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An alternative to AWS Transfer Family

Both products put SFTP in front of cloud storage, and with both the files stay in your own bucket. The difference is what you are billed for: Transfer Family meters every enabled protocol by the hour, running or idle. DocEvent bills per user, and starts free.
AWS Transfer Family
SFTP, FTPS, FTP, AS2
Billed per protocol, per hour
DocEvent
SFTP, FTPS, FTP, SCP + browser
Billed per user, free to start
both write to
Your Amazon S3 bucket
Your AWS account, your encryption, your lifecycle rules
The bucket is the constant — so moving is a change of front door, not a migration, and no files have to move.

Which one fits your traffic

The answer genuinely depends on how much you move. Here is where each one wins.

A team moving a few GB a month

Five users and a couple of gigabytes of traffic. On DocEvent that is the free Basic plan, or $10/month on Standard. On Transfer Family the meter starts at roughly $219/month for one protocol before a single file moves — the endpoint is billed by the hour whether anyone connects or not.
Winner: DocEvent, by a wide margin

Partner file exchange across several protocols

Some partners need SFTP, others still send over FTPS. Transfer Family bills each enabled protocol separately, so two protocols is roughly $438/month. Every DocEvent plan includes SFTP, FTPS, FTP and SCP on the same service at no extra cost.
Winner: DocEvent

A terabyte, or millions of files

Here the honest answer changes. The managed plans meter two things — transfer at $10 per extra 10GB, and operations at $10 per extra 100,000 — so neither terabyte volumes nor very large file counts suit them. Transfer Family meters neither: it would be about $219/month plus roughly $80 in data fees, and operations are free. At that scale run the server yourself: SFS Server on the AWS Marketplace is flat hourly software pricing with no per-GB fees at all, billed through your AWS account — or see self-hosted and Enterprise for running it in your own VPC.
Winner: Self-hosted SFS Server, not the managed plans →

What switching involves

There is no migration, because the files never move. You are changing which endpoint writes to the bucket.
1
Point a service at the same bucket
Create a DocEvent service against the bucket Transfer Family already writes to. Nothing moves, and both endpoints can serve it while you cut over.
2
Add a user per partner or system
Each sender gets its own account with a password or an SSH key — bring the keys you already issued — plus per-service IP allow rules if you want them locked down.
3
Change the hostname at the sending end
Update the endpoint and credentials wherever the files come from. When traffic has moved, delete the Transfer Family server and the per-protocol hourly charge stops.

Side by side

DocEvent Simple FTP ServiceAWS Transfer Family
What you are billed forPer user, per month — idle endpoints cost nothingPer enabled protocol, per server, per hour — running or not
Entry price$0 — Basic is free forever, up to 5 users≈ US$219/mo for a single protocol before any traffic
Data transfer1GB included on Standard, then $10 per extra 10GB+$0.04/GB uploaded and +$0.04/GB downloaded
Operations50,000 included on Standard, then $10 per extra 100,000Not metered — you pay for protocol-hours and gigabytes only
ProtocolsSFTP, FTPS, FTP and SCP — all included in every planSFTP, FTPS, FTP, AS2 — each one billed separately
Storage backendsAmazon S3, Azure Blob / Data Lake / Files, Google Cloud Storage, and any S3-compatible store — Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, MinIO, SupabaseAmazon S3 and Amazon EFS only
SetupSign up, point it at a bucket, add users — minutes, no AWS resourcesVPC, endpoint, IAM roles and a CloudFormation stack to manage
Password sign-inBuilt in, per userCustom identity provider you build (Lambda + API Gateway)
SSH key sign-in
Browser access for end users
SFS Drive, included
Per-user IP allow / deny rulesBuilt in on every serviceVia VPC security groups
AS2
extra per-message fees
Where your files liveYour bucket, your account — we are only the endpointYour bucket, your account
AWS Transfer Family rates as published for us-east-1 (aws.amazon.com/aws-transfer-family/pricing). The ≈US$219/month figure is US$0.30 per protocol-hour over a 730-hour month, before data transfer. Standard AWS storage and infrastructure charges apply to both products.

Common questions

Run both at once and decide with real traffic

Nothing here is a one-way door. Point a DocEvent service at the bucket Transfer Family already writes to, move one partner across, and compare them on your own files for a month. The Basic plan is free forever for up to five users, so the trial costs nothing and you keep paying AWS exactly what you pay today until you switch the last sender over.
Run it in your own AWS account
The self-hosted SFS Server from the AWS Marketplace — flat hourly pricing, no per-GB data fees.
Pricing
Free forever for up to five users, then $2 per user per month.
SFS Drive
Browser access to the same buckets for people who should not need an SFTP client.

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