The Best Free FTP Client

The Best Free FTP Client I used WS_FTP Pro as my principal FTP client for years. What started out as simple but effective product gradually with each new version became more feature-bloated and less effective for simple routine tasks. With the release of Version 9 it was clear to me that the product had totally lost its way so I started looking for an alternative. After trying seven different FTP clients I decided that the best for me was the Open Source utility FileZilla [1]. It uses a simple layout based on a two pane interface that looks a bit like the early versions of WS_FTP. But this simplicity is deceptive, it is actually a quite powerful product There's a full featured site manager, firewall and proxy support, SSL and Kerberos GSS security, restart, drop and drag and a lot more. The only significant feature that's missing is site-to-site transfer but that's of no importance to me. What is of importance is that FileZilla is fast, totally reliable, secure and and very easy to use. There's also a free FileZilla FTP server which I haven't used but I hear that it's just as good as the client. If you find FileZilla's user interface a little minimal you may want to try SmartFTP [2]. It's a commercial product but is free for personal, educational or non-profit use. If you want a SCP (secure copy) client for Windows that uses SSH and offers a rich feature set there's WinSCP [3]. It features a built-in terminal, it can launch Putty directly, allows remotely file editing edit files, direct transfer and transfer queuing and the ability to limit download speed rates. Me, I'll stick with FileZilla.
Code:
[1] http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/ Free Open Source, Windows NT and later, 3.4MB [2] http://www.smartftp.com/ Free for non commercial use, Windows 2000 and later 3.3MB [3] http://winscp.net/eng/index.php Free GNU license, All Windows version, (1.4MB)