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At my company we use FTP to share releases and e-mail to notify customers of the availability.

I'm looking for a service offering:

  1. Easily upload of a file
  2. Users need to sign in to download
    • and keep a record of which user have downloaded what
  3. proper UI

Any ideas?

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What you're after is an Binary repository manager

Quoting from Wikipedia with added links:

Notable Universal package managers include:[6]

I know for sure Nexus and Artifactory match your requirements (even if proper UI is a bit subjective and you mileage may vary).

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  • This isn't very user friendly. IT's perfect for the DevOps to manage the supply chain, etc.. but I am looking for a customer facing tool.
    – André Moreira
    Commented Jun 26, 2017 at 13:53
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    Then you're after a CRM maybe ? I don't get what's wrong with artifactory or nexus web interface for a customer with restricted rights bringing them on the product release page only.
    – Tensibai
    Commented Jun 26, 2017 at 14:07
  • Well, it's just the setup actually (the same goes for a CRM). We are building our DevOps team (hiring actually), so I'm looking for something very simple and throw away once we have team in place to properly take care of the pipeline.
    – André Moreira
    Commented Jun 26, 2017 at 14:39
  • Then use a goodle drive directory and let customers subscribe to notifications ?
    – Tensibai
    Commented Jun 26, 2017 at 15:00
  • That's exactly what I am doing :)
    – André Moreira
    Commented Jun 26, 2017 at 15:40
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In DevOps, it is not always about just piciking the right tool, but understanding what is happening also in terms of the workflow. Interesting aspects are here delivered value (like saved time) and how the process can be scaled if you get more customers.

Without knowing further details, I would suggest to investigate what your customers do after they have got the release.

  • Do they use it to install at their workplaces? In this case, customer-friendly mechanism is some sort of autoupdate through update site or providing a link to a CDN, content delivery network service (you just distribute your releases after all as binary content).

  • Or, are these customers technical users, like system engineers, who have to upload the releases which are actually system components to further FTP interfaces? Here you might want to find out whether it makes sense to investigate seamless integration with their content delivery pipeline.

  • Or, are these releases executable installers? In this case, you might consider something either like a Bamboo Deploy Plan or integration with customers' configuration as code system (like Chef or Puppet).

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  • I agree with everything you said and that's why we are adding a DevOps team in our company. Right now I am looking for something pretty dumb that I can use to release software and notify registered users that a new release is available.
    – André Moreira
    Commented Jun 26, 2017 at 14:42

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