ProFTPD is Free and open-source software, compatible with Unix-like systems and Microsoft Windows (via Cygwin).

Along with vsftpd and Pure-FTPd, ProFTPD is among the most popular FTP servers in Unix-like environments today.

Compared to those, which focus e.g. on simplicity, speed or security, ProFTPD's primary design goal is to be a highly feature rich FTP server, exposing a large amount of configuration options to the user.

Some of the most noticeable features are:[5] ProFTPD comes with a command-line interface (CLI) only, but there are several third-party Graphical user interfaces (GUI) existing for ProFTP for users who prefer this to the CLI, or like to use a combination of both.

Especially when it comes for example to real-time monitoring of current user actions and file transmissions, a GUI can be very helpful and superior to the CLI.