SFTP: the file transfer your housing system already knows how to do.

Not every housing CMS speaks webhooks, and not every IT team wants to stand up an API project for one integration. SFTP is the plainer alternative housing IT has run for decades: a folder on a server you already control, files landing in it or being picked up from it. HousingSurvey Pro connects to that server as a client — no API project, no inbound firewall rule for us to reach you, nothing new to install beyond one key on an account you already manage.

Platform planSFTP is included on the Platform tier and above, alongside the REST API, webhooks and EDI exports — see pricing.

You keep the server. That's the security model, not a limitation.

HousingSurvey Pro is always the client, never a listener you connect into — there is no shared or multi-tenant SFTP endpoint anywhere in the platform for someone to find. Every server you add gets its own freshly minted keypair (ed25519 by default, RSA-4096 if your server needs it); only the public half is ever shown to you, and the private half never leaves HousingSurvey Pro's backend. The first successful connection's host-key fingerprint has to be explicitly confirmed before it's trusted — after that, the connection fails closed if your server ever presents a different key, whether that's a legitimate re-key or something worse. Revoking access is entirely in your hands: remove the key from your server, or disable the account, and the connection stops working immediately.

What moves, in which direction

Two directions, both built on the same connection and the same delivery guarantees:

• Outbound. Nightly EDI flat-file exports can deliver straight to your server alongside the existing download link — SFTP delivery is additional, never a replacement, so a delivery problem never blocks the export itself. Survey report PDFs, works-completed PDFs, resident letters, invoices and your tenancy register can each be sent to a chosen server on demand. Every file lands via a write-then-rename — nothing watching the folder ever sees a half-written file under its real name.
• Inbound. Property/UPRN stock, SOR repair-rate schedules, and tenancy records can be pulled in as CSV files from a folder you point at. Every pull previews first — files found, rows to create or update, anything that failed to parse — and writes nothing until you confirm, at which point the files are re-checked against what you just previewed so nothing gets imported blind.

Stated plainly: what's not there (yet)

No certification claims are made about this feature, and neither is anything not actually built: inbound pulls are manual, not scheduled; the SFTP path takes CSV, not XLSX. If any of that changes, this page changes with it.

Set up in minutes, not a change request

An org admin adds a server under Settings → SFTP servers, mints a key (or uses a password, if that's what your server requires), runs a real connection test, and confirms the fingerprint. From there, sending or pulling files is a couple of clicks — no ticket to your integration vendor, no waiting on anAPI allowlist. The full setup guide walks through every step, including what each test-connection failure actually means.