Comparison of FTP servers

The table below compares basic characteristics of FTP Servers. This list is not exhaustive.

Name

Managed by

Target Niche

OS

Features

License

BulletProof FTP Server

Marvin Colgin

Commercial and home use

Windows® 98 SE, ME, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista and Mac OS X

Activity and Traffic Monitor, User Quota system, Bandwidth Throttling, GUI Administration with Windows System Service Support, Event Manager (eg: React on file upload), Resumed Upload/Downloads, Anti-Hammering

Proprietary

Cerberus FTP Server

Cerberus, LLC

Commercial and home use

Windows NT,2000,XP,2003, Vista

Simple Administration, TLS/SSL security, IPv6, logging, Active Directory authentication

Free for personal use

CrossFTP Server

Crossworld

Medium traffic, secure enabled (couples well with FTP and FTPS)

Windows, Mac OS X, Linux/Unix variants

GUI Administration, TLS/SSL security, monitoring, logging, File/LDAP/Database backend, Web Start with CrossFTP Client included

Apache License V2.0

CrushFTP Server

Ben Spink

Commercial to Home User

Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Unix, Solaris

FTP, FTPS, SFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, WebDAV, Remote Administration, WebInterface, Zipped Uploads and Downloads, Plugin Architecture, Usage Reports, Email Event Notification, SQL, LDAP, Virtual File System, AJAX + XSLT, Adobe PDF Form Posting and Uploads, User and Group Inheritance, Virtual File System Chaining, Virtual Domains, Quotas, Ratios, Bandwidth Limiters, Live Graphs, Self Update, Automatic Backups, UTF-8

Proprietary

Fastream IQ Web/FTP Server

Fastream Technologies

Commercial application

Windows 2000, XP Home/Professional, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Server 2003 and Vista

Web server included, TLS/SSL security control, Remote administration

Proprietary

FileZilla Server

Tim Kosse

Medium traffic, medium security, non-critical

Windows NT,2000,XP,2003

Simple administration, TLS/SSL security control, Remote administration

GPL

IceWarp Server

IceWarp Software

Commercial and free editions

Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, 2003 Server, XP, Vista

FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS, WebDAV, OTP/S-KEY, Remote GUI or Command Line Interpreter, User and Group Management, Home and Shared Folders, Virtual Hosts, Quotas, Bandwidth Throttling, Live Statistics, Automatic Synchronization, Integration with Email/IM, Active Directory and LDAP Mirroring, Service Monitoring, Watchdogs, Events

Proprietary

Internet Information Services

Microsoft

Commercial applications

Windows NT, 2000, XP Professional, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Server 2003 and future releases

Remote administration inside Active Directory

Proprietary

JSCAPE Secure FTP Server

JSCAPE

Commercial applications

Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X

Support for FTP, FTPS, SFTP/SSH, HTTP/S and WebDAV protocols. User authentication support for LDAP, Active Directory and database user repositories. Virtual file system, multiple domains and extensive support for triggers and business process automation.

Proprietary with free Community Edition available.

KDE Public File Server (kpf) 1

Rik Hemsley

small menu bar applet

Linux, BSD etc. with KDE

lightweight, basic, configurable, graphical monitoring

GPL

ProFTPd

The proftpd Project

Fast, secure, modulable

Linux, Mac OS X, Windows (with cygwin)

LDAP Authentication, TLS/SSL security control, Shaping traffic, SQL or LDAP or File Quota, Ratio ...

GPL

Pure-FTPd

Frank Denis

Production and secure environments

Linux, Solaris, HPUX, Mac OS X and FreeBSD, (Potentially Windows though unofficial)

TLS Encryption, Flexible authentication

BSD

Serv-U

Rhinosoft

High traffic, production and secure environments

Windows

NT-SAM, Active Directory, Ldap, TLS/SSL, Traffic Shaping, SQL, File Quota, Ratio, HIPAA Compliant

Free for Personal Use, Corporate versions available

Vsftpd

Chris Evans

High traffic, production and secure environments (couples well with ssh for sftp)

Linux/Unix variants

GPL

War FTP Daemon

Jarle ("jgaa") Aase

Commercial and home use, production environments, no government use

Windows

SSL, Python plugins, Quotas, soft links, file comments (via NTFS streams), EMail/SMS event notification, bandwidth limiter, NAT

Proprietary (Freeware)

wzdftpd

Pierre Chifflier

Modular, extensible, feature rich

Linux, Windows & BSD

TLS, VFS, UTF-8, IPv4/6, Zeroconf, CRC, TCL, Perl, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, customizable via SITE commands, event triggers, support for plugins/modules/scripting

GPLv2 or later

zFTPServer

Västgöta-Data AB

Home and commercial use

Windows NT,2000,XP,2003

Simple administration, TLS/SSL security control, Remote administration, virtual filesystems, Anti-Hammering, System Service

Proprietary (Freeware with paid extensions/support)

See also

  • List of FTP servers
  • List of FTP clients
  • FTP
  • FTPS