Do you support SFTP (secure FTP)?

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We support SFTP (“secure FTP”) as well as standard FTP. SFTP is a more secure and powerful way of connecting, and it’s noticeably faster if you’re transferring a large number of small files. It’s also far more reliable if you’re using NAT or a firewall on your connection.

The term “SFTP” is a bit misleading, because it implies that SFTP is simply a more secure version of FTP. However, it works quite differently behind the scenes: it creates an SSH connection, not an FTP connection. That means there is only one SFTP account available for an account. We don't support additional SSH and SFTP accounts as we do for traditional FTP, but you can use multiple SSH keys to provide access to multiple people without sharing passwords.

Because of the way an SFTP connection works, it can be used to change any of the files in your website directory or home directory. It's not restricted to certain directories like an FTP connection. As a result, using SFTP makes it a little trickier to make sure you're putting things in the right place on the server; you have to pay close attention to which directory you are in.

Please enter your domain name in the box at the top of this page to see detailed SFTP connection instructions.

Do you support "scp" file transfers?

Yes, "scp" ("secure copy") is another form of file transfer over SSH. Our servers fully support it, with the same caveats as SFTP.

I've heard that some FTP programs now support TLS encryption of the password part of standard FTP connections. Do you support that?

Yes, we also support "explicit FTP over TLS" (also known as FTPES) on normal FTP command connections (which is unrelated to SFTP). Programs like FileZilla support this.

However, we recommend using SFTP instead where possible. It's more reliable, especially when you have a firewall or a router that does "network address translation" like most home Internet routers.