Cloud or On-Premise
Both Built by Files.com

For almost everyone: Files.com Cloud. It’s the modern File Orchestration Platform with the full feature set — automation workflows, REST API + SDKs in 8 languages, PGP/GPG encryption, AS2, SOC 2 + HIPAA-BAA out of the box, SSO + SCIM, and on-call support. Provisioning takes about 10 minutes; there’s a 7-day free trial with no credit card.

The ExaVault on-premise appliance is the right choice if you mustrun file transfer inside your own datacenter or VPC — air-gapped environments, strict data-residency mandates, classified workloads, or compliance frameworks that don’t allow multi-tenant cloud. The appliance handles SFTP / FTP / FTPS / WebDAV with the same user-management and audit-log surface, but it doesn’t ship the cloud-only features (automations, REST API, AS2, partner integrations). Free for deployments up to 50 users; paid license required above that ($99/month per 50-user pack).

Cloud is the modern product. It gets the full engineering investment — new features ship to cloud first (often only to cloud), the API surface is wider, the integrations catalog is deeper, and the compliance posture comes out of the box rather than being your scope. The on-premise appliance is a stable, well-maintained product, but its feature set is fundamentally narrower because it ships as a self-contained image you run yourself.

Files.com is a multi-tenant hosted SaaS — it runs on Files.com infrastructure, not yours. If the requirement is that file-transfer infrastructure runs on equipment you control, the on-premise appliance is the answer. If the requirement is just data residency (e.g., EU-only storage), Files.com Cloud has region-pinned storage that solves that without requiring you to run anything yourself.

Files.com Cloud ships SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA with a BAA, and GDPR controls out of the box — your auditors review our attestations, not your infrastructure. The on-premise appliance shifts that scope to you: you control the environment, so the compliance posture is your audit and your scope. The appliance gives you the controls (encryption in flight, audit log, SSO, 2FA, syslog export); the attestation is your responsibility. For FedRAMP-shaped requirements, on-premise inside an existing FedRAMP-compliant environment is usually the right shape.

Cloud: usage-based, starting around $199/month for the entry tier. Higher tiers add more users, storage, and features. No infrastructure cost.

Appliance: $0 software cost forever. You pay for the VM hosting (VMware vSphere license / AWS or GCP Marketplace runtime). Optional paid support tiers add operational features.

The honest comparison is rarely “$0 vs $199/month” — once you account for the engineering time to operate an appliance (patching, backups, monitoring), the operational cost of self-hosting usually exceeds the cloud subscription. Cloud wins on TCO for almost everyone.

No. The on-premise appliance is actively maintained by Files.com — security patches, OS updates, and protocol-level improvements ship on the regular release cadence. The product is a long-term commitment, not a deprecation track. New customers continue to download it.