Comments on: Mac OS X FTP Clients Throwdown

By: toro

toro — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:28:33 +0000

check out macfusion, it integrates into the finder, so u can save to FTP from any save dialogue!

By: Charlie

Charlie — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:11:14 +0000

Thanks for this post! Very helpful.

By: ForkLift - Best Damned OS X FTP Client « Mister E.

ForkLift - Best Damned OS X FTP Client « Mister E. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:13:21 +0000

[...] started with this review to get a beginning list of [...]

By: Mejne

Mejne — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 11:18:44 +0000

Thanks to Jim Jordan for reminding everyone that Filezilla also exists for Mac.
I always find it funny how Mac users like to pay for crappy software while they can get high quality open-source for free.
I agree Filezilla doesn’t look that great on OSX but it does work great and has all the features you can expect from an FTP client.

By: Brandon Klapholz

Brandon Klapholz — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 03:18:05 +0000

This is perhaps the lamest article I have ever come across comparing OS X ftp clients.

What exactly do you consider an “advanced feature”?

ncftp, net2ftp, manyot her options exist including TextWrangler’s built in ftp, and a thousand more on freshmeat and sourceforge – although Interarchy, Viacom, and Yummy aren’t bad… i refuse to pay for http://ftp…thats ridiculous – you don’t even have to on Windows.

I will concede the overall client list for ftp on OS X is relatively pathetic compared to other platforms.

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 23:12:59 +0000

The FTP and FXP client named CrossFTP looks good, and the basic version is free:

By: Jim Jordan

Jim Jordan — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:47:59 +0000

Free (GPL), very capable, cross-platform, open source

http://filezilla-project.org/

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 23:40:38 +0000

People who love Transmit have not tried Yummy.

By: JoeSmall

JoeSmall — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 08:30:55 +0000

check out forklift at http://binarynights.com. It’s a new app with built in FTP/SFTP client. I love it!

By: Tim McIntosh

Tim McIntosh — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 07:42:39 +0000

Minor correction: The comment that “Son of Fugu” adds nothing is incorrect. It adds the ability to do remote editing with any application, as opposed to Fugu, which only supports external editors implementing the BBEdit protocol.

By: will

will — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 23:06:23 +0000

Re: Jason,
Panic rep here, we didn’t charge for our universal release. In fact, if you look at the 3.5 release notes you’ll see a plethora of features without a hint of an upgrade fee. We only charge across major versions (ie. 2.0 to 3.0) which we feel are well worth the modest upgrade price. Thanks for the kind words about Transmit…we’re glad you like it!

cheers, will

By: FTPplanet.com Blog

FTPplanet.com Blog — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 12:11:05 +0000

FTP Clients for the Mac OS X…

It’s a bit more difficult to find a great FTP client for a Mac (after all, WS_FTP is only available on Windows ;-). I came across a fantastic analysis of the various Mac FTP clients available over on The Apple……

By: MacJedi

MacJedi — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 13:33:29 +0000

Hmmm…I don’t think Captain FTP has an ugly interface and I think it is wrong of you to eliminate potentially the top client in this category based on a subjective opinion. Most of the reviews on the shareware sites indicate users like me really like the interface.

Captain FTP is rated in the top two or three by most independent Mac reviewers like MacWorld for example.

It is definitely the most reliable and full featured client out there for heavy duty users and beginners.

Looks like you do have a problem, I have made synchronizations with the Captain for projects containing 5,000 files and over 1GB in size without a hitch. I have also been able to do this with some of the other clients you mentioned.

By: Jason

Jason — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 18:05:21 +0000

Transmit all the way. The only downside is that they charge you for major upgrades, i.e. from powerPC to Intel.

By: Yvonne

Yvonne — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 08:06:39 +0000

RBrowser – Crippled demo (only FTP), lack of modern Nice to Have features, and it’s high price make this an unattractive app stacked up against the new generation of FTP apps.

I’ve been using the RBrowser ‘demo’ for a while, and it’s great for doing simple FTP tasks. Though Cyberduck is OK too :/

By: Anto

Anto — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 03:42:47 +0000

Erik, I think the problem is your internet connection, your NAT box (if you have one), or your ftp server. We regularly transfer *very* large directories with Interarchy, the biggest at the moment contains 368892 files. I find it difficult to believe Interarchy is the problem, especially when so many other ftp clients fail too.

By: Somazx

Somazx — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 22:00:03 +0000

I do use FTP every day – in conjunction with a textmate. Ideally the FTP is built into the editor or the OS (even better) I’m not paying $30 for something as basic as (S)FTP.

By: Jim Matthews

Jim Matthews — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 15:01:43 +0000

Eric: Yes, we do test with transfers of thousands of files. We’d love to figure out why Fetch stalls on your big transfers, and correct the problem in a future release. If you have some time and are comfortable collecting packet traces please drop me a note at bugs at fetchsoftworks dot com.

By: Erik

Erik — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 10:33:43 +0000

I tried them all, and have spent too much money and time looking for one that actually works in OS X. I frequently upload hundreds of small files and Yummy FTP is the only one that has been successful consistently without stalling out (and no I am not affiliated with them in any way either – just a satisfied customer). The Terminal FTP/SFTP is consistent I should say, but I do like to have drag and drop simplicity. I don’t know what the problem with all the other FTP apps is, but as a web developer this is really not something they should have problems with. You can’t believe how annoying it is when you have a couple hundred files and have to go manually check all of them to make sure they weren’t corrupted, because the FTP app decided to stall out. And NEVER being able to upload that new photo album, for example, without uploading only 10 or so files at a time is a complete waste of my time. Other ftp apps time out and continue to the next, etc. Then you get to play the “go search for the corrupted file game”. I used Cyberduck for a long time and just couldn’t work with all the force quit/stalling. It’s getting better, but not there yet. I’d still condider Cyberduck a very beta, and wonder why the author of this blog gave it a strong 3rd place. Drawers for bookmarks? Yea, great, whoopie, but if the app locks up all the time during a process of what it’s supposed to do, who cares? Cap’n FTP had plenty of stall outs too, along with Transmit, Interarchy, and Fetch. All the same problems. Maybe it’s my target FTP server (PureFTP on Linux mostly), but Yummy FTP handles all those big, complex uploads with tons of files, no problem, where the other FTP apps just conk out after maybe 1MB or so, or after a few files. It makes me wonder if the other guys even tested their software trying to upload more than 50 or so files at one time?

By: Rick

Rick — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:59:30 +0000

Sorry to be pedantic, but this blog has a lot of exposure, and if you learn this once all your future articles will be just a little bit better: The possessive “its” doesn’t have an apostrophe. So, in your sentence

Although early in it’s development, it’s already quite bad.

you should take out the first apostrophe (before development) and leave the first one in.