Commander One / CloudMounter ($30/$45 each, Eltima Software, ) But while on average, paid apps work better than free ones, some are far more worth paying for than others. If you actually shell out money for a file-transfer app, expect fancier features such as more connection options, droplets, and sophisticated synch abilities. Still, if you need a free app simply to move files to and from an FTP server, you could do a whole lot worse than this.įree - Download now (opens in new tab) Paid Apps You definitely get what you pay for: Neither ForkLift version will remember your server passwords or store them in the Keychain, and in ForkLift 2, Droplets - a mini-app that lets you transfer files to a specific destination just by dragging and dropping files onto it, without opening ForkLift itself – just didn't seem to work.

In addition to the usual FTP and WebDAV options, ForkLift can connect to Amazon S3, AFP, and SMB servers. It offers respectable (though not amazing) transfer speeds, and a clean, Mac-like interface I found intuitive and appealing.

If you're going to pay for an FTP client, you have better choices than this one.įree - Download now (opens in new tab) ViperFTP Lite (Naarak-Studio, )įorkLift's creators are giving version 2 away for free on the App Store to promote their newer version 3, which we'll get to later in this roundup. Rather than use two panes - one showing a folder on your local computer, the other showing the remote directory to which you've connected, so that you can easily drag and drop files between the two – Cyberduck's single pane obliges you to drag files to and from a separate Finder window, a needless bit of extra hassle.Īnd while the program's technically free, it'll nag you to pay up often, and charges App Store downloaders a lot more ($24) than it does folks who purchase a registration key on its own site (a minimum donation of $10). But it loses points for a dated, unattractive interface – including when synching – and for its baffling decision to use a single-pane layout.

It also offers the ability to synch up a local and remote directory, a powerful feature more often found in paid apps. This veteran contender boasts crazy fast file transfers and an impressive roster of cloud service options: Amazon S3, Google Drive, Google Cloud Storage, Azure, Backblaze, Dropbox, OneDrive, and DRACOON.

Best file manager for mac os