The ISP I use, Brighthouse Networks, dropped their personal home pages service (which they called PHP, not to be confused with the scripting language of the same name) in late 2010; that meant no more web space, meaning no more free FTP.

Verizon internet, amazingly, was still offering free FTP access to their personal home page service all this while but not anymore as of this month. FTP access isn’t gone, but in order to get it to access your web space, you’ll need to pay 6 bucks a month on top of your usual ISP subscriber fees. This is a bit stupid considering you can get cheap web hosting for 5 bucks a month or even less if the web host provider offers bi-annual or annual payments that include a discount.

Does anyone really need FTP anymore?

No. The protocol is antiquated beyond belief, especially considering how insecure it is.

"ISPs need to offer SFTP or SSH!"

No, they don’t. If you’re operating a web server or other type of server, then sure, I can see the point of having that kind of access. But for personal web space on an ISP? I don’t think so.

The way files are transferred today is either through email or a file hosting service like Skydrive, Dropbox or the like. Heck, even Minus these days is offering 10GB of free space (yes, gigabyte with a G) with easy-as-pie drag-and-drop transfers right through the web browser.

Unless you’re administering a web or file server, today’s modern choices are far superior compared to FTP. Drag, drop, share or set private, etc., and do it all with no client software required.

On a final note, yes I use FTP via FileZilla a lot – but only because I administer my own web site and it’s only for server-related files (mainly WordPress stuff). For just about everything else I use Dropbox and Minus.

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