Recently while discussing how to use FTP to upload files to WordPress, one of our users asked us to recommended the FTP clients for Windows and Mac. There are plenty of free and paid FTP clients available. In this article, we have hand-picked some of the best FTP clients for WordPress beginners. The goal here is to find the most reliable, secure, and easy to use FTP tool for all your WordPress file editing and uploads.
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File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is tailor-made for quickly moving large digital files between a remote computer acting as an FTP server and an FTP client that lets you access and upload those files. Best FTP Clients For Mac File Transfer Protocol ( FTP ) is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host or to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. It is a fast and convenient way to transfer files over the Internet. Aug 08, 2017 AndFTP for upload footage to FTP shutterstock server. The Best File Manager and FTP Client for Mac - Duration. Shutterstock upload tutorial for the NEW Upload system 2017.
What is an FTP Client? Why You Need it?
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) allows you to upload files from your computer to your WordPress site. In order to use FTP, you will need an FTP client which is a desktop app that connects your computer to your WordPress hosting account.
- FTP stands for the File Transfer Protocol. An FTP client is generally used to copy files from one machine to another over the Internet. Two computers involved in an FTP transfer are called a client and a server.
- FireFTP (for Windows and Mac, FREE) FireFTP is another cross-platform FTP client, this time available as an extension for the popular Mozilla Firefox browser. Simply download the free extension by following this link, restart Firefox, and then enjoy FTP access directly from your internet browser.
- After using “GET” and “PUT” commands for so many years, it seemed a bit awkward to start using point-and-click FTP file transfer clients The 3 Best Free FTP Clients for Windows The 3 Best Free FTP Clients for Windows FTP is a useful file sharing method and the go-to method for uploading files to a web host. Here are the best FTP clients you can grab for free.
It provides an easy to use graphics user interface, so that you can perform all FTP functions such as copy, upload, delete, rename, and edit files / folders on your WordPress site.
It is not necessary to install an FTP client to use WordPress. However, an FTP client can help you quickly fix common WordPress errors when you are not able to access WordPress admin area.
How to Use an FTP Client?
You will need a FTP username and password in order to connect to your WordPress site.
This information can be found in the email you got when you first started your blog and signed up for a web hosting account.
You can also get this information from your web hosting cPanel dashboard or ask the support, and they will email it to you.
Once you have this information, you can connect to your website.
First, you will need to launch your FTP client and enter your FTP username, password, host (usually your website address e.g. wpbeginner.com), and then click on the connect button.
Host is usually your website’s URL (e.g. wpbeginner.com).
If you do not enter anything in the port field, then your FTP client will connect using the plain FTP protocol on port 21.
You can use port 22 to connect to your server using SFTP which encrypts information before sending it to your web server. This reduces the chances of hackers stealing your FTP password or sniffing on information.
Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the best FTP clients available for WordPress users on different platforms.
Best FTP Clients for WordPress Users
There are several paid and free FTP clients available for different platforms and operating systems. Each one of them comes with an easy to use interface and additional features that will make it easier for you to edit WordPress files.
1. WinSCP
WinSCP is one of the most powerful and easy to use FTP client for Windows users. It feels like there are too many things on the user interface, but it is actually quite easy to learn.
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On your left, you have the files on your computer and on the right, you see the files on your server. Just click on a file to download, upload, or edit it.
For advanced users, WinSCP has all the features that you would need from a powerful FTP client. It supports SFTP, SSH, and of course the plain old FTP. Handling files and assigning default editors is quite easy with WinSCP.
Platform: Windows
Price: Free
Price: Free
2. Cyberduck
CyberDuck is an extremely easy to use FTP client suitable for beginners as well as advanced users.
It is available for Mac and Windows computers. Unlike other cross platform applications, it actually integrates beautifully with your native Mac environment. It also supports Mac features like storing your login credentials in keychain and locating files in finder.
You can select your preferred code editor and open files for editing with the click of a button.
Platform: Windows, Mac
Price: Free
Price: Free
3. Transmit
Transmit is the most popular FTP client for Mac, particularly among web developers. It comes with an extremely powerful set of features like folder syncing, disk feature, and higher speeds.
Transmit beautifully integrates into your native Mac environment which makes it super easy for Mac users to learn quickly. You can add your transmit shortcuts to Finder as favorites and quickly access them.
It supports SSH, SFTP, FTP, FTPs connections. It also comes with a neat code editor for quick file edits.
Platform: Mac
Price: Free, Paid version for $34
Price: Free, Paid version for $34
4. Free FTP
Free FTP by Coffee House is a popular FTP client among Windows users. It is very beginner friendly and quite easy to use.
It supports FTP, SFTP, FTPS, and beautifully integrates into your operating system. It has a history feature which allows you to remember where you stored a file.
There is a paid version available as well which is called Direct FTP. It has extra features like code editor, autocompletion, image viewer, etc.
Platform: Windows
Price: Free, Paid version for $39
Price: Free, Paid version for $39
5. FileZilla
FileZilla is a popular free FTP client for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
It is perhaps, the most easy to use FTP client. However, the reason we have placed it on the fifth position is because Windows users have reportedly found adware or spyware packaged into FileZilla downloads.
You can uncheck the box during the installation to opt-out from adware, but since many of our users are beginners, we are afraid that they may miss it and eventually end up with an adware on their computer.
Our experienced users can install FileZilla from official website. Linux users will find Filezilla available in their distro’s official repositories.
Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux
Price: Free
Price: Free
6. WS_FTP Professional
WS_FTP Professional is a popular commercial FTP client for Windows. It offers enterprise grade security with SSH, and 256-bit AES, FIPS 140-2 validated cryptography and OpenPGP file encryption for transfers.
It comes with powerful file search, drag and drop transfers, faster speeds, scheduled transfers, and many more advanced features.
Platform: Windows
Price: From $49.95
Price: From $49.95
We hope this article helped you find the best FTP client for uploading files to WordPress. You may also want to take a look at our beginner’s guide to pasting code snippets in WordPress.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
FTP, which stands for File Transfer Protocol, is the standard method used these days to easily transfer files between your PC/Mac and your server. Whether free or paid, there are tons of FTP clients for Mac users. Some of these are simply for a quick download use, while those of you who frequently use FTP for your servers may appreciate spending a few bucks for a solid, full-featured FTP client. Either way, we’ve listed our favorite free and paid FTP clients below, so be sure to have a look:
Top Free FTP Clients
1. CyberDuck
There’s a reason why CyberDuck is voted as one of the best free FTP clients by many Mac communities: the features it offers for free. The client offers tons of features, including Google integration, Amazon S3, Amazon Cloudfront and more. It also supports Quick Look, Growl, and quick remote editing with a text editor of your choice.
The app is available in many different languages, with translations offered by worldwide users. Connecting to a FTP server is a breeze, browsing your remote server is pretty easy, and overall, CyberDuck is really, really simple to use. It gets our vote for the best free FTP client available for OS X today.
CyberDuck is also available for Windows. For Mac, it requires OS X 10.6.6 or later.
2. FileZilla
FileZilla is a free FTP client available for Windows, Mac and Linux users. While less known on OS X, the Windows counterpart of the app is more famous, owing to its ease of use. Still, we’ve found the OS X version to be a tad bit more difficult to use than the Windows version.
One of the features I like most about FileZilla is it shows you the status, responses and commands from your server, which is great for a software with a lack of a price tag. FileZilla is completely free and requires OS X 10.5 or later.
3. FireFTP
FireFTP isn’t really a separate FTP client app, but rather an extension that integrates directly into Mozilla Firefox. FireFTP is more suited for those of you who need a simple FTP client for the occasional upload or download, as the extension doesn’t really support all those features that other FTP clients listed do. Still, being able to run the client directly from inside Firefox is a huge added bonus.
FireFTP runs off all platforms that support Mozilla Firefox.
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Top Paid FTP Clients
If you are frequently using FTP to manage your clients’ servers and are not afraid to spend a few bucks for a quality FTP client, check out the best paid ones below:
1. Transmit
Transmit is a useful FTP client with a simple and intuitive user interface. It features many different useful options, including the standard remote file editing, folder sync options, etc. In addition, it features a Dashboard widget, droplets for quick drag-and-drop uploading to favorite locations, inline previews, etc.
Transmit can also do server-to-server transfers from one server’s tab to another’s. Transmit also integrates with the OS X Finder, allowing you to mount servers like disks.
Transmit features a steep price tag at $34, but you get a proper, full-fledged software for your well-earned money.
2. Yummy FTP
Yummy FTP is another great FTP client, for a good price. While the application is pretty basic in various ways, mainly because of its core features, a few things make this client really unique. The application features a nice little tool called DualBrowse which allows for easy synchronized browsing of local and remote directories on your server.
Yummy also features “FTP aliases”, which allow you to create aliases of your FTP server(s) anywhere within Finder. You can then easily drag-and-drop files onto these aliases to automatically upload the file to the server. Pretty neat. The app also features a preview pane for files.
Yummy costs $14.99, and runs on OS X 10.6.6 or later.
3. Fetch
Fetch is amongst the first and oldest FTP clients developed for Macs and operates using a single pane uploading interface, similar to Finder. It has a clean, simple and easy-to-use interface, and supports the obvious FTP and SFTP connections as well as other secure connections using the Kerberos service.
One of the app’s main selling points is its stability. The app is known to be bug-free (most of the time), and rarely crashes. Another feature supported by the app is automatic file compression on upload, which can be really useful for some people. Still, we’d like to see frequent drop-boxes supported by the app for quick uploads (maybe sometime in the future?)
Fetch is compatible with Intel Macs running OS X 10.5 or above and costs $25.
Honourable mention – Flow
Flow is one of the best-looking feature-packed FTP clients around. The app has a layout similar to what Finder looks like, and the transitions included look pretty sweet. The reason why it is not in the above list is because its previous versions were buggy and it has almost been abandoned by the developers with no update for the past 2 years.
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Flow includes some really nice features, including a built-in editor. The editor allows users to easily and quickly make changes to HTML, CSS, etc. It also gives you a preview of the current page you’re editing, and it has its neat little color palette. If you don’t mind paying $4.99 for a software that has not been updated for the past 2 years, Flow is a good choice.
Conclusion
As I mentioned earlier, there are tons of FTP clients for Mac and this list is definitive not conclusive. If your favorite FTP client is not in the list, do let us know in the comments.