What is NcFTPd Server?

NcFTPd is a high-performance File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server software solution for UNIX systems, designed especially for high-traffic sites and internet service providers. It is also popular among students, home users, educational sites, and businesses. NcFTPd has been providing fast, flexible, secure, and commercially supported FTP service since 1996!

The current version is: 2.8.8 (January 11, 2024).

Licensing

NcFTPd is not free or open source software and we are saddened to note that it is no longer a supported product.

The reason for this is that we no longer have the resources to provide ongoing technical support for this product. Existing customers are welcome to continue to using the software on a self-serve basis. Our documentation remains online and we hope it will continue to be a valuable resource. You can also try sending us e-mail, but officially the product is not supported and we cannot guarantee a response. Binary packages remain available for download and we hope to continue providing updated packages as new operating system versions are released.

What were the benefits to using NcFTPd for your FTP server?

The reason was simple -- you could service more remote users at a time, and therefore move more data out the door. It was certainly cheaper to install NcFTPd than it was to buy more server hardware whose sole purpose is to act as additional FTP servers.

There were also security benefits you couldn't find anywhere else. Since NcFTPd was designed from day one with security in mind, it gained a reputation among administrators as a very secure product. NcFTPd was periodically reexamined to reduce the probability that a buffer overflow, race condition, denial-of-service, or other security problem exists.

There wasn't a single major security problem with NcFTPd in the entire history of the product, dating back to 1996! Can your existing FTP server software or other FTP server software you were considering say the same?

NcFTPd is very configurable, including powerful support for virtual hosts and virtual users, but is still a breeze to install. Here was the feature list for more reasons why NcFTPd was the FTP server of choice for thousands of servers worldwide.