I finally bought the Transmit MacOS app, and the 16x faster transfer speed is still a start

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Highlights taken by ZDNET

• If you regularly send files to/from remote servers, this app is for you.
• Transmit can connect to SFTP, WebDAV, and several cloud services.
• Transfers are available for a one-time fee of $45.

I upload and download files from multiple services and servers throughout the day. These files range from small text files to large video files. When I’m on macOS, there’s one tool I prefer for this process, and that’s Transmit.

Transmit is a paid app ($45/one-time payment with a 7-day free trial) that goes beyond what most file transfer apps can do.

What makes Transmit so special? Besides having a well-designed, easy-to-use GUI, it can work with more resources than you’ve heard of. Transmit can connect to Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Box, DeamObjects, Dropbox, Google Drive, Azure, OneDrive, OpenStack, RackSpace, or any server that accepts FTP, SFTP, or WebDAV protocols.

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One caveat for the server list is that Google Drive support will be ending soon. If you already have a Transmit > Google Drive connection established, it should still work. However, if Google Drive support is no longer available, you will not be able to add a Google Drive account. That’s very common with apps like this: when Google makes a change, support is often broken.

Despite the Google Drive issue, Transmit is an outstanding file transfer app. I’ve used it a lot to move files back and forth between SFTP servers, and it does that just fine. I can also connect to SFTP servers using SSH Key Authentication, which makes it more secure than using a username/password.

And with the tabbed interface, I can open as many connections as needed and send/receive files throughout the day without having to open a new tab or reset the connection.

What makes Transit worth $45?

There are several aspects of the transfer that, to me, make it worth the $45 one-time fee.

First, it starts with a well-designed GUI. While Transmit hasn’t gotten the Liquid Glass treatment yet, this is very much a macOS app. It is designed in such a way that anyone can jump in and start connecting to servers without much hassle. Of course, if you’re going to connect to SFTP or WebDAV servers, you’ll need to know how to work with those protocols, but if you’re connecting to the likes of OneDrive, it’s as easy as it gets.

It doesn’t hurt that Transmit also supports dragging and dropping files to and from the server. Once connected, navigate to the local folder and drop the files you need or remove from the server.

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Another feature that really stands out to me is the sync option. Here’s how it works:

1. Navigate to the local folder that stores the files/folders to be synced in the left pane.
2. Navigate to the destination folder that will contain the synced files/folders.
3. Click the sync icon (just to the left of the “i” icon near the top).
4. Configure the synchronization options you want.
5. Run the simulation to make sure it is successful.
6. If the sync is successful, click Sync Files.

Once you take care of that, the source and destination will always be consistent, making for an outstanding storage solution. Not only can you transfer a file at once, but you can also use Transmit to keep your data in sync with a remote server. And given how easy it is to synchronize configuration, this is a complete no-brainer.

A good backup solution is usually worth every penny.

You can also create favorites, which give you quick access to the servers you access most often. To create a favorite, all you have to do is connect to the server in question, click the Servers menu, select Add, then (in the resulting pop-up) give the server a name, then click Add.

After adding a favorite, you can quickly access it from the Servers menu.

Finally, the speed at which Transmit sends and receives files is amazing, especially for large files sent to services like Amazon S3, where you can see transfer speeds up to 16x faster than other applications. I ran a full sync of my Documents folder to an SFTP server on my home network, and over 4,000 files were transferred (some of which were large movie clips), and the process was completed much faster than it was when using other applications (such as FileZilla).

How to get Transmit

You can install Transmit from Apple App Store or by downloading the installer directly from the official transfer website. If you choose to install from download, all you have to do is double-click on the downloaded file, and the installation will begin. The 7-day trial starts right after you open the app.

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Everything about Transmit is easy to use, from connecting to remote servers to transferring files to creating sync backups.

If you’ve been looking for a great file transfer app and don’t mind paying a one-time fee of $45, you can’t go wrong with Transmit.