Key takeaways:
- FME Flow Hosted is FME Flow with a different deployment method: Safe runs it for you on AWS instead of you installing it on your own servers.
- AWS provides the infrastructure, Safe manages the operating system, database, security, patching, and ongoing operations, and you focus on using FME Flow.
- It suits teams without dedicated IT support, teams slowed by internal infrastructure processes, partners deploying for customers, and anyone who needs a public-facing FME Flow kept separate from their corporate network.
- Self-managed FME Flow is the better fit when data and infrastructure must stay inside your own firewall, or you need direct control over your architecture.
- Every new account gets $250 in free credit, so you can launch an instance and test your own workflows before paying anything.
What is FME Flow Hosted?
FME Flow is where FME workflows run in production: on schedules, in response to events, and behind web apps and services. Like any server application, it needs a server, and someone has to set up and maintain that server.
FME Flow Hosted removes that step. It is Safe Software’s hosted deployment option for FME Flow, giving you a low-barrier, self-serve way to get FME Flow up and running without building and maintaining the underlying environment yourself.
The work is split three ways:
- AWS provides the hardware, networking, and infrastructure.
- Safe Software manages the operating system, database, security, patching, and ongoing operation of the environment.
- You configure FME Flow and put it to work on your data.
Each instance is single-tenant, meaning you get your own dedicated FME Flow environment rather than sharing one with other customers. You can scale storage, memory, and processing capacity in minutes, and start, stop, or schedule your instance so it runs only when you need it.
What’s the difference between FME Flow and FME Flow Hosted?
Functionally, very little. FME Flow Hosted is FME Flow. Both share the same codebase, so schedules, automations, FME Flow Apps, and job management work the same way, and you build workspaces in FME Form and publish them the same way. The difference is how the environment is deployed and operated.
With self-managed FME Flow, you install it on your own hardware, virtual machines, or cloud account, and your team maintains everything underneath it. With FME Flow Hosted, Safe deploys and operates that environment for you, and you manage your instance through a web dashboard and API.
FME Flow Hosted was previously called FME Cloud and was renamed with the FME 2023.0 release.
When do I need FME Flow Hosted vs. FME Flow?
The two options complement each other, so the right choice depends on your IT resources, your deployment requirements, and how you use FME.
FME Flow Hosted is a strong fit if:
- You need a public-facing FME Flow. Hosted instances sit outside your corporate environment, which makes it easier to share FME-powered workflows with people outside your organization, such as public data portals or field data collection from external users, without exposing internal infrastructure.
- You don’t have dedicated IT support. A GIS or technical lead who needs FME Flow but has no one to configure and maintain a server can get running without becoming a system administrator.
- Internal processes are slowing you down. Larger organizations may have IT resources but face long infrastructure, procurement, or security approval queues. FME Flow Hosted lets you self-serve and get started quickly, whether for a prototype, a pilot, or production work.
- IT doesn’t want another server to look after. Safe takes on the operating system, database, and ongoing operations.
- Your workloads come and go. Hourly plans let you start, stop, and schedule your instance and pay only while it runs. Annual plans suit instances that run continuously.
Self-managed FME Flow is a stronger fit if:
- Everything must stay inside your own firewall, or run offline.
- Your sensitive or internal data would be difficult to expose securely to an external environment.
- Your organization requires direct control over its infrastructure and architecture.
FME Flow Hosted in action
Alpine Energy: a more reliable integration foundation. Alpine Energy, an electricity distributor serving around 36,000 homes and businesses in South Canterbury, New Zealand, was running critical integrations on an unstable legacy setup that needed daily server reboots and occasionally lost files. That made its monthly billing turnaround, with just one day to prepare data for electricity retailers, a high-pressure exercise.
Working with Safe partner Seamless Data, Alpine moved its integrations to FME Flow Hosted, in line with its cloud-first strategy. Billing became predictable, and the daily reboots disappeared. The bigger change was everything around billing:
- Visibility across the whole integration landscape. Seamless now runs 11 integrations on FME Flow Hosted covering work orders, network models, assets, defects, vegetation, outages, attachments, and third-party data, connecting systems such as ArcGIS Utility Network, Fulcrum, Business Central, Microsoft Fabric, and SharePoint.
- Trusted data for critical operations. Reliable integrations now support asset lifecycle planning, future network planning, field data, and safety-critical work such as network tracing.
- No more on-premises integration infrastructure to maintain. Alpine’s internal digital team shifted from troubleshooting broken workflows to improving services for the business.
Read the full Alpine Energy story.
Smartphone Free Schools Rating: from proof of concept to production. This volunteer-led UK initiative aims to help every school in England and Wales adopt smartphone-free policies by 2030, displaying participating schools on a public map. Its early process depended on a single volunteer manually handling registrations, updates, and the map.
With Safe partner Avineon Tensing, the team turned its FME proof of concept into an automated, production-ready system on FME Flow Hosted. Registrations are now validated, cleaned, joined to official school data, and published to ArcGIS Online automatically. Running in the cloud eliminated local infrastructure costs, the system can scale as more schools join, and volunteers can spend their time on outreach instead of data maintenance.
Read the full Smartphone Free Schools story.
Try FME Flow Hosted for free
You can start using FME Flow Hosted today at no cost. Every new account receives $250 in free credit, enough to run an entry-level instance for a couple of hours a day over a few weeks.
Getting started takes minutes:
- Sign up for an FME Flow Hosted account.
- Choose a region, instance size, and FME Flow version, then click Launch.
- Publish a workspace from FME Form and run it.
A user who knows what they need can go from sign-up to running a workspace in about 20 minutes, with the infrastructure, networking, security, and setup already handled.
Sign up for FME Flow Hosted and claim your $250 credit.
