Comparison of FTP server software packages
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Graphical
Name | License | Platform | Details |
---|---|---|---|
ALFTP | proprietary, but freeware for any use | Windows only | Personal FTP server |
Cerberus FTP Server | proprietary, commercial | Windows only | FTP, FTPS, SFTP, HTTPS web client, IPv6, SOAP-based web services API, Windows Active Directory / LDAP authentication, HTTP / HTTPS remote administration, public key and client certificate authentication |
Complete FTP Server | proprietary, trialware | Windows only | FTP, FTPS, SFTP, SCP, HTTP, HTTPS, Windows Active Directory authentication, SQL authentication, groups, virtual file-system, process/e-mail events, protocol conversion for back-end servers, SSH tunnelling, file-sharing (via client app), web-app hosting via server-side Javascript, remote administration, public key and client certificate authentication, Plugin API (.NET), fail-over, load-balancing |
CrushFTP Server | proprietary, trialware | Mac OS X, Windows (all), Linux (all), *BSD, Solaris, IBM. | FTP, FTPS, SFTP, SCP, HTTP, HTTPS, WebDAV(SSL), AS2, AS3, Plugin API, Active Directory / LDAP authentication, RADIUS authentication, SQL authentication, SAML SSO Authentication, Web UI administration, Groups, Layered Inheritance, Events / Alerts, Protocol Conversion (incoming FTP/FTPS/SFTP/HTTP(s) protocols converted to a back end FTP(ES)/SFTP/HTTP(s)/S3/WebDAV server.), SSH Tunneling, HTTP(S) Tunneling, CrushTask, client certificate authentication, ad-hoc file sharing, keywords search, PGP in stream encryption / decryption, bandwidth acceleration (CrushTunnel), file revisions and synchronization, DMZ front end server mode can also cluster with load balance, DDOS protection, High Availability Virtual IP and HTTP session replication, Job scheduling and monitoring, scriptable command line file transfer client. Supports cloud storage via S3 for file data. |
FileZilla Server | open source, free software | Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1 | FTP, FTPS, supports autoban, speedlimits, IP Filter, Groups, Shared folders, compression, |
LogicalDOC | proprietary, open source | Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, *BSD, Solaris, etc. | FTP, SFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, WebDAV and WebDAV over SSL, Plugin API, Windows Active Directory / LDAP authentication, SQL authentication, Web UI administration, Events / Alerts, file revisions and synchronization. |
Microsoft Internet Information Services | proprietary | Windows only | FTP, FTPS, WebDAV and WebDAV over SSL
(FTPS is supported in IIS 7 and later) |
NASLite | proprietary | Linux based | FTP/NAS server |
Sysax Multi Server | proprietary, Free Personal Edition | Windows (All Editions) | Secure FTP Server that also supports Secure Shell Access and Web browser based secure file transfer. Protocols supported include FTP, FTPS, SFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, Telnet, and Secure Shell. Features include web UI administration, server event triggers and scripting, and authentication using Windows, ODBC, or Active Directory. Certified for Windows Vista. |
Syncplify.me Server! | proprietary, Free Personal Edition | Windows | Secure File Transfer Server with protocol support for FTP, FTPS and SFTP. Manageable via responsive web interface and REST API over HTTPS. Supports VFS, virtual folders, proprietary as well as Windows and Active Directory authentication, event-handling and scripting. |
War FTP Daemon | open source, free software | Windows 9X/2000/XP/2003 | One of the original FTP servers made for the windows platform and still available. |
WS FTP Server | proprietary | Windows only: XP or later | WS_FTP stands for WinSock File Transfer Protocol. It's developed and sold by Ipswitch, which offers it with three different prices: an FTP server, an SFTP server, and the full Corporate version with encrypting and SCP2. |
Console/terminal-based
Name | FOSS | Platform | Details |
---|---|---|---|
CrushFTP Server | No, proprietary | Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, *BSD, Solaris, etc. | FTP, FTPS, SFTP, SCP, HTTP, HTTPS, WebDAV and WebDAV over SSL, AS2, AS3, Plugin API, Windows Active Directory / LDAP authentication, SQL authentication, GUI remote administration, Events / Alerts, Protocol Conversion (incoming FTP/FTPS/SFTP/HTTP/HTTPS protocols converted to a back end FTP/SFTP server.), SSH Tunneling, HTTP(S) Tunneling, CrushTask, Headless (A separate GUI machine can connect and control the server, or you can edit XML files directly.) |
glFTPd | No, proprietary | Linux, BSD, Mac OS X | Virtual users and groups, private paths, bandwidth throttling, upload/download ratio support, on the fly CRC calculating of files being uploaded, script support on almost all commands and operations, online user management, built-in statistics viewable using site commands, FTPS and ACL support. Supports FXP. |
GoAnywhere MFT | No, proprietary | Linux, BSD, Unix, AIX, i5/OS, HP-UX | Enterprise level managed file transfer solution with secure FTP server, automated workflows, scheduler, clustering, triggers, monitors and audit logs. Protocols supported include FTP, FTPS, SFTP, SSH, SSL, TLS, SCP, HTTP, HTTPS, AS2, ICAP, SMB, CIFS, Active Directory / LDAP authentication, Open PGP, GPG, ZIP and SQL. Provides a browser-based interface for administration. Protects data in motion and at rest with FIPS 140-2 validated encryption. Includes a HTTPS web client for ad-hoc file transfers. |
ProFTPD | Yes, GPL | Unix-like (Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, and more[1]), Windows with Cygwin | Very feature rich and popular FTP daemon for Unix-like platforms. Many third party Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) available. SFTP with a module.[2] |
Pure-FTPd | Yes, BSD License | Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, and more | Supports FXP. |
vsftpd (Very Secure FTP Daemon) | Yes, GPLv2 | Linux, BSD, and more | FTP, FTPS, FTPES. Anonymous can be forced to use FTPES. Optionally validation of client certificates can be configured. The access of users can be controlled by deny and enable lists. The server can be configured to generate detailed activity logs - the log format may be verbose or compatible with wu-ftpd format. vsftpd is default FTP daemon in Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, Slackware (along with ProFTPD), NimbleX and RHEL. Others like Debian require an additional installation. The licensing model of vsftpd is GPLv2 with exception which allows linking with OpenSSL library. |
wu-ftpd | No, proprietary | Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and more | Main website seems offline, but continues development in the newer CC series |
Libraries
Name | Licence | Language | Platform | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|
pyftpdlib | MIT License | Python | Platform independent | A high-level portable library to easily write asynchronous FTP servers with Python. It is currently the most complete RFC-959 FTP server implementation available for Python. |
Summary board
ALFTP | Cerberus | Complete | CrushFTP | FileZilla | IIS | Multi Server | ProFTPD | SFTPPlus | Syncplify.me Server! | WS FTP | Pure-FTPd | vsftpd | Wu-ftp | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
License type | proprietary | proprietary | proprietary | proprietary | FLOSS/GPL2 | proprietary | proprietary | FLOSS/GPL | proprietary | proprietary | proprietary | BSD | FLOSS/GPL2 | proprietary | |
OS | Linux | No | No | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Mac OS X | No | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
Unix | No | No | ? | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
IBM i/OS | No | No | ? | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | ? | ? | ? | |
Windows | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | ? | |
User Interface | CLI | ? | ? | ? | Yes | ? | ? | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | ? | ? |
GUI integrated | ? | Yes | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | ? | |
GUI(s) separately | ? | ? | ? | Yes | ? | ? | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | ? | ? | |
Services | FTP | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
SFTP | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | |
FTPS | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | ? | |
SCP | ? | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | ? | Yes | No | Yes | ? | ? | ? | |
WebDAV | ? | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | ? | No | No | No | ? | ? | ? | |
HTTP/HTTPS | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | ? | |
AS2 | No | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | ? | No | No | No | ? | ? | ? | |
Authentication | LDAP | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | ? |
Active Directory | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | ? | |
Local | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
Database | ? | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | ? | |
High Availability | Failover Cluster (active/passive) |
No | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | ? | No | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | ? |
Load Balancing (active/active) |
No | Yes | ? | Yes | No | Yes | ? | ? | No | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | ? |
See also
- Comparison of FTP client software
- File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
- FTPS (FTP over SSL/TLS)
- FTP over SSH
- SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
- Comparison of SSH servers
- Comparison of SSH clients