AceFTP Pro 3.80

As long as good FTP clients will be around to be grabbed and brought here on the dissection table, it's going to be my pleasure to check them out for you, despite the fact that more and more programs come with built in FTP clients. After all, it's like the mobile phones with camera and MP3 players built in - they won't be able to replace the real things anytime soon, in my opinion, and today we'll check a 100% FTP client software, called AceFTP Pro...


Setup

The last version of this FTP client is 3.80.3, and this is compatible with Windows 2000, 2003, XP and even Vista. While the full program is valued by its producer at $29.95, you can try the trial version for 30 days without the smallest functional limitation, so things look great from this point of view.

To install this program, you need to download the 5.2MB setup package first, and I hope you won't have any problems with this part, because I didn't. As you install the program, you must be careful not to include the VMN Toolbar, unless you really want to have another toolbar inside your Internet Explorer... other than that, everything works smoothly, without the need to think much, just click some "Next" buttons, as usual...


Interface

Despite the fact that I didn't fall off my chair when I saw AceFTP Pro for the first time, after using it for a while I must admit that its interface is well designed, including some small yet interesting things, like the download status bars included in the status bar. Having a Windows XP style, the interface of this program is easy to use, highly customizable and - whatta joy! - allows you to use tabs and have more connections and local browsers open at the same time.


Features

At first sight, AceFTP Pro doesn't seem to be more than a basic-average FTP client, but as you spend more and more time with it, the plethora of features included unfolds, creating a much better view of the whole program. First of all, I must repeat what I said above - it is simply great to know that your FTP client can connect to a couple remote locations at once and download files simultaneously from all of them, because I've seen a lot of other programs from this category that cost more and can't do this.

Regarding the support for connection types, nothing is out of ordinary here, in fact you get only the basic - FTP and HTTP/HTTPS, that's all. Despite this, there's a very interesting thing about the included FTP connections that you only need to click once to get in...

For a long time, as I was using the program, I felt really sorry about the lack of a site manager as I was used to, and a solid collection of FTP servers to connect to, so here's what you should do to avoid this... Simply press Ctrl+W, or use the File menu, and choose the first option, called Connect. Once you do this, the AceFTP Site Profiles window comes up.

The Popular Sites folder inside the AceFTP Site Profiles contains 6 categories - Anti-Virus, Browsers, Games, Hardware, Operating Systems and Software, but as it always happens with this part, there could be at least two times the current number of items here. Of course that this can be easily solved, by adding your own sites, so things don't look that bad at all!

The list of interesting features also includes a backup/restore tool that's very easy to use, and can be used to backup and restore files from a remote server to your local drives, so your site's files will always be safe... only as long as you do regular backups, of course!

The competion actions that can be chosen include disconnectiong from the Internet, logging off the current Windows user and you can even choose to power off your computer automatically when the transfers are complete.

At last, you should check the Options, accesible from two places - the Log menu, and the Tools menu (first it's called Options, then General Preferences, but it's the same thing, after all). AceFTP Pro has good support for external applications and the settings of the program are pretty easy to understand.


The Good

This program looks good, works great and is easy to use, all these coming for a decent price. The built in Viewer and the highly customizable interface add a lot to the value of this software.

The Bad

Some choices taken during the user interface design stage are at least strange, since the Options window can be accessed from two different menus, hidden under two different names, and the main window can get pretty cluttered if you don't pay attention to hide the elements that are not useful to you.

Conclusion

AceFTP Pro sounds good to me, and I didn't have a great day to be generous - it's all the merit of the team at Visicom Media that worked on it, and also I have to give as many thumbs up as possible for the pricing and the fully-featured trial version. Good work, guys, keep it up!

Developer: Visicom Media Inc.
Price: $29.95
Trial Link: Download