Transmit 4: The Ultimate Mac FTP and S3 Client

May 17, 2010 by Matt | Posted in Featured, Software & Scripts 6 Comments

Panic Inc has released version four of their popular Transmit FTP client. To simply call it an “FTP client,” though, doesn’t do the software justice. Really, it’s a file transfer application. It can interact with FTP and SFTP servers as well as Amazon S3, Apple iDisk, WebDAV servers, and Bonjour locations. Not only can Transmit move files between your computer and a remote server, but it can easily transfer data between servers.

The new version of Transmit boasts a cleaner interface, faster transfer speeds, “tear-off tabs,” syncing, Amazon CloudFront support and the ability to issue SSH commands (among other things).

Panic claims a 25x speed improvement on large uploads, as well as quicker downloads and list/delete queries. I haven’t tried to verify these numbers or anything, but Transmit is certainly fast. Very fast.

One new feature that really caught my attention is “Transmit Disks.” You can mount remote servers as disks on your desktop, and a menu bar item lets you easily mount/unmount them.

Anyway, Transmit 4 is an excellent FTP client. It’s well worth trying the free 7-day trial Panic offers. (The full version is $34.)

  • http://www.problogdesign.com Michael Martin

    I still haven’t settled on a text-editor and FTP app for Mac yet, but Transmit really does look awesome. The only thing that makes me nervous now is that I read a lot of comments saying Coda needs an update. Don’t want to spend the $100 now to find a massive upgrade to it as well in a few months :(

    Then again, I don’t want to go a few months without a good text editor either… :D

    • http://www.webmaster-source.com Matt

      I currently use the free CyberDuck FTP client, as I don’t have the spare cash to buy the full version of Transmit quite yet. (I do want to switch.)

      As a text editor, I use two apps. I use the free TextWrangler (the younger sibling of BBEdit) for light editing. Feature-wise it’s right up there with Windows packages like Notepad+. When I’m working on a multi-file project, I’ll use Espresso. It’s along the same lines as Coda, but cheaper. I like the look of Coda though.

  • http://www.problogdesign.com Michael Martin

    I might stick with Cyberduck too. Transmit really does look great, but it’s slightly hard to justify shelling out for a pure-FTP app as well. Especially when Espresso is going to take care of the guts of my FTP needs!

    I’ve been playing with the Coda demo just. I thought they had a far nicer website than Espresso, but when you read them, the feature lists are basically the same. And after trying the 2 demos, Espresso’s has the far nicer interface I think. Everything is just incredibly sleek and polished!

    The only thing I noticed that Coda had over Espresso was SSH. I know it’s not a big deal because of Terminal, but still, it was nice having the option to do that all in one place (Not exactly a major issue though…)

  • http://www.conquerapathy.com Kyle Richey

    I tried Transmit 2 a long time ago, and just recently decided to do the 7-day trial of Transmit 4 (also considering the switch from CyberDuck).

    To me, it looks amazing, and the fact that I can still edit files directly from my server using TextMate (the best text editor in my opinion) is incredible.

    It’s faster, cooler-looking and offers more than CyberDuck, so I’m taking the plunge.

  • http://www.simeonnovels.com Simeon Novels

    Hey Matt,

    I just ran across your blog by doing a search on Google. Thanks for the info! I’m now just getting into Amazon S3 (I know, welcome to 2008…) and I was looking for an FTP client to support it. So far, it seems as though Transmit is living up to the hype :)

    Best,

    Simeon

  • Vance Three

    That’s great news! Panic Inc’s latest release, Transmit 4, sounds like an impressive file transfer application rather than just an ordinary FTP client. | http://www.drywallmarietta.com