Signiant vs. FileCatalyst
Signiant is the market leader in intelligent file transfer and has been for many years. As an independent company, our focus is on helping media companies make content flow more efficiently. FileCatalyst, on the other hand, is now part of Fortra, formerly Help Systems, which has acquired a variety of IT products that were not built on a unified platform. FileCatalyst is one of many products that are sold and supported by a team that doesn’t have deep knowledge of any one product.
Why Signiant is the better choice over FileCatalyst for large file transfers
The Signiant Platform is proven, battle-tested and scales with your business. End users love the simplicity of Media Shuttle and IT, and operations teams enjoy the security and enterprise-grade features. Your partners and customers are already on the Signiant Platform. When working with large, high-value content, the choice is clear – it’s Signiant.
Learn More About the Signiant Platform
The Signiant Platform builds on the foundation of our world-class fast file movement apps and adds workflow-centric production services that make working with media even more efficient.
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A Comparison of Key Capabilities
The Signiant Platform | IBM Aspera | |
|---|---|---|
Proprietary transport technology that eliminates latency and packet loss, delivering speeds up to 100X faster than standard tools | ||
No file size limits | ||
Rock-solid reliability with Checkpoint Restart | ||
Unlimited Send, Share and Submit portals | ||
Search media assets across storage locations | ||
Preview media files | ||
Real-time views of transfers in progress, historical transfers and detailed chain of custody information | ||
Delegated administration | ||
Pre-transfer delivery spec validation with CloudSpeX | ||
Bandwidth management | ||
Modern APIs and integrations with leading media tech products | ||
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Signiant Platform pricing differ from FileCatalyst pricing?
Signiant offers no-surprise pricing on all our subscription plans. We make it easy for our customers to conduct business with us and we work with companies of every size. When you connect Signiant to on-prem storage, you get unlimited transfers with no file-size limits. When using cloud storage, every subscription includes a generous allowance of cloud payload.
FileCatalyst sells licensed software using a legacy model where you pay an upfront license fee and then pay maintenance fees annually for product updates and support. You’re on your own to keep the software up and running and update the software with the latest security patches. TCO is much better with a SaaS product which is why Signiant is committed to that model.
How does Signiant customer support compare to FileCatalyst?
The Signiant customer support team sits in the same location as our engineering team so there is a very tight working relationship with the people who build the software and the people who support it. Signiant customer support has earned a Net Promoter Score in the 90+% range in every year it has been measured. Our world-class customer support is included with every SaaS subscription.
FileCatalyst is now owned by Fortra which has acquired a somewhat random mix of products that are not tightly integrated and are supported by a team that now must support a huge range of disparate products. Be careful with these roll-up approaches — support is rarely what it needs to be.
Who are Signiant customers?
Signiant software is used throughout the B2B media supply chain — from the earliest stages of content creation, through facets of post production, and all the way to aggregation and distribution. With more than 50,000 global media and entertainment companies of all types and sizes, Signiant customers span every corner of the globe. Check out some of our current customers.
What is Checkpoint Restart?
With checkpoint restart, any file transmission interrupted by a computer or Internet connection failure will automatically pick up where it left off when the system is back online. By continually saving the state of a running transfer and setting markers at intervals, the checkpoint restart feature ensures that any interrupted transfer resumes quickly and reliably, without any data loss.
What types of storage does Signiant work with?
With the Signiant Platform, you’ll maintain storage independence, meaning assets always remain 100% in your control. You have your choice of storage including on-premises object or file storage as well as cloud object storage in AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Storage, or Wasabi. Learn more.
Testimonials
“Everybody gets notifications. It’s a lot more convenient for us and simplifies all communications. People are no longer asking us, ‘Has this file arrived?’”
Jóhannes Reykdal, Broadcast Technician
“Once others heard how well [Signiant Media Shuttle] it worked, everyone asked, ‘Hey, can I use it?’”
Dan Schott, Director, Post Technologies
“It’s the peace of mind you get with Signiant. You get reliability, and you get security because of the encryption.”
Matjaz Fajdiga, Head of TV Engineering
“We’ve been able to roll [Signiant portals] out in new ways and integrate them with our existing pipelines and tailor them to individual clients.“
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