Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

FileZilla VS GNU Emacs

Compare FileZilla VS GNU Emacs and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

FileZilla logo FileZilla

FileZilla is an FTP, or file transfer protocol, client. It lets individuals transfer single files or batches to a web server. For many years, FTP was the standard for website design. Read more about FileZilla.

GNU Emacs logo GNU Emacs

GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editorโ€”and more.
  • FileZilla Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-12-13
  • GNU Emacs Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-19

FileZilla features and specs

  • Cross-Platform
    FileZilla is available on multiple operating systems including Windows, macOS, and Linux, which makes it accessible and versatile for users across different platforms.
  • User-Friendly Interface
    FileZilla has an intuitive and clean interface that allows both beginners and advanced users to navigate and use its features efficiently.
  • Supports Multiple Protocols
    It supports FTP, FTPS, and SFTP, allowing users to choose the most appropriate protocol for their needs.
  • Large File Support
    FileZilla is capable of transferring files larger than 4GB, which is beneficial for users dealing with large data sets.
  • Drag and Drop
    Users can easily drag and drop files between the local and remote servers, making it easier to manage file transfers.
  • Bookmarking
    FileZilla allows the setting of bookmarks for easy and repeat access to frequently visited directories.
  • Resume and Transfer Queue
    It supports resuming interrupted transfers and has a comprehensive transfer queue that enables batch processing.
  • Directory Comparison
    The tool provides a directory comparison feature which helps in identifying differences between local and remote directories.

Possible disadvantages of FileZilla

  • Security Concerns
    FileZilla downloads can sometimes bundle additional adware or unwanted software during installation if not downloaded from the official website.
  • No Built-in Encryption
    FileZilla does not offer built-in encryption for storing site credentials, posing a potential security risk.
  • Limited Advanced Features
    While it is feature-rich, some more advanced functionalities available in enterprise-level FTP clients are not present in FileZilla.
  • Interface Dated
    While functional, some users feel the design of FileZillaโ€™s interface is somewhat outdated compared to modern application standards.
  • Complex for New Users
    Despite its user-friendly interface, setting up FTP connections and configuring settings can be complex for users with little technical knowledge.
  • Community Support
    Being an open-source project, user support is primarily community-driven which might not be as prompt or comprehensive as professional support in commercial software.

GNU Emacs features and specs

  • Highly Extensible
    GNU Emacs is highly customizable, allowing users to configure nearly every aspect using Emacs Lisp. This makes it remarkably adaptable for various workflows.
  • Rich Plugin Ecosystem
    There is a wide array of plugins available for Emacs, extending its functionality for programming, text editing, project management, and more.
  • Versatile
    Aside from text editing, Emacs can function as an email client, web browser, terminal emulator, and more, making it a powerful multi-purpose tool.
  • Free and Open Source
    GNU Emacs is free to use and modify, with source code available under the GNU General Public License, encouraging collaborative improvement and transparency.
  • Cross-Platform Support
    Emacs runs on many different operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and various Unix-like systems, ensuring a wide reach and consistent experience across platforms.

Possible disadvantages of GNU Emacs

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Due to its vast array of features and unique keybindings, new users often find Emacs difficult to learn initially.
  • Performance
    Emacs can be slower compared to more lightweight text editors, especially when heavily customized or handling large files.
  • Keyboard-Centric Interface
    Emacs relies heavily on keyboard shortcuts, which can be overwhelming and complex, leading to potential finger strain from extensive use.
  • Complex Configuration
    While its customizability is a strength, configuring Emacs to fit personal needs can be time-consuming and complex, requiring knowledge of Emacs Lisp.

Analysis of GNU Emacs

Overall verdict

  • GNU Emacs is widely considered to be a powerful and versatile text editor, especially among programmers and developers.

Why this product is good

  • Highly Customizable: Emacs can be extensively customized with Emacs Lisp, enabling users to tailor the editor to fit their specific workflow.
  • Rich Ecosystem: There is a large variety of plug-ins and extensions available, which can transform it into much more than just a text editor.
  • Built-in Tools: Emacs includes numerous built-in tools such as a debugger, calendar, email client, and file manager, making it a comprehensive development environment.
  • Cross-Platform: Emacs runs on multiple platforms, which makes it accessible to a broad audience.

Recommended for

  • Programmers and developers who appreciate a customizable and extensible tool.
  • Users who want to integrate various development tools into a single environment.
  • Individuals comfortable with learning Emacs Lisp to create and understand custom scripts and configurations.
  • People interested in a text editor that has a strong and supportive community.

FileZilla videos

How to Use FileZilla (FTP Tutorial)

More videos:

  • Review - FileZilla Review: The Best FTP Client Available [HD]
  • Review - Filezilla FTP Client Review

GNU Emacs videos

Switching to GNU Emacs

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to FileZilla and GNU Emacs)
File Transfer
100 100%
0% 0
Text Editors
0 0%
100% 100
FTP Client
100 100%
0% 0
IDE
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using FileZilla and GNU Emacs. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare FileZilla and GNU Emacs

FileZilla Reviews

  1. Review

    Ugh, website updates used to be such a hassle! Maybe FileZilla doesn't have every fancy feature out there, but for someone like me who just needs to update their website photos and stuff, FileZilla is a total rockstar.

    ๐Ÿ‘ Pros:    Fast
    ๐Ÿ‘Ž Cons:    Nothing, so far

10 Best FTP Clients for WordPress Users (Mac and Windows)
One of the most popular names in the FTP game is Filezilla. Not only is FileZilla free and easy to download, but it doesnโ€™t take long to understand the inner workings of the entire system. Although FileZilla has a bit of an outdated interface, all users are able to link to their site files and place them next to whatโ€™s being stored on a computer.
Source: kinsta.com
7 Best FileZilla Alternatives to Use in 2022
FileZilla is free software and an FTP application which consists of FileZilla Client and FileZilla Server. While using an FTP client, the user can upload, delete, rename, move, copy, and download files via a remote server.
Source: techdator.net
6 FileZilla Alternatives for Safe File Transfers
This free, open-source, and popular FTP client for Windowsuses FTP, FTPS, SFTP, SCP, S3, and WebDAV file transfer protocols to copy files between local and remote computers (beyond the options FileZilla offers). Featuring file encryption, a command-line interface, connection tunneling, an integrated text editor that enables you to edit local and remote text files, and...
7 FileZilla Alternatives: What Type of FTP Client Are You Looking for?
FileZilla, one of the most mature FTP clients, is a free, open-source program for transferring files. It is easy to connect to your FTP site with FileZilla. FileZilla works with any operating system, has a simple interface and all of the basic features you would expect from a top FTP client including support for FTPS and SFTP transfers.
6 FileZilla Alternatives for Secure File Transfer
FileZilla comes up early in searches for FTP and SFTP clients, but viable free and proprietary Filezilla alternatives do exist โ€” some of them with more intuitive interfaces, better features, or connections to more tools.

GNU Emacs Reviews

14 BEST LaTeX Editor for Mac & Windows in 2022
Emacs is a Unix based text editor tool which is used by programmers, engineers, students, and system administrators. It is one of the best LaTeX editor for Mac that allows you to add, modify, delete, insert, words, letters, lines, and other units of text.
Source: www.guru99.com
The Top 7 Notepad++ Alternatives for You
Emacs has been around in its various forms since 1976 and is another very worthy Notepad++ alternative. When I first started using Emacs I have to admit that I didnโ€™t find it the easiest to use. But once I got used to it I realized just how powerful Emacs is for the programming community.
10 Best Notepad++ Alternatives in 2020
Emacs is a Unix based text editor tool which is used by programmers, engineers, students, and system administrators. It allows you to add, modify, delete, insert, words, letters, lines, and other units of text.
Source: www.guru99.com
7 open source alternatives to Dreamweaver
Vim or Emacs. Without participating in the holy war between these two traditional text editors, I can safely say that there are a number of enhancements for web editing available for both. So if you're already a terminal junkie, take your pick. Or, if those don't satisfy, try one of these Emacs/Vim alternatives.
Source: opensource.com
10 Best Sublime Text Alternatives in 2019
Emacs is a Unix based text editor tool which is used by programmers, engineers, students, and system administrators. It allows you to add, modify, delete, insert, words, letters, lines, and other units of text.
Source: www.guru99.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, FileZilla seems to be a lot more popular than GNU Emacs. While we know about 83 links to FileZilla, we've tracked only 6 mentions of GNU Emacs. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

FileZilla mentions (83)

  • The Complete WordPress Security Guide for Small Business Owners (2026)
    Connect using FileZilla or your FTP client. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • SFTP Client using .NET
    Once can create an SFTP server by following the instructions for their operating system. For instance, here is how to do it on Ubuntu/Debian. Also, one can use a readily available sftp server such as FileZilla's. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Ask HN: What are your favorite tiny, single purpose tools?
    Just about everything you want to know about sun and moon data for any location. Also a world clock, time zones, timers, calculators, even weather. https://filezilla-project.org/. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • Beginner IoT project: LED Web trigger
    References: Felipe Flopโ€™s website https://www.filipeflop.com/blog/controle-monitoramento-iot-nodemcu-e-mqtt/ accessed on 01/27/2018. Eclipse server for MQTT Broker https://iot.eclipse.org/ accessed on 01/27/2018. Mosquitto https://mosquitto.org/ accessed on 01/27/2018. Cloud MQTT https://www.cloudmqtt.com/ accessed on 01/27/2018. DuckDNS https://www.duckdns.org/ accessed on 01/27/2018. Proftpd... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • How to Setup a Minecraft Server on Ubuntu: A Step-by-Step Guide
    You may choose to download the files locally and then upload them to your server using another client like WinSCP or FileZilla, but the simplest way would be to use wget with the download link as below:. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
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GNU Emacs mentions (6)

  • Emacs daemon as sytemd service in debian 12 (gnome)
    Cat .config/systemd/user/default.target.wants/emacs.service [Unit] Description=Emacs text editor Documentation=info:emacs man:emacs(1) https://gnu.org/software/emacs/ [Service] Type=notify ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/emacs --fg-daemon # Emacs will exit with status 15 after having received SIGTERM, which # is the default "KillSignal" value systemd uses to stop services. SuccessExitStatus=15 # The location of the... Source: about 3 years ago
  • Why does emacs exec path variable not just copy the users path variable?
    ## If your Emacs is installed in a non-standard location, you may need ## to copy this file to a standard directory, eg ~/.config/systemd/user/ . ## If you install this file by hand, change the "Exec" lines below ## to use absolute file names for the executables. [Unit] Description=Emacs text editor Documentation=info:emacs man:emacs(1)... Source: over 3 years ago
  • Hi DM's, what medium do you use to organise your campaign?
    For gathering notes, writing and organizing, Org-Roam which implies Org and Emacs. Source: almost 4 years ago
  • This Guy is getting out of control at this point.
    I was heading to gnu.org/software/emacs to prove my point and it said:. Source: over 4 years ago
  • opam doesn't see emacs?
    <><> Version-specific details <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> ๐Ÿซ Version 1 Repository default Homepage: "http://gnu.org/software/emacs" Bug-reports: "https://github.com/ocaml/opam-repository/issues" Authors: "anil@recoil.org" Maintainer: "anil@recoil.org" License: "GPL-1.0-or-later" Flags: conf Synopsis Virtual package to install the Emacs editor Description This... Source: over 4 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing FileZilla and GNU Emacs, you can also consider the following products

WinSCP - WinSCP is an open source free SFTP client and FTP client for Windows.

VS Code - Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft

Cyberduck - A libre FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, S3, Backblaze B2, Azure & OpenStack Swift browser.

Sublime Text - Sublime Text is a sophisticated text editor for code, html and prose - any kind of text file. You'll love the slick user interface and extraordinary features. Fully customizable with macros, and syntax highlighting for most major languages.

Transmit - Transmit is an FTP client for Mac OS X and Mac OS Classic (which is unsupported).

Vim - Highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing