FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is the standard method of managing web pages, data, etc. at a remote location. In the case of a web host, the data is your website(s) hosted on the web host's servers. FTP allows you to easily upload your website to our servers immediately upon account activation and make instant modifications to your website 24/7 without service interruptions.

All of LFC Hosting's plans (starting at only $9.95/month) include Unlimited FTP accounts, a number rarely seen in the industry. Although most of our clients require only one FTP account (with the exception of our resellers), the additional FTP accounts are available at your disposal if you require them in the future, in accordance with our all-inclusive policy.

Although FTP is a standard offering among shared web hosting companies, LFC Hosting provides a variety of features that augment our FTP services to level far exceeding the status quo, including Secure FTP (SSL), reliability, speed and security enhancements with our load-balanced and MySQL replicated FTP server cluster, and superior FTP account administration through your LFC Control Panel.

If you are not familiar with FTP, our award-winning customer service team will gladly show you, free of charge, how easy it is manage your site using a popular FTP client.

Unmatched FTP Self-Administration

Your FTP accounts can all point to the same location, allowing you to provide each of your staff with their own username and password to manage your account, but can also point to subdivisions of your account, allowing you to provide your staff members each with access to only a portion of your website. Alternatively, clients hosting multiple sites on one account, including, but not limited to, our resellers, can offer the administrators of the different hosted sites each with their own FTP account with access only to their site (ie. their subdivision of your hosting account).

All of your FTP accounts can be managed and assigned to subdivisions of your main hosting account automatically through your account control panel. If you are a reseller, your customers can actually manage their own FTP accounts and assign them to subdivisions of their own "space" through our advanced reseller control panel, according to limits and guidelines that you specify.

Secure FTP

As an e-commerce ready host, security is among our highest priorities. That is why all of LFC Hosting's plans come with FTP SSL (FTPS) - a secure encrypted method for transferring your important files, just one of the many unique security services offered by LFC, helping businesses easily operate more securely on the Internet than with our competition.

FTP SSL uses 128-bit SSL encryption, the strongest form of Internet security widely supported, and the same security that enables you to bank over the web. In a standard scenario, as with most competing hosting services, you are not able to FTP your files over SSL security, or it may cost extra as they will charge you for your own SSL certificate plus the annual renewal costs with a security certificate authority (minimum $100 USD/year).

Although LFC Hosting does support this method, we also offer free unlimited use of our own SSL certificate, allowing you to transfer your files securely to and from your website at no additional cost. This makes FTP SSL accessible to businesses of all sizes.

The Technology Behind Our Superior FTP Support

Contrary to competing Windows hosting services, which use Windows-based FTP software individually installed on each web server, LFC Hosting employs a centralized, independent, highly configurable Linux open-source ProFTPD-based FTP system offering superior security and reliability as standard with all of our hosting packages (starting at only $9.95/month), giving LFC Hosting's clients the distinct advantage with access to the best of both the Windows and Linux worlds.

Moreover, LFC uses the same technology used in our industry leading mail system to provide its valued customers with a highly efficient, fast, reliable, secure, robust, and feature-rich FTP service:

• Load-Balancing, Fault-tolerance, and Redundancy:
  
  The same LVS Directors used in LFC Hosting's e-mail system manages our fully redundant, fault-tolerant and load-balanced cluster of FTP servers. LFC Hosting developed the use of the LVS technology in-house.
  
  Load-balancing: A method where LVS Directors (routers) distribute the load across the entire cluster (group of servers), sending traffic to whichever server(s) can offer the fastest response. This process is transparent to you, but ensures continually optimal performance at all times.
  
  Fault-tolerance: If a server experiences a problem, the routers automatically avoid sending any traffic to it whatsoever, allowing us to promptly resolve the problem without any interruption of service. This also means that, unlike other services, LFC is able to perform maintenance, easily add additional servers to increase performance and handle higher loads as needed, and even add new features to the system without any downtime.
  
  
• MySQL Replication for Instant Self-administration:
  
  LFC's state-of-the-art FTP system uses the same MySQL-replication-based automation architecture used in our mail system for improved efficiency, speed and reliability across our cluster of load-balanced and fault-tolerant FTP servers.
  
  Traditionally, engineers must decide between housing all data for a cluster centrally (which means that changes happen instantaneously but the system is less efficient as individual servers have to constantly query the central server over the network) or on the individual servers themselves (which means that the servers access the data locally but multiple copies of it must be maintained, usually meaning that changes are not instant and are sometimes not as reliable).
  
  LFC Hosting's unique application of MySQL replication essentially achieves the best of both worlds, by maintaining a centralized database for instant changes while continually syncing local copies of the centralized database on the individual FTP servers in the cluster at all times, allowing them to access the data from their local hard drives.
  
  If an FTP server goes down, LVS (see above) will route traffic away from it. Then, as soon as it comes back up, it will immediately and automatically sync with the central database to get all changes made while it was down.
  
  This, yet another "behind-the-scenes" advancement that you only get with LFC, offers the ultimate in performance, reliability, and, best of all, means that all changes that you make to your FTP accounts through the LFC Control Panel will take effect immediately, with no delay whatsoever!