Flatfile is a focused importer tool. If all you need is a polished UI where customers upload a CSV/XLSX, map a few fields, and fix obvious mistakes, Flatfile will absolutely do the job.
FileFeed, on the other hand, starts by giving every team a standalone embeddable importer that is 100% free forever. You can drop it into your product today without signing a contract or turning on Automated FileFeeds.
Importer Included, Forever Free
Need only the in-app importer? FileFeed ships a standalone importer that you can embed today-no paid plan required, no feature gating. The same importer also snaps into Automated FileFeeds when you are ready for end-to-end automation.
Where Flatfile Stops
- No built-in capture for SFTP, email, or scheduled feeds-your team still watches folders and cron jobs.
- Transformations, validations, and retry logic live in your own scripts once data leaves the importer.
- Reprocessing, search, and audit history require extra tooling or manual work.
The moment files arrive anywhere except your UI, you are back to writing glue code, maintaining infrastructure, and waking up to failed jobs.
What FileFeed Automates
- Capture from every source: SFTP, email attachments, integrations, manual uploads, API drops-all in one pipeline.
- Validate and transform: schema detection, mapping, normalization, custom rules, and automatic fixes out of the box.
- Deliver clean data: push to webhooks, APIs, databases, storage, or your own backend with full monitoring and reprocessing.
FileFeed is a complete system for file onboarding. It receives the files, runs your rules, and hands your app ready-to-use data without custom infrastructure.
Final Comparison
- Flatfile: best-in-class importer UI for manual uploads, but everything after upload is on your engineering team.
- FileFeed: importer plus automated pipeline-capture, validate, transform, and sync every file source with zero custom scripts.
If all data flows through your UI, FileFeed covers that for free. If feeds also arrive from SFTP exports, partner integrations, or scheduled automations, FileFeed is the only option that removes the manual work end to end.
