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SmartFTP Client is no longer Free. What would be the best replacement for it?

Posted by Daniel - 2,278 Views

I had been using SmartFTP (Free Version) for about 3 years, but it was about a month ago when I checked their website they stated there that they can not give SmartFTP for free anymore. Yep, it’s hard to be forced to use the other FTP Clients when I already get used to it but there’s nothing I can do except to find a replacement since I have no plan to buy it. Well, SmartFTP is a good FTP Client especially with the look and the arrangement of the panels, even I just found out that it’s a little bit slow. Do they limit the speed on the free version? I am not going to speculate, I am leaving it anyway.

The painful part when finding a new FTP Client is when I need to test-run it on my machine to choose the most suitable one since I don’t fully rely on screenshots and online descriptions. My requirements are:

• It should give me an easy ways to browse both local files and remote files. It means that the local file browser and the remote file browser should be accessible on a single window (split arrangement is preferred) and it should be placed close to each other so I can easily drag files between them.
• It should have transfer queue feature, real time debug information to monitor each process, a reporting feature such as failed transfer report, a good account manager to save my existing accounts.
• and of course it have to be FREE :D

There are so many of them available on the net. Free FTP Client key phrase with your search engine will give you a list. I tested some of them including CoreFTP, GoFTP, WinSCP, FileZilla and FireFTP. All of them perform good with the basic function but the last two are my favourite since they met the requirements I need. Let’s talk a bit about them,

FireFTP Client

It’s not a stand alone FTP Client but it’s a Mozilla Firefox add-on originally created by Mime ?uvalo, this gives me a lightweight impression when using it, but it works like the other stand alone one. You can get it for free from it’s official website. Once installed it is accessible via Firefox’s [Tools] menu. Fire FTP has several features such as Search/Filter, Sync Directories and Sub Directories. A bit surprised from it when I can’t see my .htaccess file on the server but it’s because files with a period in front of them like .htaccess are considered ‘hidden’ in the FTP world. To display these files go to Tools->Options->Show Hidden Files.

FileZilla FTP Client

I found this before on 2005 but it was not like what I see today. I got surprised with the development. It’s far more complete now. FileZilla is open source software distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface. Although it needs a window for each connection since it does not provide a tabbed style interface, it supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB (I haven’t had time to test it) and the Account Manager is cool - love it :) It is also available in many languages.

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2 Responses to “SmartFTP Client is no longer Free. What would be the best replacement for it?”

1. Rich Says:
   October 20th, 2008 at 10:28 pm

   A good FTP replacement solution is http://www.singlewrench.com it is fast and much easier to use than http://ftp.

2. RevTI Web Hosting Says:
   February 6th, 2009 at 4:29 pm

   I always use FileZilla, it’s the best FTP client and better it’s open source.

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