CuteFTP 8 is the latest product release from GlobalSCAPE, a leading provider of managed file transfer software. The latest version of its excellent FTP client is available in both Home ($39.99) and Professional ($59.99) versions. Home offers value and ease-of-use for the casual user, while Professional maintains that ease-of-use and adds strong security and automation of tasks for business users.
Key new additions to CuteFTP 8 include PGP encryption, podcasting support (dedicated Podcast Manager feature), expanded backup options, in addition to improved search and enhancements to the interface that make it even easier to use than ever before. Really, using CuteFTP Professional 8.0 is a snap - from installing the software, to entering FTP server details and managing folder views.
CuteFTP 8 isn’t a revolution in FTP, but it is a logical evolution of GlobalSCAPE’s client application. The addition of PGP encryption to existing SSL and SSH security makes CuteFTP 8 rock solid for file transfer security and compatibility, and its Task Automation Wizards make configuring automated transfers such as site mirroring, site back-ups and scheduled transfers quick and intuitive.
You have a variety of features which enhance file transfer. The accessible interface allows you to easily update and maintain sophisticated Web sites. You can safeguard transfers of mission critical files with CuteFTP Professional’s security features, as well as speed the transfer of large architectural, graphic, or engineering files with multi-part accelerated downloads. Site caching allows you to minimise bandwidth while you browse, and you can even schedule and script FTP transactions using the autonomous Transfer Engine.
CuteFTP Professional includes the Transfer Engine (TE), and an integrated HTML editor. You can use the Transfer Engine from within CuteFTP, or with any COM enabled scripting or programming language. The HTML editor can create, open, and edit local or remote HTML documents, right in CuteFTP.
CuteFTP 8 meets industry demands for FTP clients thanks to PGP encryption and decryption, which helps ensure compatibility with industry standards and keeps your data secure during transfer and storage. The new PodCast Manager is a neat tool for handling all of your podcast subscriptions and publishing in one application (it creates podcast RSS feeds, uploads new audio files and automatically downloads new episodes), and the Local Backup quickly and easily backs up your computer to a remote server for added data security.
In the professional view, the main window is divided into four panes: Local pane, Remote pane, Individual Session Log pane, and the bottom pane that has the Queue Window tab and the Log Window tab. You can also choose to use Home View, which is also a four-pane view with the log displayed above the local and remote panes and the queue underneath. This is the classic view found in earlier versions of CuteFTP.
Local pane has two tabs: Local Drives and Site Manager. The Local Drives tab displays the files available for upload on local computer and the Site Manager tab displays the list of your FTP sites. The Remote pane displays the list of files available for download to your local computer, while the Log pane displays the time and date of uploads, downloads, and other events that occur.
The Bottom pane has two tabs: Queue Window and Log Window. The Queue Window displays the status of the uploads and downloads and the Log Window displays the FTP connection information for all remote sites, number of sites you are connected to and the other log details of the session, such as the time, date, and so on.
The Advanced Search feature helps you to find files and folders more easily, by name, size or creation/modification date, whether they are on your local computer or a remote server, and advanced operations after transfer can be set to automatically exit and shutdown your computer, run a virus scan or any number of other tasks upon completing a transfer. Colour-coded tabs make managing multiple transfers to multiple sites is easier, and improved Mode Z compression speeds the transfer of ASP, BMP, CSS, DAT, DOC, EXE, HTM, JS, LOG, PDF, PHP, PL, PPT, PY, SWF, TXT, VBS, XLS, XML and XSL files.
We also really liked the Task Automation Wizards which help to ease configuration of scheduling file transfers, hot drop (folder monitoring), backing up remote servers, mirroring local and remote systems and adding new servers to the Site Manager. There’s now UTF-8 support for the ISO 10646 character standard, and usability improvements have been added to Bookmarks, Log Files, Macros, Time Zone Synchronization, and Quick Connect.
CuteFTP Professional provides easy-to-use yet powerful tools for tackling the complex challenges of data management and helps achieve HIPAA, GLBA and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. If you’re looking to share large files and business data with confidence, CuteFTP Professional is a decent choice. However, in our tests we noticed that the software used system resources (up to 20% CPU) - even while idle - and almost double that while transferring large numbers of smaller files.
GlobalSCAPE says it has addressed these performance issues with the latest release (version 8.0.3), as well as correcting an issue where installing CuteFTP 7 and CuteFTP 8 on the same machine could result in an ‘incompatible site manager’ error, and where an Open SSH server with a file of the same name was not overwriting but replacing some of the content of the old file. Nevertheless, the software is still not as fast or reliable as Ipswitch’s WS_FTP Professional 2007 ($54.95).
[7]
[
Best Software Pricing UK]
[
Best Software Pricing US]
