I will not go into much detail about FTP and SFTP because this web site is not about CCNA or networking layers, but it’s rather about web hosting and as a web hosting client you really are not that much interested into the “black” magic behind these two protocols. I will concentrate on the one thing you should definitely know while you are in the web hosting ocean 
FTP
This shortcut stands for file transfer protocol and it’s the protocol you will use when uploading data to your web space or downloading them from your web space to your personal computer. I can not say, that you will use FTP, because many times today even hosting companies started to understand, that FTP is not a very secure way of accessing a clients web space and they tend to provide you with the more secure alternatives to a plain FTP session.
What a FTP client does is it contacts the server you “ordered” it to contact. It logs in to the account with the credentials you give it and it helps you organize your web space. The whole idea behind FTP is pretty simple and it is “very” lightweight. It sends data from and to your computer without any changes done to it either before or after the transfer.
The big problem with a FTP transfer is it’s insecure nature. FTP is lightweight and thus it lacks something. And this “something” is the security. You send data on “as is” basis. What you click to upload/download i sent over the wire in an unencrypted way. It’s send in a “plain” format. Even your login credentials to your FTP account are sent in an unencrypted form and this makes this type of file transfer absolutely insecure.
If you are on a free Wifi network – even if it’s encrypted – you should never connect to a FTP server you don’t want anyone else to have acces to! If you are not sure about the security of your network, or you simply do not want to take 
the risk, than look for an alternative. Many hosting providers today offer you the alternative to use a “Web based file uploader”. The popular Cpanel control panel has this feature, too. You can see an example of a control panel in the picture
Web based files uploader
This method is most of the time very secure as you are using it within your own control panel session and if your host offers the control panel as HTTPS than there is a big chance that even your File uploader will be in HTTPS mode But you need to check it out, before trusting this my words. My provider does it, but it could be different with your! It’s on a host to host basis.
The SFTP access
I don’t think, that many shared web hosting providers would allow you the use of SSH, but I think that there are many who would allow you to use the SFTP protocol. SSH is not that useful in a shared hosting environment as you are not in charge of the server, but there are some companies who offer it.
SFTP stands for secure FTP and as you might guess it is the safer alternative to FTP. The data and your login info are sent over the wire in an encrypted format and it’s hard for the possible attacker to track your communication [ if you don't use SFTP for an upload lasting 24/7...].
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With SFTP you can be sure that your data is not visible and thus even using your SFTP on a less secure network should not be such a problem. Although there might be problems like MIM attacks etc., but generally the SFTP is the secure way to access your web space
The data you send over the wire is encrypted before they are sent and it is decrypted after it is received by the other 
end. The encryption and decryption is the black magic behind the scenes, but for you as the end user it is not that important. The important thing is that it is secure and it takes longer than a plain FTP session, but it’s not like it takes 1 hour for SFTP and 15 minutes for an FTP. It’s just a question of a few seconds and most of the time you even don’t realize the difference.
FTP/SFTP clients
Up until now we talked about the protocols and their use in web hosting. Now I would like to give you a few links to some of the clients you could use to upload or download data from/to your server. I would suggest, that the site to go is download.com as there are tons of software there and its just up to you what you choose. there are even very good Trial version of some very reliable FTP clients, but you do not have to pay to get a great FTP client!
download.com – This link provides you with the most downloaded FTP clients on download.com
Filezilla – the ultimate free FTP client – it supports many protocols [FTP/SFTP ]
Softpedia – This site offers some good programs, too
Hopefully this article helped you 
Have a nice day and coe back soon!
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