An Xshell alternative for when the free licence stops working

The free build is registered inside the application with your name and a valid email address, and you click a validation link within seven days. After that it wants the network permanently. NetSarang's own support article is direct: unlike enterprise licences, which may be used in offline environments, the free licences must maintain an internet connection in order to be used. Lose it and you get a registration-expired notice where the terminal should be.

For a tool whose job is reaching machines on isolated networks, that is a strange shape. The free grant is also locked to the major version: when Xshell 8 shipped, free licensing for version 7 ended and free users had to move up, while paid version 7 holders were left alone.

Conchshell has nothing to register. No name, no email, no validation link, no revalidation dialog. The one paid feature, syncing saved connections between your own machines for $19 once, is a key checked on your own machine with no network, and the rest of the application never asks whether you bought it.

NetSarang keeps a page for people whose free installation has stopped: your usage has been detected as non-compliant to the Free License EULA, and this software is no longer usable. The accompanying FAQ says the determination uses publicly available information such as IP ownership, together with your registration data.

Read that with a home user on a company VPN in mind, or a contractor on a business ISP range. The remedies offered are buy a licence, uninstall, or email support with an incident number. The EULA behind it is stricter than the marketing page too: one person, one desktop plus one laptop, no business use directly or through outsourced or subcontracted services, no technical support, and a policy that may be altered or revoked at any time without prior written notice.

Xshell 8 was $119 a seat on 20 August 2026, perpetual for that version, with a year of maintenance; volume brings it down to $113 from two seats, $107 from ten and $97 at a hundred. Xshell itself gives you an SFTP session type, a Remote File Manager pane and, in an August 2026 build, SCP inside that manager, but the dual-pane transfer client is not included: Xftp is $59 alone, or $139 buys the Xshell Plus bundle. Extra maintenance is $24 for a year or $47 for two, bought at checkout. What NetSarang does not publish is the price of renewing once maintenance has lapsed; that page has a Renew button and a sales address, no figure.

The Conchshell basket is the application, free, on macOS, Windows and Linux, with the terminal, both file panes, FTPS, RDP and host monitoring inside it. The only line item is $19, once, for carrying your saved connections between your own machines, at the introductory price that becomes $29 later.

That line item has no counterpart on the NetSarang side, because Xshell has no sync at all. Moving sessions is File > Export, which writes an .xts bundle, and File > Import at the other end, and with a Master Password in play the same one has to exist on the receiving machine. Here the encrypted vault is mirrored into a folder you already sync, such as iCloud Drive, Dropbox or a git checkout, and devices linked by a code read off the desktop screen also sync directly over your own network while the app is open on both.

Check this one before anything else, because SFTP and FTPS are different protocols and the shorthand blurs them. Xshell itself does no FTP of any kind. Xftp's specification lists SFTP over SSH2 and FTP, and the Xftp 8 manual contains the words FTPS, SSL and TLS nowhere at all. The only FTP on offer is plaintext, in a product bought separately.

NetSarang's shorthand, "SSH and SFTP/FTP client", reads as though it covers FTPS. It does not: FTPS is FTP wrapped in TLS, while SFTP is a subsystem of SSH, and having one says nothing about the other. Hand an Xshell user an FTPS endpoint over explicit TLS and they will be installing something else.

Conchshell does FTPS through rustls and pins the server's certificate on first use, with the trust prompt drawn by the operating system rather than the application. A certificate the system already trusts, with a valid chain, the right name and current dates, is accepted without a prompt and pinned, except on Android, where every certificate goes through the prompt; any other is pinned once you confirm it, and from then on its chain, name and dates are not checked, which is worth saying because a page like this has every incentive not to: the fingerprint on that first prompt is the thing to compare.

This is the move that cannot be undone by a settings change. NetSarang's requirements stop at Windows — Windows 8 or higher, with Windows Server 2012, Terminal Server and Citrix MetaFrame on the all-features page — there is no Linux build and no browser client, and no macOS build has been announced, so leaving the platform means leaving the application: CrossOver or Wine is the only way to take Xshell with you, and a small genre of "Xshell for Mac" pages exists purely to say so.

Conchshell is built natively for macOS on Apple silicon and Intel, for Windows, and for Linux as .deb, .rpm and .AppImage. The Apple silicon build of 2.16.0 was a 9.3 MB download, and the app took 18 MB on disk, measured on version 2.10.1 on 3 August 2026. One detour on Windows: the installer pulls Microsoft Edge WebView2 down from the network when the machine does not already have it. Away from the desk there is the iPhone and iPad app, free in the App Store since 27 October 2026, and an Android APK from the site - not in Google Play.

Xshell keeps every session as an .xsh file in your Documents folder, and unless a Master Password is set, the passwords inside are encrypted with a fixed key. That is NetSarang's own wording, along with the admission that it carries a risk. The Master Password, under Tools > Options > Security, mixes your own keyword into the encryption, and it is off until you switch it on. Public decryptors for the scheme exist, and Metasploit has a module that collects those credentials.

So the order that makes sense is: rotate anything that matters, then delete the session folder rather than leaving it on a machine you are done with. Conchshell's vault is XChaCha20-Poly1305. On Windows and Linux, where no system keychain is used, its key is derived by Argon2id from a master passphrase of at least 12 characters, and you get a recovery code; on a Mac, iPhone, iPad or Android phone the key sits in the system keychain and the vault takes one click. Independent slots for the passphrase, the OS keychain and a recovery code sit over one data key. The app offers to create the vault when it starts, and asks again at every start while any saved password is still unencrypted; until you accept, saved passwords stay unencrypted in the application's local data. Its interface has no command that reads a stored credential back out: you can create one and destroy one, and that is the whole surface. Each credential in the vault is bound to host, port, user, proxy chain and jump host, so change any of those and it is not offered.

• No registration, no email validation, and no dialog demanding the internet before it will let you into a terminal.
• It runs natively on the Mac or the Linux box you moved to, as a real window rather than a Wine wrapper.
• FTPS beside the terminal, which no NetSarang product offers at any price, with the server's certificate pinned on first use.
• RDP and the two-panel file manager are in the free application, not a second purchase on top.
• Nothing can be switched off from the outside: no licence server decides whether today is a working day.

• Serial console work over a COM port with ZMODEM and X/YMODEM, and rlogin sessions. Conchshell has none of it.
• Triggers, script recording and the scripting object model in VBScript, JScript or Python. If a script watches your terminal and answers it, that script stays in Xshell.
• Tunnelling: TCP/IP and X11 forwarding, dynamic port forwarding as a SOCKS proxy and Instant Tunneling, plus agent forwarding through Xagent. Conchshell has no port forwarding of any kind.
• Kerberos and SSPI single sign-on, PKCS#11 smart cards and FIDO2 keys. Conchshell does passwords, private keys, OpenSSH user certificates found beside the key file, and ssh-agent on macOS, Linux and Windows (on Windows the built-in OpenSSH agent; Pageant does not work yet); it does not check OpenSSH host certificates, and keyboard-interactive is answered only with the saved password, so one-time codes cannot be entered.
• RDP to a host with NLA switched off, and anything published through Terminal Server or Citrix. Conchshell speaks CredSSP with NLA only and is no replacement for mstsc.
• A vendor with a support queue, resellers, and offline activation for estates that never reach the internet.

1. Xshell sessions are already portable. File > Export gives you an .xts file, which is a ZIP: rename it, unzip it, and you have the .xsh files as readable text with host, port and username.
2. Install Conchshell and build its own JSON bundle of connections, folders, profiles and settings. There is no Xshell importer, so the values from the .xsh files go in once, by hand or by script.
3. Expect to retype every credential. Conchshell keeps credentials out of its own import and export files by design, and there is no path that carries an Xshell password into it.
4. Keys stay where they are, as files. Give each connection the same path; an encrypted key asks for its passphrase at connect time, unless you sign in through ssh-agent and let the agent hold it (on Windows the built-in OpenSSH agent; Pageant does not work yet).
5. Every host asks for fingerprint confirmation on first connect, drawn by the operating system. Compare it once with ssh-keygen -lf on the server.
6. Then clean up the Windows machine: either set a Master Password on the old sessions or delete the folder under Documents\NetSarang Computer before you pass the machine on.

Download Conchshell

Is Xshell free for commercial use?

No. The Free EULA is for home and school, one person on one desktop plus one laptop, and it prohibits business use directly or through outsourced or subcontracted services. Free licences also get no technical support. For work, NetSarang's store listed $119 a seat on 20 August 2026, with volume tiers down to $97.

Is there a free Xshell alternative for Windows?

For use at work, not from NetSarang: the free Xshell licence is for home and school only, and a work seat was $119 on 24 September 2026. Conchshell's Windows build is free for any use, including at work, with the terminal, SFTP, FTPS and RDP in one window and no registration. What it lacks against Xshell is the serial port, port forwarding and tunnels, X11 and agent forwarding, triggers and scripting, and GSSAPI or smart-card sign-in. One feature is paid: syncing connections between your own machines, $19 once at the introductory price and $29 after, with updates included and nothing to renew; the application itself has no trial clock and does not expire.

Why does Xshell keep asking me to revalidate my licence?

Because the free licence has to stay online. NetSarang's support article says enterprise licences may be used in offline environments while free ones must maintain an internet connection, so a dropped link, a captive portal or an isolated VLAN produces the revalidation dialog. Their documentation does not state how long the tolerance is before it appears.

Is there an Xshell for Mac or Linux?

No. The Xshell 8 datasheet lists Microsoft Windows 8 or higher as the only operating system, and NetSarang has announced no macOS or Linux build. Running it under Wine or CrossOver is the only route, which is why CodeWeavers keeps a compatibility entry for it. Conchshell ships native builds for macOS on Apple silicon and Intel, for Windows, and for Linux as .deb, .rpm and .AppImage.

Does Xshell do RDP, and does Conchshell?

Both do. RDP arrived in Xshell 8 as a session type beside SSH, on Windows only, since Windows 8 or higher is the only system NetSarang lists. Conchshell has RDP built in on macOS, Windows and Linux, each remote desktop in a window of its own, with one limit to know first: it speaks CredSSP with NLA only, so a host with NLA switched off will not connect, and it does not replace mstsc.

Will my saved Xshell passwords come across?

No. There is no Xshell importer, and Conchshell deliberately excludes credentials from its own import and export files, so nothing carries them in. You retype them once, into a vault that has no read-back command and that the app offers to create when it starts, at every start until you accept, and after that the route binding — host, port, user, proxy chain, jump host — decides when each one is offered.

Does Conchshell replace Xftp as well?

For file work, mostly. The two-panel manager is in the same free window as the terminal, with a transfer queue showing progress, speed and ETA, directory comparison and synchronisation, and remote files opened in your local editor and written back on save. It covers SFTP, FTPS and plain FTP. One gap: FTP and FTPS connections in Conchshell cannot go through a proxy, while SSH, SFTP and RDP can.

You lose the serial port, port forwarding, the triggers, the scripting model and the enterprise authentication stack, and you lose a vendor with a support queue. If any of those are load-bearing in your work, keep Xshell; a paid licence is perpetual, so it can sit there for the days you need it.

What you get back is an application that opens without asking who you are, on the operating system you actually use, with FTPS and RDP already in it. Download it, spend an evening moving the hosts across, and decide with both installed.

Download Conchshell

• What Conchshell is
• Download for macOS, Windows and Linux
• How the vault and host keys work
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