Apologies if this question isn't relevant.
I'm looking for a product which will provide some kind of document portal for customers. Simple idea is I upload document to customer area, where the customer can see that document (once they have authenticated). Something like sharepoint, but simpler (cheaper?!)
Something that runs as near to "out of the box" as possible too.
Alfresco has a (free) community version. It's meant as a sharepoint replacement, among others. You can access documents through cifs, webdav, ftp, a website or directly in Office through the sharepoint interface.
WebDAV will provide what you require. Apache + mod_dav is all that you need at the cost of $0. See for instance: http://karol.miaskiewicz.com/?p=398
HyperOffice would be a perfect fit. You can centralize document storage online by groups (teams, clients, partners). You can collaborate with version control, comments and notifications, and manage access using authentication and permissions.
There are many, many options to choose from that are based on the LAMP stack, as 90% of the open source Content Management Systems offer user/role-based logins and the rudimentary document management you're looking for. I'd say most will run on IIS + PHP + MySQL if you must use Windows as your server OS, but Linux is generally the preferred OS.
Drupal in particular would work well and it's widely-supported with a large community should you run into any issues.
You can also demo many other CMSs at: http://opensourcecms.com
Just because it needs to be said, you've described FTP. Just about any browser will function as an FTP client these days, it's free, and it's simple.
If Windows servers are your thing, there's a free version of Sharepoint, which should be fairly user-friendly.
