Free FTP Clients For Mac

If you have a self-installed WordPress blog, you should be familiar with File Transfer Protocol (FTP). This is the protocol used by WordPress users to upload plugins and themes to the web server. FTP is also a popular protocol used by website builders to transfer files between computer and web server.

To be able to use FTP, you need an FTP client. There are two kinds of FTP clients: computer-based and web-based, but we are not going to discuss the web-based clients here.

While trying to update one of my blogs, I tried to search for several alternative FTP clients for my Mac. And here are the results

A. Multiple OS FTP Clients

1. Classic FTP –> is a fully featured, free FTP client available for Mac OS X and Windows. It has a “Mirror and Upload” tool which will scan a selected local folder and upload any files that do not exist on the remote folder. The application also allows you to synchronize navigation of a local and remote folder.

2. CrossFTP –> is designed to be an easy-to-use client. It has a two-pane browser-like user interface which is simple to learn and use. Multi-tabs design facilitates managing and connecting multiple FTP sites simultaneously in a single window. It’s written in Java so it would work in any Java-enabled machine.

3. FileZilla –> is a popular Windows-based FTP client. I didn’t even know that there was a Mac version of FileZilla until I researched for this article. I had high hopes when I was about to use this app for the first time. But personally, I think that the Mac version is not as easy to use as the Windows version. FileZilla is also available for Linux.

B. Mac-only FTP Clients

4. Cyberduck –> is a open source product licensed under the GPL and free to use. It is available in many languages and most translations are contributed by users. It is voted by many Mac communities as one of the best FTP clients available for Mac. Cyberduck is also available as a dashboard widget.

5. OneButton FTP –> is a graphical FTP client for Mac OS X with a strong emphasis on simplicity, drag and drop usability, and file queuing. It allows you to easily transfer files to and from remote servers, such as the ones hosting your websites, simply by dragging files to and from your computer. At the time of writing, this app is no longer supported by the author, but still works fine.

6. MacFusion –> is an open source Mac application that allows you to work with files on servers across the internet, as if they were sitting on your computer. Macfusion presents as a Volume in Finder. Macfusion works with SSH/SFTP and FTP servers. This app requires Leopard and Google’s MacFUSE. You can learn more about how to set up MacFUSE on the wiki howto page or the Quicker Start Guide page.

C. Dashboard FTP Widgets

7. Ãœbertragen –> is a widget designed to transfer files, be it to a FTP server, to another Mac running Ubertragen on your local network (through Bonjour) or to one of your Bluetooth devices.

8. Fire Widget –> is a drag-and-drop FTP upload widget. It has a simple interface and runs nicely. Just drop a file, the gate slides up, the file gets transfered, and you are done.

There are others, of course, which did not make it to the list simply because of my lack of knowledge. So, if you know any other alternatives, please share using the comment below.