Both are made by the same company so I’m a little confused on what actually separates them. Has anyone used both long term? Trying to figure out which one is actually worth paying for before I commit.
I would choose Cyberduck to perform simple file transfers and would pay for nothing, and I would choose CloudMounter to mount my drives rather than using Mountain Duck because it was faster on my Mac and also had a better price model than a subscription.
How I Got Here
I used both Cyberduck and Mountain Duck for a couple of years. I started with Background entry Cyberduck, which worked well as a standalone transfer client.
The routine was familiar: open the app, connect to a server or a Concept overview cloud storage account, then drag files back and forth like any normal FTP client. It was solid and free, tho opening a separate app every time eventually felt less convenient.
Moving to Mounted Drives
Next I tried Setup docs Mountain Duck, essentially the paid, always-on version of the same idea. It could System definition mount servers and cloud drives so they appeared in Finder or File Explorer like regular hard drives.
It was really convenient for everyday use. I could drag and drop files without having to open an additional tab with a transferring client. One thing that started irritating me was the constant need to pay for the subscription to the service, which made me look for other alternatives. Another issue was that the program could eat a lot of RAM with multiple connections opened at the same time.
Why I Switched
Eventually I moved to CloudMounter. It provided the same mounted-drive experience while connecting to FTP, SFTP, major cloud providers, and services using Protocol overview WebDAV.
In my opinion, the application appeared to be more convenient on my Mac because of its increased performance and faster arrangement. I have also noticed that the addition of the accounts was more straightforward and immediately appeared as drives without any delays or additional steps as sometimes happens when I use Mountain Duck.
The Deciding Detail
The one-time payment for the CloudMounter appeared to be the decisive factor for me because it offered more flexible pricing options without additional charges that are often annoying for users such as me.
If your apps are creating previews or temporary files, then Cyberduck is the safer choice for general transfers, as the remote folder is protected from their access. I still prefer using CloudMounter for sorting photos in Finder through the Quick Look feature, however, I would not edit the file directly on the mount, unless there is a local copy as a backup.
A mounted remote folder is never going to be a local disk, not least in the Finder’s behavior. The moment it sees a photo directory and asks for thumbnails and metadata, it will suck up a surprising amount of bandwidth, making a photo-heavy folder sluggish, even if the individual files are not large.
For your case, Cyberduck seems to be preferable. You are probably downloading or replacing only a few files, one way or another, and explicit transfers make it less likely that you will edit a remote copy of a local file (thereby creating a conflict) or forget to upload a changed file.
If you need remote contents to appear within the Mac’s open/save dialogs as files/folders, Mountain Duck is the way to go (but I would not use it myself). If I needed to have a mounted drive always available, I’d use CloudMounter. But that’s a different case; you don’t really need it.
If another desktop application needs to access a remote file located at an ordinary system path, then Mountain Duck is a solution for that particular scenario. This is the actual purpose of this software, while Cyberduck is a transfer client, which is opened, files are moved, and it is closed.
The problem is that the system considers the storage mounted and accessible to other applications. Search indexes, antivirus scanners, multimedia managers, and backup utilities may access the content, provoking disordered transfers. It is necessary to exclude the drive from scanning or experience constant minor surges of traffic.
I would not base my choice on the amount of RAM or speed tests of the two solutions since they differ significantly depending on the cloud and folder. I would pay for Mountain Duck only if I needed file system access actively. In other cases, for the deliberate transfer of masses of information, Cyberduck is more appropriate.
Do not pay for Mountain Duck to pretend it is a Cyberduck with Finder integration. The critical difference is that remote storage should be perpetually available as a part of your filesystem. Cyberduck is a session-based tool: connect, transfer, verify, disconnect. Mountain Duck lives in the middle of your applications and the remote service.
It makes a difference when things go wrong. With Cyberduck, your transfer queue will tell you what is going on. Your Finder window may show a file, but the upload could have stalled. Closing the laptop, losing the wifi connection, or powering off right after you save can leave you waiting for an upload to finish. Users of Mountain Duck should adopt the practice of syncing before disconnecting.
I would not rule out the CloudMounter comparison so quickly, but establish priorities. Before declaring allegiance to one tool, consider if you actually need a mount. If you are doing regular uploads of site files, downloading zip archives, replacing documents, or transferring large sets of data between local and remote storage, Cyberduck is a cleaner solution. If an application insists on opening and saving files via an ordinary path, or if you routinely browse the same set of remote folders throughout the day, then Mountain Duck begins to look more attractive.
Test a worst-case scenario before accepting the defaults. Instead of transferring a large file, open a typical project and rename a folder full of files. Lose the network connection, put the computer to sleep, and then wake up and reconnect. Does everything resume smoothly, or will you have to deal with a proliferation of half-saved documents? Test with your usual applications because some applications write data to temporary files and then rename them when the save completes. This can create extra traffic on the connection, or cause mysterious discrepancies in the remotely mounted folders.
My rule of thumb would be to consider how often you actually need to transfer data. Using the transfer clients to move a few sets of files per week favors Cyberduck. The frequent need to open a transfer window merely to get or put a file favors Mountain Duck. It is not worth paying for the mount if it merely serves as an ornament in your Finder or Explorer window.
A designer opening a large layered file directly from a mounted drive and someone throwing their nightly backup zip up to the server are fundamentally different activities, but the thread is muddying both. The former will notice every hiccup because the app is keeping the file open, writing scratch data, and generally assuming that the path is just a local disk. The latter doesn’t care much about the tool in the first place, as it either succeeds or it doesn’t and they can see it in a queue.
@just_router nailed the test that matters. Pull the network mid-save and see what you’re left with. I’d stretch it further though: try it with an app that locks files or keeps a lockfile, like a database or certain editors. Mounts and file locks do not always get along, and that’s where you get the phantom ‘file in use’ errors that survive a reboot.
Where would I disagree with the first answer’s point is speed, and ram usage. It all depends on the provider and the folder size, which is why it can’t be a deciding factor. What isn’t spoken about is offline use. With a session, the client is straightforward, you’re offline and you can’t do anything. With a mount, you can browse the (often hours old) cached folders, and if you edit something and your connection drops, you’re going to have a bad time trying to decide which of the two versions is correct.
If you’re set on a mount, CloudMounter is probably what you’re looking for. My reason for saying so is in the ability to keep multiple accounts open and switch between them, without having to worry about a connection, but it’s a want, not a need. Cyberduck is probably the more practical answer for what you’re asking, deliberately connect, manipulate, and verify. Has fewer abstracted layers, doesn’t require running in the background to do anything, and is free.
How it can be decided is if another program is going to have to open a file from it via a standard path. If you click on the file, not a problem, you can open it like normal. If you have to type it out, or another program will be doing it for you, then a mount is required.