Glossary Entry
What is FTP?
FTP without the jargon — the definition, the analogy, and why any site owner should care.
The short answer
Moving files in bulk between your machine and a server is what FTP has done for decades, and the unencrypted version has no place on a modern connection.
The rest of the page opens it up — the mechanics, why a site owner should care, and one concrete example of it at work.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
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Jargon left undefined
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Username, password and files all travel the network unencrypted under plain FTP. That was tolerable once and is negligent now. TLS is wrapped round the original protocol by FTPS, whereas SFTP is a separate protocol carried inside SSH and is the modern default, with a day-to-day workflow that feels identical.
The workflow survives because it is simple. Open something like FileZilla, drag between the two panes, and let the queue empty itself. Bulk transfers a panel file manager makes painful are trivial here.
The everyday parallel
A cargo run nobody photographs. It is the plain, high-volume way of shifting a great many files at once, and the unencrypted version tapes the paperwork to the outside of the crate.
Carry that picture with you and most documentation on the topic loses its mystery on a first read.
Where it touches your own site
Migrations, bulk uploads and recovery jobs all send you back to it, and choosing between the plain and encrypted flavours is a genuine security decision dressed up as a routine chore.
Nobody expects you to work at this layer daily. The aim is recognising it when it explains something — and that moment is exactly when this page pays for itself.
FTP out in the open
Rebuilding a site from a local backup, an owner drags wp-content up over SFTP and walks away: four thousand files queued, sent and ticked off by the client with nobody supervising.
Entirely unremarkable once you have seen it — which is the point: most hosting ideas are plain machinery behind an intimidating label.
Where it sits inside your own account
Here it largely looks after itself, since the defaults are sensible and the panel puts the controls within reach the moment you want them. Read on: SFTP, Document Root, SSH and Backup.
A free SSL certificate comes with every plan and reissues itself before the old one lapses — the padlock is never yours to diarise.
Why a hundred definitions were worth the writing
Sooner or later every confusing hosting term turns into a support ticket, so we defined the hundred commonest ones properly — once, in the same plain English we use with customers.
The rate you register at is the rate you renew at, so year two costs precisely what year one did — nothing lying in wait on the invoice.
- 100+ entries, plain English all the way
- Ordinary analogies, working examples
- Neighbouring ideas linked together
- Written by our own support engineers
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
Tied to real hosting
Examples name platforms you would genuinely use, never an abstract diagram on a whiteboard.
The next step, drawn out
Carry on into SFTP and Document Root — ideas rarely travel alone, so the neighbours are linked in.
Jargon-free by design
Definitions written for people who run sites, not for other sysadmins — translation rather than restatement.
Clear about how deep to go
Most of these are recognise-level rather than operate-level, and every entry says which it is.
Stakes made explicit
More than what a thing is: the moments it turns out to be the answer to a problem you have.
This term, properly landed
FTP defined, pictured by analogy and located in your own panel — recognise-level after a single read.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Find it in your own account
Nothing teaches a hosting term faster than finding it in your own panel; five minutes of looking beats an hour of reading.
- 2
Check the defaults as they stand
The platform ships sensible defaults for this — check rather than assume, and your setup becomes something you know instead of hope.
- 3
Chase the neighbouring terms
Hosting terms travel in groups — SFTP, Document Root and SSH finish this one's picture, each a two-minute read away.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- Mailboxes that answer at the name you hold
- Upgrades applied in place, with no migration when you change plan
- WebP image optimisation built in, at no extra charge
- Your existing site brought across by our engineers, at no charge
- NVMe SSD storage on every tier, not only the dear ones
- Spam and virus screening on every mailbox by default
- WordPress Toolkit, with the updates seen to for you
- 99.9% uptime as the target, watched around the clock
- Free SSL on every plan, reissued before the old one lapses
- SSH, Git and Composer on the developer plans
Frequently Asked
The questions that come up most
FTP, FTPS or SFTP — which should I use?
Take SFTP every time, since it is on every plan we sell, it is encrypted, it passes through firewalls cleanly, and the same clients speak it. FTPS if some legacy system insists. Plain FTP for nothing at all, because it broadcasts your password across every network it crosses.
Now that every panel has a file manager, is FTP finished?
One file at a time, the manager has largely taken over. Once the job is bulk — hundreds of files, whole folder trees, a sync driven by a script — the transfer protocol is still well ahead. It survives for the plainest of reasons: the work it was built for still needs doing.
Do plans include copies I can restore myself?
Yes — every plan gets a daily copy, and the restore runs from your panel in minutes: files, databases or both, at three in the morning with no ticket queue in the way. Keeping a further copy offsite is still a sound habit, and nothing here stops you.
How quickly can a site be live?
Quickly — minutes rather than days. The account opens the moment payment clears, the domain (free for the first year on annual plans) attaches straight away, and the one-click installer has WordPress or any of 240+ applications running before your coffee cools. Site already somewhere else? Send the details and we move it free, normally within a day.
Keep reading
Document Root
A domain's URLs all resolve inside one folder, the document root, and that folder is the boundary between y…
SSH (Secure Shell)
SSH opens an authenticated, encrypted line straight to a server's command line, where you can issue command…
How to Connect With FTP and FileZilla
Step by step, with every snag flagged before you get to it.
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