Best Free FTP Client

Dating back to at least April 1971 the File Transfer Protocol is one ofthe oldest protocols supporting the internet and is more common thanmany people know.

FTP clients are programs that reside on a PC andenable fast bulk file transfers between the PC and a server.

Theyconnect using File Transfer Protocol via different ports. They are veryuseful when you need to download or transfer more than a few files andare an essential tool for website management. You could transfer filesone at a time and you could of course do it all freehand via the ftpprotocol in a command window - but one of these programs will beat thatany which way. No contest!


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FireFTPIf you use firefox, or if you needed one more reason to considerswitching, my top pick is FireFTP. After the latest round of upgradesit now support SFTP, compression, and while somewhat hidden even FXP(server to server transfer).



Other advanced features include directorycomparison, syncing directories while navigating, SSL encryption,search/filtering, integrity checks, remote editing, drag & drop,file hashing, and more. With this robust feature set, its ease of use,and browser integration FireFTP should now serve the needs of all butthe heaviest power user needs and is quickly becoming one of myfavorite FTP clients.


If you use a browser other than Firefox or require advancedfunctionality not found in FireFTP then one of these great standaloneapplications should meet your needs.


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Cyberduck. For MacOS users a reader has suggested Cyberduck. Cyberduck is an opensource FTP, SFTP, WebDAV and Amazon S3 browser licenced under the GPLwith an easy to use interface, integration with external editors andsupport for many Mac OS X system technologies such as Spotlight,Bonjour, QuickLook and the Keychain. I have not been able to test itbut welcome any feedback and encourage alternative suggestions if youfind them.

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FileZilla. It is the darling of the OSS crowd and certainly does the job. Some users report that WS_FTP Pro(the commercial program) has lately become far too bloated, and insteadthey have turned to one of the capable and lightweight freewareapplications.

FileZilla seems tobe their favourite. It is a very credible alternative to WS_FTP and hasmost of the features; it's lightweight in comparison but in my bookthat is often better. It uses a simple layout based on a two-paneinterface that looks a bit like the early versions of WS_FTP.


But thissimplicity is deceptive, it is actually quite a powerful product.There's a full-featured site manager, firewall and proxy support, SFTP,SSL and Kerberos GSS security, restart, drag 'n drop and a lot more.The only significant feature that's missing is site-to-site transfer,but that's probably of no importance to most users. What is ofimportance is that FileZilla is totally reliable and very easy to use.The new V3 of FileZilla adds support for Linux, Mac OS X and FreeBSD.


There's also a free FileZilla FTP server which I haven't used but Ihear that it's just as good as the client.There is now a 3PD (3rd-partydeveloper) portable version of FileZillathat has various uses, including being able to place it on a flashdrive and take it with you for a no-install (anonymous) use on any PC.

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Tunnelieris reported by a contributor as a much better proposition thanFileZilla for SFTP. It's a fast SSH client with a basic FTP clientstrapped on. The main reason for using it is that over SFTP it's manytimes quicker than FileZilla, which is vital when you are sending 200mbvideo files.




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WinSCPwill suit if you want a SCP (secure copy) client for Windows that usesSSH and offers a rich feature set. It includes a built-in terminal, itcan launch Putty directly, allows remote file editing, direct transferand transfer queuing, and has the ability to limit download speed rates.






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CoreFTP LEis my tip because it worked for me when others didn't. This is the Liteversion of the commercial product; it has an annoying nag screen onstart-up, though, that might put you off. CoreFTP could be the one foryou if you need to log on to a site that gives problems, and it alsohas a massive feature set. Its strength is probably the ease of use forsuch a powerful app.


CoreFTP has four particular strengths:
1. It has the best tricky-site access ability of any FTP client I've used.
2. It has an excellent GUI that makes it outstandingly easy to use.
3. It has a massive feature set that somehow doesn't slow it down.
4. It has good on-screen real-time logging, which not all clients have.



There are sites - especially those with extra security, where ittakes about 8 seconds to connect - that cause some FTP clientsinsurmountable problems; CoreFTP will get you in. I couldn't log on toone site at all with WS_FTP and some of the others, but this one didthe trick. The neat on-screen log display also lets you know what'shappening if you have problems.
You can force-view invisible files,like htaccess. The chmod feature is useful, you can set your directoryand file permissions with a very clear interface; ditto the clear andfast site manager. There's a nice one-click reconnect to the last sitein use.


Navigating to different drives is tricky, though, in Core - soif you have a stack of hard drives that you work from, you should keepthis in mind - FileZilla is better here.


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Here is a feature list: HIPAA compliance, SFTP/ SSH, SSL/ TLS, FTP/HTTP/ SOCKS proxy, IDN, drag 'n drop, site manager, session manager,queue manager, custom screens, bandwidthcontrol, caching,auto-transfer, retry/resume, auto-reconnect options, auto S/key, remotefile-searching, advanced directory listings, start/stop/resume oftransfers, full recursive chmod, browser integration, site to sitetransfers, file viewing and editing, firewall support, custom commands,FTP URL parsing, command line transfers, filters. This should be enoughfor most people. If not, upgrade to the $25 Pro version that that hascustom sounds, two-way encryption, ping and traceroute, and more.

Core also do a useful-looking Micro FTP Server which can beinstalled on PCs and used for PC-to-PC transfers. I'm looking forwardto trialling this. Contributors valuable contributions to this category have been made by: Tom Styles, Irene, Michael Gaul.


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thanx a lot !