Transmit

Transmit is the app most Mac people reach for the first time they need to put files on a server and want it to feel like a Mac app rather than a port. Left pane local, right pane remote, drag between them, and the transfer goes at whatever speed the connection will give you — Panic pushes many streams at once, which is noticeable on a folder of a thousand small files. Places saves the connections you use constantly, and Transmit Disk mounts a server in Finder so other apps can open files on it directly.

The $45 covers Transmit 5 and its updates. Panic's record on this matters more than the licence text: this is a studio that has been shipping the same paid app since the 1990s and has never converted it to a monthly fee, and when version 5 arrived, recent version 4 buyers were moved across at no cost. Expect a paid Transmit 6 eventually, probably years out.

Two reasons not to buy it. If you upload a file a month, Cyberduck does that for nothing. And if what you actually want is a general dual-pane file manager for local disks with remote access as a bonus, ForkLift covers more ground for less.