Each connection is just a tile within the main window that you double click to launch your session. Each new connection you configure in the software gets created as a shortcut in your start menu so you can use the built in windows search to find your connections.

Quick access screen tiled with your most used connectionsĪs stated, install is a breeze.

Tabbed browsing of multiple open sessions.

Saving of credentials (including private key) for auto logging into your sessions.

You’ll even see the connections you create in Solar-PuTTY appear in your regular PuTTY application if you use it on your system as well. This makes sense because it’s essentially a feature rich skin of PuTTY. exe from here and run it to launch the software.

It’s one of the only SSH clients, other than PuTTY, that doesn’t require installing the software. Solar-PuTTY is a free SSH Client and Connection Manager from SolarWinds. This allowed me to see what challenges you would face trying to download, install, configure, and use each one. I also wanted to help you narrow down your options so you can find the one that works for you and quit wasting time (and subsequently someone’s money) connecting to everything the long and repetitive way.įor my evaluation I installed each of top the SSH clients and setup a few connections and used it for the afternoon.

I wanted to test out several of the popular free, freemium, and paid SSH clients and terminal session managers available to see what the pros and cons of each were. Occasionally, I get the itch to see what all is out there in case there is some feature I didn’t know I couldn’t live without. Without a SSH connection manager you’ll be typing in addresses and credentials each and every time you need to connect to a host.įor me, using a good SSH client has been invaluable. Whether you’re a Linux Server SysAdmin or a Network Admin or Engineer you probably open more terminal sessions than anything else.

If you’re like me, you jump in and out of dozens of SSH connections a day.

10 best ssh clients for windows