Vendor SFTP feeds
Let suppliers push inventory files to a Foundry-hosted SFTP account — no server for you to run, with per-feed logins and filename routing.
Some suppliers prefer to push a feed file on their own schedule rather than host one for you to pull. Foundry hosts SFTP for exactly this: you create a feed, hand the vendor a login, and files they upload are imported automatically. There’s no server for you to run or pay for.
This is one of the import methods — the column mapping, linking, and promotion all work the same way once files land.
How it works
- In the admin, add an SFTP-push feed on a supplier source. Foundry provisions a dedicated login immediately.
- You give the vendor the connection details (below). The password is shown once at creation — copy it then.
- The vendor uploads CSVs to their folder whenever they have new data.
- Foundry sweeps each feed every few minutes, imports every new file it finds (in upload order), and removes it from the drop folder once imported.
Each feed is a separate, jailed, upload-only login — a vendor can only add files to their own folder, can’t read anything, and can’t reach other feeds.
Connection details for your vendor
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Protocol | SFTP (SSH) — not FTP or FTPS |
| Host | sftp.foundryims.com |
| Port | 22 |
| Username | Provided per feed (an opaque feed-… identifier) |
| Password | Shown once at feed creation; can be revealed again later without rotating |
| SSH key | Optional — you can register the vendor’s public key instead of, or alongside, the password |
You can reveal the password again later (so you can re-share it) without rotating it. Rotating issues a new password and immediately kills the old one — only do that when you want to cut off the current credentials, since it breaks the vendor’s existing automation until they update it.
Two things to tell the vendor
- Disable “temporary filename” / “upload then rename” transfer. Many clients (WinSCP by default) upload to a temp name and rename on completion. The jailed login can create files but not rename them, so those transfers fail. Most clients have a setting to upload directly to the final filename.
- Don’t hammer the login with bad credentials. After roughly ten failed auth attempts the server temporarily IP-bans the client for 15–30 minutes. A fat-fingered password entered on repeat is the usual trigger — slow down and re-copy the password rather than retrying in a loop.
One login, several files
A feed’s folder can hold more than one file, and the sweep imports each as its own job. If a vendor sends different kinds of file to the same login — say an inventory/price file and a product-data file — you can route files by name: set a default column mapping plus rules that match a filename pattern to a different mapping. For example, route *product* to your product-data mapping and let everything else use the inventory default.
Foundry can build a routing pattern for you from a filename the vendor has already sent, wildcarding the parts that change (dates, sequence numbers) so 20260714_Meyer_Inventory.csv becomes *_Meyer_Inventory.csv.
Map from the first file
You often don’t know a new vendor’s exact columns until they send something. You can create the feed with no mapping — the SFTP login works right away, and files the vendor uploads simply wait, unimported, in the folder. Foundry notifies you when the first file arrives; you then map it from a preview of the real file (Foundry auto-detects a draft mapping you correct), save the mapping, and the waiting files import.
Related
- Importing data — column mapping, scheduling, and the other import methods.
- Core concepts — how imported rows become catalog variants.