News :: 15MR: FTP Synchronizer Professional v2.3.31.110

Hello all! Today’s target of the 15-Minute Review is FTP Synchronizer Professional version 2.3.31.110 by FTP Synchronizer—A folder-to-FTP synchronization application which would be useful for on-the-fly backups or managing websites.

As Giveaway of the Day states: (Shortened)

“FTP Synchronizer is an FTP sync product that allows you to synchronize files between local computers and remote FTP servers.

Extremely easy to use. Still confused by A LOT of options in other products? Luckily, you won’t find them in FTP Synchronizer. FTP Synchronizer does just one thing, and does it well.

High performance. We know file sync is time-consuming work. And, we also know your time is valuable. So, we developed the multi-threaded file synchronization engine to speed it up!”

Quick Pros

• Initial setup through wizard easy
• Hides to task tray when setup done
• Easy right-click interface on task tray icon to synchronize
• Transfer is good speed

Quick Cons

• Advanced option hidden including secure FTP
• Transfer speed and naming conversion disabled, stating need to upgrade to Pro or Enterprise
• Pro is still not full-featured; Maximum of 5 profiles and 10000 files synchronized (Even after restarting application)
• No ‘prompt’ option for when remote and local files changed
• Does not automatically synchronize; Have to run syncronize when you need to link
• Crashed on second try with error and lost my profile and kept crashing
• Had to include full path to folder or set root of selection tree to /home// while setting up
• Never could get it to synchronize

Expansion

While this application shows a lot of promise, I had major issues with it. The wizard is truly easy for beginners, it still would have been nice to had ‘SFTP’ and ‘SSL’ options on the front page, or at minimum had automatic detection of which were supported. While the application does not automatically synchronize, it is easy to launch synchronizing by simply right-clicking on the task tray icon.

While I could go into detail about the rest of my cons, unfortunately they should be put on the backburner due to the crashing issue.

When I would go to synchronize for the first time, it would always give me an error, so I’d try to fix the issue (Change the root folder, secure FTP settings, etc.) - The Original file would still be in the File Queue and when you would try to synchronize again, it would give an error again, apparently by the log still trying to use the old settings. So when you click on the file to remove it from the list, it would remove itself but leave a check box in place. When you click Run again, suddenly your whole profile would go missing, and start getting errors as follows: “Out of Memory” and then “Access violation at address 00410FA0 in module ‘FTPSyncronize.exe’. Read of address 00000090”, followed by “Integer Overflow” - I could never get the application to synchronize properly, with this issue consistently showing up over and over. Finally, on my fourth try, it worked without crashing. My concern is that if you do need to make changes, this application is going to crash repeatedly, causing headaches. The application, the way it appears to function, needs to have the full path for the folder in which to write in; many people will not know how to figure this out and instead will likely get frustrated with the ‘remote’ folder selection not doing what is should be doing or not knowing what the issue is at all.

Final Verdict

Being designed for people who don’t have a great deal of FTP knowledge, this application’s bugs not only are show-stoppers, but in many cases definitely couldn’t be figured out by the starting user to FTP. Having to put /home/