Talk:Comparison of FTP client software

Requested Clients and features

Far Manager

Is this a Ftp Manager? I was not abel to see the ftp functionality. ProphylacticScience (talk) 09:38, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Classic FTP

Its listed under 'gratis' but its not free. Theres a 30-day demo but after that you must pay —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.194.89.208 (talk) 16:26, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Konqueror

If Internet Explorer is listed then I think Konqueror ought to be listed too seeing as it has a much more advanced FTP client than Internet Explorer. Fyorl (talk) 08:55, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

SmartFTP?

Testing the client and reading the documentation seems like SmartFTP doesn't support SFTP. It does supports SSL/TLS ftp and ftp over ssh (port forwarding), but not SFTP. --Alesis69 05:22, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Confusion seems to abound. See SFTP. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 16:09, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Indeed - SmartFTP support forums are busy with users who want SFTP functionality. An ETA of 4Q 2006 has been posted by their developers.

Precision about Filezilla sftp mode

Actually, Filezilla doesn't support key authentication for sftp, I think it should be mentioned because the only windows client that support keys is WinSCP.

I agree that such distinctions should be made. I did check my copy of Filezilla though, and I can assure you that rev 3.3.4.1, built 2010-08-16, surely later versions, and maybe some earlier ones, does support key authentication for sftp. --AJim (talk) 18:34, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

CuteFTP vs. CuteFTP Pro

Cuteftp.com has two versions - Home and Pro. The look and feel is quite different for the two, and the feature set is probably larger for the Pro version.

FTP client features table?

I suggest adding another table that should list some of major FTP client features (like it is done in Comparison of wiki software) such as broken download / upload resuming, searching, ability to download a single file through multiple simultaneous connections to a server, proxy server support and others.

In my opinion, that information would greatly help those, who read this article in order to select a FTP that meets their needs.

But a problem here is that neither I nor most other editors are able to check each of the clients listed here against each feature, so that kind of table is likely to be incomplete.

Shambler0 02:31, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Another problem with this table: there are lots of red "no"s in the column for FTP over SSH. But I think it's actually the next column that most people are referring to when they talk about "Secure FTP", i.e. Secure File Transfer Protocol, currently labelled as "SSH file transfer protocol" in the table.

(and also, is Interarchy really the only client that supports FTP over SSH?)

Maybe the "FTP over SSH" column should be deleted, or moved to the far right, and the "SSH file transfer protocol" column renamed? - 124.168.82.182 07:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

oops, I meant the features table already there, not the proposed new one. - 124.168.82.182 07:25, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. We should only have ftp, sftp (secure), ftps (over SSL), and fxp in Protocol support; things like https/webdav seem to be unrelated. And isn't compression (MODEZ?) a server feature? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.132.203.93 (talk) 09:26, 21 January 2007 (UTC).

I think this table is really necessary. (Nhocjok 09:21, 26 March 2007 (UTC))

Agree. For those going to create the table: CoreFTP, SmartFTP support Unicode; FileZilla, WinSCP, FlashFXP, WS FTP not support Unicode. --137.189.4.1 (talk) 05:30, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it would be really good to know whether the clients support Unicode filenames. FileZilla now does, but AFAIK WinSCP doesn’t. Spel-Punc-Gram (talk) 11:28, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

I fully agree. Features I'd like to see:

• Search on a disk/server.
• Count occupied space of a folder.
• Move a file/folder on the server.
• Download a file larger than 4 GB.
• Edit a text file on a server.
• Connect to a cloud drive.
• Adware free.

No GUI?

• lftp, NcFTP - (CL) Command-Line interface only - no GUI

lftp and NcFTP seem to have no GUI, just command line interface. I've added a notation of this significant limitation. Please put the information in another better form if you can think of a good way. Please add this notation to other clients where appropriate. 69.87.202.246 00:32, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Date/Timestamps

When transfering files, the ability to retain the original date/timestamp is desirable. Standard FTP cannot upload files and retain timestamp! FireFTP cannot even download a file and retain timestamp, because it is just a Firefox extension. Filezilla cannot upload and retain timestamp, even in SFTP mode (which can support this), apparently because of its FTP heritage. WinSCP is the only program I have found so far that can upload files and retain the original timestamp, instead of resetting it to the current local filesystem time. Should we have a column for this feature, or otherwise note it in the article? 69.87.199.144 20:04, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Windows Explorer is a ftp client

Windows Explorer is a Ftp client and supports folder view. --- I have to agree, if you go into My Network Places you can choose add a network place and can upload files there. It also supports password entry and saving passwords 109.181.225.98 (talk) 13:48, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

suggest comparison

i found this freeware Freeftp --83.190.205.33 05:06, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

AOL and Netscape as FTP clients

Hi, Could someone please add entries for these 2 FTP clients (I don't have time to figure out the table format of this article):

• AOL FTP client: free (comes bundled with the AOL software); Mac OS 7.5 - Mac OS X
• Netscape products: Footnote: Netscape versions 3 thru 4.77 supported multi-file drag-and-drop FTP upload. No delete or rename capability. Versions 4 - 7 (at least) upload via the Composer or Publisher interface.

P.S. I'm surprised Netscape was missing. Has this article been vandalized?? Thanks -- JEBrown87544 23:35, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

IE not support FTPS

I searched the google. It seems that IE is not support ftps directly.

Univerwu 01:36, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Run as a Windows Service?

Can there be a section added which details whether the client can be run as a windows service? Agasante 12:15, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

FTP.EXE

add ftp.exe, and add DOS etc to the operating system support —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.202.146.22 (talk) 05:44, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I believe FTP.EXE is a port of the original BSD UNIX FTP client, which predates Microsoft entirely, and can still be found to this day on every Unix/Linux installation. It was around long before any of the others on this list. This program has a lot of history, and I'm surprised that it's not on this list. 184.57.129.13 (talk) 23:39, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Please add a column about mapping the FTP/SFTP/FTPS/WebDAV URIs as drives

That seems to be a very helpful ability. WebDrive and SftpDrive are the first candidates... 23:16, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

--Denis

Free Download Manager

Free Download Manager has support for FTP too, I think. They're affiliated with FileHippo, I believe. SharkD (talk) 10:49, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

you're right, but it has only download capitilities o.O mabdul 0=* 18:32, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

FTPRush

FTPRush is an abandoned, yet very capable and free FTP client that's worth mentioning.

LeapFTP and BulletProof FTP

LeapFTP and BulletProof FTP are both missing entirely from wikipedia, though both of them seem abandoned since 2010. They were staples for many people. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:8080:4901:63FC:902D:525F:59F7:D496 (talk) 11:48, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Merge?

I don't think it should be moved because none of the other comparison pages are merged. --Ctachme 18:24, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

None? :) Comparison_of_content_management_systems is not merged with List of content management systems or Content management system.

I think the comparison articles can become quite large, esp. if we include many clients that are not currently in the list and thus should be seperate. Perhaps the FTP client article could have a blurb about the comparison article, it seems the formatting is up in the air currently. --ShaunMacPherson 04:25, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Don't merge. --minghong 06:39, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Merge. Lists are a lightning rod for spam and the comparison is more useful & makes a list redundant. See also Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_image_viewers for precedence. --Karnesky 23:48, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Features

Is SCP and WebDAV really relevant to this article? It is not supposed to include all types of file transfers, just FTP-related ones, isn't it? Amaurea 09:59, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

For example, SFTP is no more related to FTP than SCP is. On the other hand, you are right, this article claims to be related to FTP protocol. But as long as List of SFTP clients is redirected here, SFTP should stay here. And if SFTP, then SCP too. I have already proposed once, to create a list/comparison of "file transfer clients", where I do not mean a protocol, but a functionality. Then it may refer to all file transfer protocols as this article does. --Prikryl 15:00, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

REQUEST:Move of the Comparison

Messy table

The last table is very messy - there seems to be an inconsistent number of columns. Additionally atleast the information for lftp is incorrect: it supports ftp and sftp as well as ftp over ssh and https. I am not sure how ftp over ssl is different from the other protocols. Amaurea 23:45, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup

License/OS

Just put the supported OS's in the main table. If you need to make room, you can drop the stuff about license. Nobody really gives a shit if it's "free as in speech" ... Goddamn OSS hippies.

Drop never-used formats

I would like to see the FTP over SSH column removed in the last table. Well sure some clients can do it but what are the actual use cases? It is _not_ sFTP (as the SSH subsystem not the simple file transfer protocol). So if you got SSH access you got sFTP file transfer in 99.9% of the use cases. If you want to tunnel FTP you take FTP/S - this is what everybody is doing and is standard. The only thing I could think of is some hackish access to some FTP server that is not on the same box as the SSH server via SSH port forwarding. And _then_ I am not sure if the clients that claim support for FTP over SSH actually support that. And if you wanted you always could log into your ssh box and contact the FTP server, download and then use SFTP. So in short - why using a wheelchair if you can walk? Nice for some programs if they offer you a wheelchair too but totally irrelevant for 99% of users (nothing against people with a handicap). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.74.44.175 (talk) 18:39, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Need to seperate FTP and SFTP clients

Right now, the title is inaccurate, at least. Plus, there's no distinction between FTP and SCP/SFTP client.--Ssj4android 20:45, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Commercial FTP clients

Commercial FTP clients seem to have a plethora of different versions, which are presented as different products (plain version, deluxe version, turbo-uber version, mac version and so on). This makes it hard to put them in the table. I just cleaned up some inconsistencies with ftp commander in this respect: other information was about the plain version, but the capabilites listed were those of the deluxe version. If the capabilities of the deluxe versions are different from the normal one, then this entry will have to be corrected. I suggest that we list the name of the basic version only, and mark deviations with footnotes if necessary.

The table was also riddled with external links to the commercial vendors. External links should be in the external links section at the bottom, shouldn't it? And anyway, the links belong in the articles of the clients themselves, and not in this list. Frankly, I suspect that most of the later additions of commercial ftp clients here are by their own vendors. The recently added information about bulletproof ftp client (bpftp.com has address 216.254.61.98) was added by an anonymous user at 216.254.18.172, for example. Attemts to link to articles like "60 day trial" in the license section of the table is also suspect. A big cleanup and systematisation of the list would be nice. Amaurea 11:59, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup

I started to cleanup the tables, in the next week i will do more in this comparison(and i did a cleanup in this talkpage!) mabdul 0=* 13:28, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Notability

Some of the other technology lists limit entries to those that have their own article. This ensures notability, of the client in this case, and eliminates the temptation of link spammers to add a URL just to increase their google ranking. Another advantage is that the discussion of notability happens at the article level, not here. Does any other editor have a problem if we start eliminating entries that don't have an article (blue link) associated with them? JonHarder ^talk 21:45, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Seeing no objections to using the existence of an article to guage notability, I am adding a talk page template at the top of this page that includes a notice indicating that non-article entries are subject to removal. If no one objects, I will start cleaning up the article in a few days. ✤ JonHarder ^talk 22:23, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. Do you know how difficult it is to create a new entry in wikipedia? Some ignorant editors will just delete them immediataely just because they don't know it exists, although tons of webpages are available. It happened to me twice and remembering the trouble that I had to go through, I won't do it again.

Notability does not mean that it has to be famous. This is an article on comparisons. It should be to compare as many ftp clients as possible, even those that are obsolete, such as the DOS versions. It is not difficult to resurrect them for study purposes.

I'm surprised that my favorite ftp client, ftp wanderer, which I chose after considering many other clients including wsftp, ftp explorer. You can still find its support page at http://www.pablosoftwaresolutions.com/

Othmanskn (talk) 01:33, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Filtering?

It would be really nice to have some way of filtering the tables by user's criteria. I found the page by searching for comparison of linux FTP clients (this page combines them into same group as windows) --Fry-kun 19:49, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Last release on?

How about adding a date when the last version was released? Then you can easily see which clients are abandoned and which are still in development. (someone wrote sometime)

Great idea! More useful than date of first release! And does not require an additional column -- just tack it on with the Last stable version number. 69.87.202.246 00:37, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

There is an error with the date for cURL. The latest stable release box says 7.74.0 (9 December 2020; 0 days ago[2]) [±] but todays date (in my time zone at least) is 16th December. I was going to edit it but it seems to be some sort of script language stuff that I don't have a clue about and don't want to break. --86.25.176.176 (talk) 20:53, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Fling

Fling File doesn't perform SFTP. It only does FTP. I suggest removing it from the list.

Rename

This article should be renamed "Comparison of file transfer clients" and both "Comparison of FTP clients" and "Comparison of SFTP clients" should redirect here, at a minimum. But the tricky bit is that we should also merge with "Comparison of SSH clients". Logically. But that already has quite a bit of information, about a whole different set of programs. And it would then make a huge article that would be somewhat unweildy, and some people would take offense, and start cutting out information... 69.87.200.97 19:23, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

P2P

What means that column? which application has Peer-to-Peer support? or what? if so, which protocol? (edonkey/kad/bittorent/bearshare/whatever)? think we shpould explain this or remove! mabdul 0=* 10:00, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Now I remove the column, ecause of the change from a user a long time ago.(11:38, December 28, 2007) The user didn't changed anythink since that. The P2P isn't described on the offical page, nor any download-pages, so I will remove that because no application has this feature! mabdul 0=* 10:12, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Combine Free/Freeware/etc sections into just one table

In the "General information" section, I see no need to have separate tables in 5 sections, based solely on payment method. Why not have a little more information (as needed) in the "Software license" column? I see only maybe needing to add "Trial Available" to the "Proprietary" value for those packages currently in the Trials of Payware section. The last 3 sections don't have an "Interface" column yet, but other than that, all the tables are identical.

MeekMark (talk) 21:35, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Resume download/SFTP

According to http://trac.filezilla-project.org/ticket/4147 FileZilla still doesn't download/upload files well, although the wikipedia table shows that it has resume download. Appearantly, the resume download doesn't matter, only support for the SCP protocol, and to a lower extent SFTP. SFTP is featured in FileZilla, but most FTP servers only support SCP which means that when downloading/uploading allot of files, atleast one or several of them always get corrupted (incomplete up/downloads). Since correct upload/downloads is a vital feature, I propose adding a column at "protocols" (SCP). perhaps it's also useful to mention the problem in the File Transfer Protocol client article, and mention WinSCP as a reliable free client. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.182.74.218 (talk) 10:51, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

FTP via browser

It should also be mentioned that file can be downloaded via FTP via the browser as well. The following address then needs to be given in the browser’s bar: ftp://your username@your_hosting.com .Enter. Then provide login and password in the pop-up window.

It should be noted that besides using the browser, a download manager (resumer) can also be used. An example is the "GetRight" program.

I find that the above methods often corrupt files less frequently than when using a FTP client. KVDP (talk) 13:43, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

IPv6 support

I suggest that the table containing info on protocol support is extended with a column on IPv6 support. Information indicating if numeric IPv6 addresses may be specified should somehow also be part of IPv6 info and possibly several other issues that I'm unaware of.

Perwei (talk) 07:45, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Certificate support

Any chance of listing which SFTP clients support login using SSH certificates? Ojw (talk) 13:58, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Primary capabilities

Tables don't say which client are for download purpose only, wich can upload to defined directory, wich can manage the remote directorie tree. I DO think these capabilities are important here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.250.241.172 (talk) 12:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Commander One

Hi! Can you add information about Commander One - it is new dual pane file manager with built-in FTP client? I can provide you with needed information. It has a page here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander_OneDashaG11 (talk) 14:27, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

LAN Support

Why is there no mention of LAN support? Apparently, some programs can upload files to FTP from a local area network while others ignore the capability altogether. Important to know which ones support this because it is used in multi-PC office environments where the files to be uploaded via FTP are on a local computer other than the one running the FTP client, and so they must be accessed over the LAN.

What the heck ? There is no such thing as "upload files to FTP", this is BASIC COMPUTER KNOWLEDGE. And you could always ftp between any computers, LAN or WAN or Intergalactic Missionary Network, as long as you know the ip. Seems like friend above ^ was merely interested in adding a link to his site (which I removed). Google adwords and the like wouldn't be involved here, would they ? 116.231.76.61 (talk) 08:29, 16 May 2017 (UTC)