Web Design Workplace loves affordable web design tools and this post features the new King of FTP – Filezilla. There have been free FTP clients since the 1980′s. And every year as the technology has advanced, free tools have frequently become proprietary and expensive. I used WS_FTP for many years – when it was affordable (this is when it was free). Now they want $35 for each copy of the “home” version of WS_FTP and compared to the free cost of FileZilla – forget about it. Go with Filezilla.
Regular FTP has some major security flaws although it is used millions of times per hour all over the world and has been for decades. Now Encrypted FTP is another matter. Encrypted FTP hides the login credentials that can easily been recorded by a sniffer (protocol analyzer). But it’s proprietary – there are lots of different companies making one. And it requires a server component and a client component. That usually makes it expensive. There is nothing in the freeware arena yet that handles the FTP encryption and also the data encryption for the actual file transfers.
So if you’re a regular Joe and don’t usually need to go Top Secret with your FTP activities – Filezilla is a great work horse for daily use. If you need encryption talk with your hosting service first to see if they offer any recommendations. In most cases with a regular hosting account you just can’t use encrypted FTP yet.
