Glossary Entry
What is SFTP?
SFTP without the jargon — the definition, the analogy, and why any site owner should care.
The short answer
File transfer inside an SSH session is what SFTP gives you: encryption the whole way, authentication with your SSH credentials, and the same drag-and-drop clients you already have open.
What follows: the longer explanation, a picture that holds, the practical stakes, and the places you will genuinely meet it.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
0
Jargon left undefined
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Despite the name it is not FTP with a wrapper round it but a separate protocol living inside SSH: one port, number 22, full encryption of credentials and content alike, and key-based login wherever it has been set up.
Anybody who works on server files for a living reaches for this first. You keep the whole FileZilla-style workflow and lose the plaintext exposure that makes classic FTP a liability on anybody else's network.
A way to picture SFTP
That same cargo run, only now in a sealed and tracked container. The loading is the same and the destination is the same, but neither the contents nor the paperwork are legible to anybody along the way.
Any analogy flattens the detail, naturally — but this one is solid enough to think with, and thinking is what a jargon buster is for.
What genuinely rides on it
This is the transfer method to use. Every plan we sell includes it, every serious client supports it, and none of the credential sniffing plain FTP invites on an untrusted network gets anywhere near it.
That, incidentally, is the bar for any technical term — not 'could I lecture on it' but 'would I recognise it as the answer to my problem'. For this one, you now would.
One worked example
A developer working from a café pushes site files up over SFTP without a second thought. To everybody else on that wifi the whole session, credentials included, is unreadable noise.
Scale that example across every website online and you have described the whole job of the concept in one stroke.
Where it appears on this platform
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: FTP, SSH, Document Root and Encryption.
Mailboxes at your own name are part of the plan — mail is included, not sold back to you at the checkout.
Why a hundred definitions were worth the writing
An unexplained piece of jargon is, to us, a service defect. This is the support team's collected translations, published where a search engine can hand them over on our behalf.
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
Cross-wired entries
Related terms point at each other, so one lookup compounds into working knowledge.
This term, properly landed
SFTP defined, pictured by analogy and located in your own panel — recognise-level after a single read.
Clear about how deep to go
Most of these are recognise-level rather than operate-level, and every entry says which it is.
Analogies that hold
Every concept comes with a mental model that returns exactly when you need it.
The next step, drawn out
Carry on into FTP and SSH — ideas rarely travel alone, so the neighbours are linked in.
Tied to real hosting
Examples name platforms you would genuinely use, never an abstract diagram on a whiteboard.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Find it in your own account
Open the control panel and find where this idea sits — a definition turns into understanding the moment it attaches to your own site.
- 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 — FTP, SSH and Document Root finish this one's picture, each a two-minute read away.
Built In
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- Staging copies for trying a change before it goes live
- A daily copy, with restores you run yourself from the panel
- People on the support desk every hour of every day
- WordPress Toolkit, with the updates seen to for you
Frequently Asked
The questions that come up most
How do I connect over SFTP?
In your client, choose SFTP as the protocol, put your domain or server name in as the host, set the port to 22, and sign in with your hosting credentials or with SSH keys if you would sooner skip the password. From there it behaves exactly like an FTP workflow, without the exposure.
Why is SFTP on the same port as SSH?
It is a subsystem of SSH, so one hardened service provides shell access, file transfer and tunnelling between them. One port to open, one set of credentials to maintain, and no second FTP daemon waiting in the patch queue.
Can more than one website run on a single plan?
From the Turbo tier upward, yes — several sites, each with its own name, mailboxes and certificate, inside one account. If the extra sites belong to clients rather than to you, look at reseller hosting instead: it keeps each one properly walled off.
What is the refund position if I change my mind?
Shared, business, WordPress and WooCommerce hosting get thirty days, and reseller gets seven. VPS and dedicated servers are built to order the moment payment lands, so they sit outside the guarantee — as do domain registrations, where the registry charges the instant the name is secured. Inside the window one request returns the hosting fee, with no retention script to sit through.
Keep reading
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