Auto FTP Manager

Auto FTP Manager can help you automate your file transfers. Although the program is mainly intended to work with FTP uploads and downloads, it also supports local folders and mapped drives.

Transfers can be executed on demand, scheduled or via the command line.

Automating transfer procedures with this tool is based on creating scheduled jobs. Fortunately, there are wizards to help you do both things. A transfer job consists in selecting the source and target locations, in various combinations: PC-PC, FTP-PC, and FTP-FTP. Then, you should set the transfer rules, which involve selecting specific actions, such as transfer, transfer-move, transfer-delete, synchronize and delete. It also lets you resolve file name conflicts by overwriting, renaming by appending date and time as well as skipping the copy. Likewise, it is possible to set a group of filters to exclude specific file types. The automation is then completed by scheduling the job to run automatically at given times and intervals.

In addition to synchronizing data by scheduled jobs, Auto FTP Manager allows using its built-in file manager. It has two panels, in which the contents of the two selected locations are shown. When there is a working connection, transferring files and folders can be done with standard Windows operations, like dragging, dropping, cutting, copying and pasting. Luckily, it is possible to open various instances of the file manager in different tabs.

Luckily, the tool works under various conditions. For instance, it allows binary and ASCII transfer modes. Besides direct connections, the program supports connecting through various types of proxies, such as FTP, HTPP, SOCKS v4 and SOCKS v5. It also preserves the security of the data by using SFTP or FTPS protocols. Good news is you can use specific settings for each of the connections.

All in all, Auto FTP Manager is definitely a good option for managing, scheduling and automating data transfers. It works under most conditions and allows setting rules. Moreover, it can perform these transfers quite fast because it allows multi-threaded and simultaneous FTP connections. Unfortunately, the tool does not seem to support smart synchronizations, which save a lot of time by transferring just the modified data. The product is shareware and can be tried at no cost. Yet, the full version seems too pricey for me, considering that similar programs can be used for free.