AWS Transfer Family alternative for an endpoint that moves a few files a day
Bridglet is the right alternative if the endpoint on your bill exists so one partner can put one file somewhere every morning, and something downstream needs to hear about it when they do.
Stay on AWS if the files have to land in a bucket you own, if you need AS2 for an EDI partner, if a Lambda or a Step Functions workflow picks them up, or if the endpoint already sits inside a compliance boundary you have scoped. None of that has an answer here.
What the meter costs
One SFTP endpoint
$0.30 an hour while the endpoint is enabled, plus $0.04 a GB uploaded and downloaded. S3 is billed on top.
Bridglet Starter
10 GB of space, 5 shared folders, 10 connections an hour, 5 guests per shared folder
One is infrastructure you assemble, the other is a finished drop folder. The question this page answers is which one your work needs.
Why people look for a AWS Transfer Family alternative
None of this is a complaint about the product. It is what the published plans charge for, and why that shape stops fitting some teams.
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1
The endpoint bills by the hour, not by the file
An enabled SFTP endpoint costs $0.30 an hour, which works out around $216 a month. Two files a day and two thousand files a day produce the same line on the invoice, because what you are renting is uptime.
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2
Then $0.04 a gigabyte on the way in and out
Uploads and downloads are metered separately, and whatever sits in S3 afterwards is a third charge on the same bill. Three meters for one folder makes the monthly number hard to predict and harder to explain.
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3
Access is IAM work, not folder work
Giving one vendor one prefix means a Transfer Family user, an IAM role, a scope-down policy and a home directory mapping. It is a JSON review with a security engineer in it, and it happens again every time a partner is added.
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4
The browser front door is another meter
Transfer Family web apps let people use a bucket from a browser, and they bill $0.50 an hour per unit on top of the endpoint hour. Serving the sender who will not install an SFTP client costs more than the endpoint itself.
AWS Transfer Family and Bridglet, side by side
| AWS Transfer Family, one SFTP endpoint | Bridglet Starter | |
|---|---|---|
| Price to start |
$0.30 an hour per enabled SFTP endpoint, plus $0.04 per GB uploaded and downloaded. About $216 a month before storage. verified 2026-09-22 |
$15/mo, flat, with uploads and bandwidth not metered. |
| What that includes |
An SFTP front door for a bucket you already own. The storage, the roles, the logging and the bucket policy stay yours to run. verified 2026-09-22 |
10 GB of space, 5 shared folders, 10 connections an hour, 5 guests per shared folder |
| The rest of the ladder |
There is no ladder. The same meter runs at any volume, and Amazon S3 charges separately for whatever you keep. |
Starter $15/mo (10 GB, 5 shared folders). Pro $49/mo (100 GB, 25 shared folders). Business $149/mo (500 GB, unlimited shared folders). |
| Per-user fees |
No charge per user. Each user is instead an IAM role and a home directory mapping that somebody writes and then maintains. |
None. Teammates cost nothing and guests are not seats. |
| Browser portal for non-technical senders |
Transfer Family web apps, billed at $0.50 an hour per unit on top of the endpoint hour. verified 2026-09-22 |
Yes, on every plan and at no extra charge. Send a link, the person sets their own passphrase, then uploads and downloads in the browser. |
| Webhooks |
Not part of the endpoint. You wire S3 event notifications or EventBridge into a function you own. |
Yes, on every plan. One call to a URL you set per shared folder when a file lands. |
| Retention |
S3 lifecycle rules, configured on the bucket. |
Yes, on every plan. Set the number of days per shared folder and files are deleted on that schedule. |
| REST API |
Yes. The AWS API and the SDKs cover the whole service. |
On Pro, Business and both lifetime tiers. |
The AWS Transfer Family column was read off aws.amazon.com/aws-transfer-family/pricing on 2026-09-22, and every row marked above carries the date it was checked. Where a cell says a thing is not listed, it means the published plans are not sold on it. Bridglet's column is the limit the server actually enforces.
What you give up
Moving costs you something. Here is the part of AWS Transfer Family that Bridglet has no answer for.
Files landing in your own S3 bucket
Transfer Family is a protocol front end for storage you control, which is the whole point of it for most teams. Bridglet keeps files on its own disks, and there is no setting that points a shared folder at a bucket of yours.
AS2, FTPS and the EDI protocols
If a trading partner sends AS2, or a bank insists on FTPS, AWS speaks those and Bridglet does not. Bridglet answers SFTP, and HTTPS in the guest portal. That is the whole protocol list.
Lambda and Step Functions in the path
An object landing in S3 can kick off a workflow that validates, converts and routes the file without leaving your account. Bridglet posts one webhook and hands the work back to your code.
A boundary you have already scoped
Plenty of endpoints sit inside an AWS account that an auditor has already been walked through, with CloudTrail behind it. Moving the drop outside that account means the scoping conversation starts over, and Bridglet brings no compliance paperwork to it.
Things Bridglet has never had
No SOC 2 report. No custom domain for your endpoint. No command line tool. No option to point a shared folder at a storage bucket you own. No phone support, and no static IP address to hand a firewall team. If any of those is a requirement, this is the wrong product and the page will not pretend otherwise.
Switching from AWS Transfer Family
There is no migration tool and nothing copies itself across. What a move involves is this, and it is mostly telling people where to send things now.
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1
Write down what the endpoint is really carrying
Usually it is a handful of Transfer Family users, one prefix each, and one or two triggers watching the bucket. The list is shorter than the console makes it look, and it is the whole scope of the move.
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2
Create the same shared folders in Bridglet
One per sender. Each gets its own path, its own retention setting in days, and credentials that reach nothing else in your account. No roles, no policies, no home directory mappings.
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3
Hand every sender their new way in
A partner with a script gets a host, a username and a password or a public key. Someone who has been living in the AWS web app gets a portal link and picks a passphrase the first time they open it.
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4
Replace the S3 trigger with the webhook
Whatever your notification or EventBridge rule was starting can be started by Bridglet's webhook instead. The payload looks nothing like an S3 event record, so read the webhook docs before you cut it over.
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5
Run both for a cycle, then disable the endpoint
The hourly charge stops when the endpoint is disabled, not when it goes quiet, so that last step is the one that saves the money. Objects already in your bucket stay where they are and keep billing as storage until you clear them out.
What Bridglet costs
Plans are sized by shared folders and space. Teammates, guests, webhooks and retention are in every one of them.
Starter
$15/mo
- 10 GB of space
- 5 shared folders
- 10 connections an hour
- Guest portal, webhooks, retention
Pro
$49/mo
- 100 GB of space
- 25 shared folders
- 60 connections an hour
- Guest portal, webhooks, retention
Business
$149/mo
- 500 GB of space
- unlimited shared folders
- 200 connections an hour
- Guest portal, webhooks, retention
A lifetime round is open while you read this: $59 once for Starter's limits, or $149 once for 50 GB and 15 shared folders. It is capped and it closes. Read the terms on the lifetime page.
Questions people ask before they move
Will this actually cost me less than $216 a month?
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For a low-volume partner drop, yes. Starter is $15/mo and does not meter uploads or bandwidth, so a folder that takes a few files a day costs the same every month. If you are moving many terabytes, run the numbers: at that size AWS's per-gigabyte price can beat a plan, and this page would rather you checked than took its word.
Do my vendors have to change anything?
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They change a hostname and a username. Bridglet speaks standard SFTP with password or public key authentication, so FileZilla, WinSCP, Cyberduck and the sftp command that ships with OpenSSH all connect without anything new installed.
Can the files still end up in my S3 bucket?
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Not by themselves. There is no option to back a shared folder with storage you own. What you can do is take the webhook Bridglet sends, fetch the file over the API on Pro or above, and put it in your bucket from your own code.
What happens to all the IAM work?
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It stops. A Bridglet credential is scoped to one shared folder when it is created, so there is no role to assume, no scope-down policy to review and no trust relationship to get wrong.
Does Bridglet do AS2 or FTPS?
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No. SFTP and the browser portal are the two ways in, and that is not a roadmap item being kept quiet. A partner who can only speak AS2 is a reason to keep the AWS endpoint.
What happens when 10 GB is not enough?
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Pro is $49/mo with 100 GB and 25 shared folders, Business is $149/mo with 500 GB. Retention carries more of the load than the number suggests, because files clear on the schedule you set instead of accumulating the way a bucket does.
Keep reading
Head to head
Bridglet vs AWS Transfer Family
The same two products, written for someone choosing between them rather than leaving one.
Use case
SFTP for data pipelines
A landing folder that tells your pipeline when a file arrived, without an event rule and a function in between.
Use case
Agency vendor file drops
One shared folder per client, credentials that reach nothing else, and retention that clears the folder without anyone remembering to.