, both web interfaces, and the REST API:

One more honest line: the community edition receives maintenance, security fixes, and updates to core features, while major new features ship in the Enterprise edition first. The current community release line is 2.7.x, and it is actively maintained.

Where each path breaks

Every option has a failure mode worth knowing before you commit. The VPS path breaks on the unglamorous things: the certificate that did not renew, the disk that filled during a nightly batch, the SQLite database that locks under concurrent access on container volumes, a documented issue in the project's tracker. The home server breaks on the residential internet line and on being one person's hobby. The SaaS path breaks on tier ceilings: storage and monthly bandwidth caps, with overage or upgrade as the remedy. Managed hosting on DANIAN breaks on resources: the base tier is one vCPU and 30 GB, and heavier workloads scale up with your consent and at a known price. Choose the failure mode you can live with.

Which path fits which team

Developers who enjoy operations should self-host; the software is genuinely pleasant to run, and an evening with Docker is an evening well spent for some people. Teams with compliance requirements that map to the Enterprise feature set, or that want vendor-direct support contracts, should buy the official SaaS or an on-premises license and not think twice. A small business, an agency, or a SaaS team that needs partners dropping files into folders, wants it to just work, and wants a human to answer when it does not, is the exact shape of the €9 managed lane. If your need is one-off sends rather than recurring exchange, our piece on open-source WeTransfer alternatives covers that lighter job. If you are still unsure, the seven-day trial settles it without a card.

Frequently asked questions

Is SFTPGo free?
Yes. The community edition is free, open-source software under AGPL-3.0 with additional terms for the embedded admin UI assets. Every protocol, every storage backend, both web interfaces, and the REST API are included at no cost. Commercial editions from the project's authors exist for teams that need their extra capabilities.

What does the official SFTPGo SaaS cost?
Displayed October 2026 prices: Tiny €50/month with 25 GiB, Small €100 with 50 GiB, Standard €230 with 1 TiB, Professional €450 with 2 TiB, Premium €850 with 4 TiB. Prices are listed in EUR and displayed in your currency, so figures vary slightly with exchange rates. Every plan is a dedicated instance with a static IP in the datacenter region you select.

What does the on-premises Enterprise license cost?
The Starter subscription is €619 per year and includes local filesystem storage, unlimited users, and up to 20 concurrent file transfers. Higher tiers add cloud storage support, more concurrency, and the full Enterprise feature set. Both subscription and lifetime licensing are available, and non-production licenses are included.

Why is managed hosting €9 when the official SaaS starts at €50?
They are different products. The €9 managed lane operates the free community edition on shared-cost infrastructure. The SaaS runs the Enterprise edition with its full commercial feature set on dedicated single-tenant instances with static IPs. If you need the Enterprise features, the SaaS price is the honest one. If the community edition covers you, €9 covers running it.

Do any SFTPGo options charge per user?
On DANIAN, no. The €9 per month is per app, and 5 users or 50 users pay the same. The official SaaS also bills per instance rather than per user. Third-party managed-SFTP SaaS typically bills per credential or per user instead, which is where small teams get surprised.

What does the community edition include?
All transfer protocols (SFTP, SCP, FTP, FTPS, WebDAV, HTTPS), all storage backends (local, encrypted local, S3-compatible, Azure Blob, Google Cloud Storage, remote SFTP), the WebAdmin and WebClient interfaces, two-factor authentication, OpenID Connect SSO, LDAP and GeoIP via plugins, event rules with webhooks, quotas, virtual folders, and the full REST API.

What does SFTPGo Enterprise add over the community edition?
An in-memory cloud streaming engine the vendor reports is up to 70% faster, advanced high-availability coordination, dynamic automation with conditions and loops, smart archiving, IMAP email ingestion, automated PGP encryption, antivirus and DLP scanning via ICAP, extended SSO controls, and browser document editing via Collabora.

Do new features reach the community edition?
Eventually, and selectively. The project states that the Enterprise edition receives major new features first on a faster release cadence, while the community edition remains maintained with bug fixes, security updates, and updates to core features. The current community line, 2.7.x, is actively maintained.

Can I use S3, Azure Blob, or Google Cloud Storage as the backend?
Yes, in the free community edition. All three are first-class backends, S3-compatible covers AWS S3, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, Cloudflare R2, and any S3 API endpoint, and you can mix backends per user or per virtual folder. This is not an Enterprise-gated capability.

Does SFTPGo support AS2 for retail EDI?
No. The community edition covers SFTP, SCP, FTP, FTPS, WebDAV, and HTTPS strictly. If your trading partners require AS2 specifically, you need a translator in front or a different product class. For SFTP-based EDI, which most small-partner networks use, it is fully capable.

What does self-hosting on a VPS really cost per month?
Hardware around $44 per month including backups and monitoring, plus your time: 5 to 10 hours of initial setup and 1 to 2 hours monthly. At a freelance rate of €60 to €120 per hour, the effective total is €100 to €280 per month. The server is the cheap part.

How long does initial setup take?
Between 5 and 10 hours for a production-grade instance: DNS, TLS with auto-renewal, firewall and passive port ranges, the database choice, an SMTP relay for notifications, a verified backup job, and monitoring. Running the binary itself takes minutes. Everything around it takes the evening.

Can I run SFTPGo on a home server or NAS?
Yes, it is a single Go binary and runs on modest hardware. The honest business cost is €210 to €667 per month effective: hardware amortized over 36 months, electricity, business-grade internet with a static address, an off-site backup target, and your monthly hours. Fine for a lab, expensive for production.

What breaks first on a self-hosted instance?
Certificate renewals, disk space during nightly batches, and the SQLite lock under concurrent access on container volumes, which is documented in the project's issue tracker. Running PostgreSQL as the data provider removes the lock issue. These are all solvable, and they are all somebody's job.

What exactly does DANIAN run?
The unmodified community edition at the current 2.7.x release, with PostgreSQL as the data provider instead of default SQLite, deployed in your choice of 21 datacenter regions. You get web terminal and file manager access to your own instance, and you can export everything at any time.

What does the €9 plan cover that a self-hosted VPS does not?
The hardware in your chosen region, daily off-site backups with one-click restore, automatic security patches and version upgrades, 24/7 monitoring, SSL and firewall, and support from the engineers who run the platform. Storage above the included 30 GB is €0.50 per GB, bandwidth above the included 1,000 GB is €0.03 per GB. On a self-hosted VPS, every one of those line items is your own job.

Can I connect my own cloud storage?
Yes. Bring your S3-compatible, Azure Blob, or Google Cloud Storage credentials and the instance reads and writes your buckets directly, with backends mixable per user or per virtual folder. Local storage on the instance itself is equally supported.

Can I migrate from an existing SFTP server?
Yes. Users are recreated through the web admin or the REST API, virtual folders remap your existing directory layout, and partner credentials are reissued per user. Step-by-step walkthroughs live in the SFTPGo knowledge base, and DANIAN support assists with migrations as part of the plan, including legacy FTP and FTPS moves.

Is there a trial?
Seven days, no credit card, full platform. If the community edition covers your workload, you will know within the first file transfer. Cancel or continue from the dashboard at any point.

Who maintains SFTPGo?
Nicola Murino, trading as Software Engineering S.r.l. in Italy, a member of the Go team and the maintainer of the golang.org/x/crypto/ssh package that SFTPGo builds on. The project has been developed since 2019 and lists sponsors including WP Engine and Jump Trading.

Sources

1. SFTPGo SaaS plans and prices: sftpgo.com/saas (viewed October 2026)
2. SFTPGo Enterprise on-premises licensing: sftpgo.com/on-premises (viewed October 2026)
3. Community versus Enterprise feature comparison: github.com/drakkan/sftpgo README (viewed October 2026)
4. Release cadence and edition policy: github.com/drakkan/sftpgo README (viewed October 2026)
5. Third-party managed-SFTP market pricing: sftptogo.com/pricing, couchdrop.io/pricing (viewed October 2026)
6. Self-hosting time and cost references: CONTENT_POLICY internal reference figures, VPS $24/month production-class, freelance sysadmin €60 to €120 per hour
7. Managed hosting details, regions, and storage pricing: danian.co/pricing and danian.co/sftpgo

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