CoffeeCup Direct FTP was the second product from the company that I encountered and used. The product is available as a free trial with a $34 license fee beyond the trial period.
The product has a simple drag and drop interface and is easy to use and learn. It installs in a straightforward way and the setting up of the link to a web server is straightforward if you have the relevant information (server name, user id, and password).
It was generally reliable, although it did not hold onto the link to my web server as reliably as some competitor products when dealing with large numbers
of files.
In terms of features, version 6.5 offers an HTML editor to create, edit, or update a new Webpage, and then save the document locally, directly to your server, or both. This includes HTML Code Completion to speed up editing and ensure clean coding.
It allows a rapid backup process by allowing you to select a group of folders or files and back them up into a local zip file.
There’s very little wrong with Direct FTP, so why am I not recommending it? The simple truth is that there exist free alternatives that work at least as well as me and the claimed unique selling points for Direct FTP6.5 are not worth the admittedly small license fee. If you need an inbuilt HTML editor or a backup to zip facility then this product may well be for you, otherwise try one of the free alternatives.
CoffeeCup have their own free no frills version, CoffeeCup Free FTP v4. In use, many users will find this more than adequate and for those users, I suggest that you save your hard earned cash.
For Firefox users, the free add-on FireFTP provides superbly integrated FTP facilities within your browser. Performance limitations mean that this is not the ideal client for heavy use but it’s great for uploading small numbers of files, and I have this installed within my browser.
My current FTP client of choice is Filezilla. It is free, and seems to hold a long queue of files better than any other client I have tried including CoffeeCup Direct FTP6.5. It offers good speed performance.
CoffeeCup Direct FTP6.5 is not a bad piece of software. Unfortunately, unlike many of the other Coffee Cup, there are many similar products, and its additional facilities would not justify me spending money on the license fee when so many of the competitors are free, including CoffeeCup’s own free offering.