--- title: OpenSSH Reviews meta_title: 'OpenSSH Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 42 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how OpenSSH works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.7 review_count: 42 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-06-19' parent_category: name: Data Security url: https://www.g2.com/categories/data-security --- # OpenSSH Reviews **Vendor:** OpenBSD **Category:** [Encryption Key Management Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/encryption-key-management) **Average Rating:** 4.7/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 42 ## About OpenSSH OpenSSH provides tools that allows you to encrypt all traffic to help manage eavesdropping, connection hijacking, and other attacks to your Internet while providing secure tunneling capabilities and more. ## OpenSSH Reviews ### 1. Effortless SSH at Scale with ~/.ssh/config, ProxyJump, and Multiplexing **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Luca P. | Chief Operations Officer DEQUA Studio | Formerly CTO in MarTech, Marketing and Advertising, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 18, 2026 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** The part that does the most for me is not a feature with a marketing name, it is the client config file. My ~/.ssh/config is where the actual time savings live. I give each host an alias, set its User, Port, IdentityFile, and ProxyJump once, lean on wildcard Host patterns for whole environments, and use Match blocks for the cases that need conditional settings. After that, reaching a box is "ssh prod-db" and nothing more. I keep that file in version control and carry it between machines, so a new laptop is productive the moment I clone it. No other piece of my toolchain pays back the setup effort the way this one file does. I would give up a lot before I gave up ProxyJump. Most of what I administer sits behind a bastion, and before the -J flag existed I was stringing ProxyCommand together with netcat or opening two terminals and hopping by hand. Now a single line in the host entry routes me through the jump host and the target behaves as if it were on my desk. When the path is two or three hops deep, ProxyJump chains them without any of the old fiddling, and because it lives in the config it is the same every time. Connection multiplexing gets overlooked until you watch it work. With ControlMaster, ControlPath, and ControlPersist set, the first SSH connection to a host opens a master socket and every session after that rides the existing connection instead of negotiating a new one. For anything that fires a burst of short connections, Ansible runs being the obvious case, the difference is large. Repeated scp and rsync to the same host stop paying the handshake tax. I set it once in the config and forget it is there, which is exactly what I want from plumbing. Key handling through ssh-agent turns key-based auth from a chore into something I forget I am doing. I generate an ed25519 key with ssh-keygen, push it out with ssh-copy-id, load it into the agent once at login, and then move across the fleet without typing a passphrase again. Agent forwarding extends that to a jump host when I need it, though I am deliberate about where I forward an agent and usually prefer ProxyJump for the safer path. The friction of proving who I am to dozens of machines simply goes away. The server side deserves as much credit as the client, and it is easy to forget that OpenSSH is both. sshd_config is where I lock a host down: key-only auth with PasswordAuthentication off, PermitRootLogin set to no, AllowGroups to gate who even gets to the login prompt, and Match blocks to apply per-user or per-group policy. For accounts that should only move files, a ChrootDirectory plus an sftp-only setup keeps them in their lane. Having the client and the daemon come from the same project, with the same key formats and the same conventions, means there is one mental model for both ends of the connection. Port forwarding is the quiet workhorse. Local forwarding through a bastion lets my desktop tools connect to localhost as though a private-subnet database were sitting next to me, remote forwarding covers the reverse case, and the dynamic SOCKS option gives me a quick proxy into a segment when I need more than a single port. All three can be declared in the saved host entry with LocalForward or DynamicForward, so a tunnel comes up with the session and disappears when I close it, no extra software involved. File transfer reusing the same channel is one of those things I would miss badly if it were gone. scp, sftp, and rsync over SSH all ride the authentication and encryption I have already set up, so there is no separate FTP daemon to stand up or trust. scp now speaks the SFTP protocol underneath, which cleaned up a lot of the old edge cases. Pulling a log bundle or syncing a directory is the same credentials and the same host alias I use for an interactive session. On security, the defaults are conservative in the way I want from something this central. Modern key types and ciphers like ed25519 and ChaCha20-Poly1305 are the norm, the host key fingerprint prompt on first connect is the small ritual that catches you reaching the wrong machine, and the recent move to hybrid post-quantum key agreement by default in the 10.0 release means traffic captured today is protected against decryption later without me changing a single setting. The OpenBSD lineage shows in choices like splitting authentication into a separate sshd-auth process to shrink the pre-auth attack surface. None of this is loud, and that is the point: the project tends toward the careful option rather than the flashy one. And it is already there. On every Linux server, on macOS, on the BSDs, OpenSSH is the SSH that ships with the system, free under a permissive license, with no account to create and nothing phoning home. For the common case there is nothing to install at all, which for a tool this fundamental to a working day is worth more than any single feature. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** The diagnostics are terse to the point of being unhelpful when something goes wrong. "Permission denied (publickey)" is the message I have stared at more than any other, and on its own it tells me nothing about which key was offered, why the server refused it, or whether the real cause was a file permission, an AllowGroups rule, or the wrong username. The fix is to run with -vvv on the client and turn LogLevel up on the server and read auth.log, and after enough years that is reflex, but a newcomer hits a wall here with no obvious way over it. Better default error messages would save a lot of people a bad afternoon. Tightening defaults across releases is the right thing to do and it still bites at the worst time. When a version drops or de-prioritizes an older algorithm, the removal of DSA in 10.0 being the clean example, alongside earlier moves away from ssh-rsa with SHA-1 and changes to the moduli fallback, I periodically find I cannot connect to a legacy switch or an old appliance until I explicitly re-enable the algorithm it speaks. The security reasoning is sound, but discovering it mid-task when a box that worked last month now refuses the connection is a recurring annoyance. My workaround is a narrowly scoped Host block that re-enables the old HostKeyAlgorithms or PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms for that single device and nothing else. There is no non-interactive password authentication, by design, and it trips up scripting against hosts that only accept a password. When I inherit an estate where some machine cannot take a key yet, automating against it means reaching for sshpass, which is ugly and which I do not want anywhere near a real pipeline, or stopping to fix the host so it accepts keys. The right answer is keys everywhere and I push for that, but the gap between "should be" and "is" is where this one lives. The Windows story has improved a great deal and is still the weakest part. The Win32 port is built into Windows now and genuinely useful, but it trails the OpenBSD release, the agent service and connection multiplexing do not always behave the way they do on Unix, and I still run into path and permission quirks that I never see elsewhere. When the work is Windows-first I often end up doing my SSH from inside WSL just to get the upstream behavior, which works but is a detour. There is no session management or interface of any kind, which is a deliberate choice and occasionally an inconvenience anyway. Everything lives in the config file and in whatever terminal multiplexer I am running. Once you are fluent that is fine, arguably better than a GUI, but onboarding someone to a new environment means teaching them ~/.ssh/config from a blank page rather than handing them a tidy list of saved connections. A well-commented config in a shared repository is the closest thing to a fix, and it is what my team uses, but it is a convention we have to maintain rather than something the tool provides. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** The core problem it solves is getting a secure, reliable session onto a machine that has no business being reachable any other way. A great deal of what I manage is headless, sitting in a rack or a cloud region with no monitor and no input devices, and the alternatives are either insecure protocols like telnet that I would never run today or a physical trip to a console. The before-state was that kind of choice. The after-state is an encrypted session a couple of keystrokes away, the same on every host, which frees my attention for whatever actually broke instead of the act of connecting. Reaching things that are deliberately walled off is the next problem it handles cleanly. Most of what I touch lives behind a bastion on a private subnet, and ProxyJump gives me a controlled, declarative way through without widening a firewall or spinning up a VPN for a ten-minute task. Before, that meant either a manual multi-hop procedure or an awkward ProxyCommand pipeline that I had to remember and retype. Now the jump is one line in the host entry and the internal machine feels local. Authentication across a fleet stopped being a source of friction because of the agent. The problem it removes is the constant cost of proving identity to dozens of machines a day, which under passwords meant either weak reuse or a lot of typing. With a key in ssh-agent I authenticate once at login and move freely after that, servers can be configured to refuse passwords entirely, and the whole estate ends up more secure and less irritating at the same time. ssh-copy-id makes distributing the key a single command rather than a manual edit on every host. Moving files without standing up a separate service is a problem it quietly absorbs. scp, sftp, and rsync over SSH all reuse the authentication and the encrypted channel I already have, so there is no FTP daemon to deploy and secure. The before-state was trusting a separate file-transfer stack with its own auth and its own attack surface. The after-state is the same key, the same host alias, and a transfer that is encrypted by default and trivial to script. Getting to internal services, and getting out of restricted networks, both come down to forwarding. A local forward reaches a database that only listens on a private network, a dynamic SOCKS proxy covers a quick way into a segment, and on client sites where direct outbound is blocked the proxy and forwarding options let me route through and connect anyway. Before, a locked-down network meant a support ticket or simply giving up on remote access until I was back on my own connection, and reaching a private service meant a heavier VPN. Now the tunnel details live in the saved host entry like everything else and come and go with the session. Repetitive connection work moved out of my hands and into scheduled jobs. Non-interactive ssh and scp reading keys from the agent let me hand a morning log pull or a recurring sync to cron or a CI runner without putting anything sensitive in the script, and connection multiplexing keeps tools that open many short sessions, configuration management runs especially, from crawling. What used to be a manual habit I sometimes forgot now happens whether I remember it or not, and faster than it did before. Underneath all of that, the consistency is its own benefit, and lately so is the forward planning. The same client and the same config work on Linux, macOS, the BSDs, and inside WSL, so the muscle memory and the host entries port wherever I go and I am not learning a new tool per platform. The shift to post-quantum key agreement by default is the part I appreciate most without having done anything to earn it: traffic I send now is guarded against the harvest-now-decrypt-later problem, and that improvement landed in my workflow without a single change on my side. ### 2. Secure SSH Access with Key-Based Authentication and SCP/SFTP Support **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ahmad J. | ICT Specialist 2, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 22, 2026 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** It supports key-based authentication and secure file transfer (SCP/SFTP), along with encrypted remote access (SSH). **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Managing SSH keys across many users or servers. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** Secure remote access and data transfer over untrusted networks. ### 3. OpenSSH is an incredible tool for remote management of servers. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Commercial Real Estate | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 17, 2023 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** OpenSSH provides a robust protocol, SSH, that allows our team to remote into all of our machines securely and easily. Its wide integration with almost every Linux operating system and even Windows means a consistent experience on every computer. OpenSSH is particularly useful for servers which have no visible monitor, allowing us to control said computer without the need of complicated equipment such as serial connections or KVMs. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** OpenSSH is built with public-key infrastructure in mind. One disadvantage of this is found when sending commands remotely as part of a script. With SSH keys on either machine, we can pass a flag into the command to specify the key file, allowing for authentication without user input. The same is not possible when a password is required for the remote machine, leading to broken scripts. This is a small limitation that can be overcome with additional applications, but an annoynance nonetheless. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** Being able to access all of our servers is important to us. However, many servers lack an external monitor or input devices that would traditionally be used to interface with the computer. OpenSSH allows us to securely connect to our server remotely using a simple terminal command. This enables a more productive workflow along with the possibility of scripts to automate everyday tasks such as checking server logs. ### 4. OpenSSH Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrew S. **Reviewed Date:** January 23, 2021 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** OpenSSH is the product that started it all. It is *the* standard. It’s keygen files are not proprietary and are accepted everywhere. Even though it’s free, you can still get paid support. However, there’s so much free information that paid support is not needed. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** There’s nothing to dislike. It’s the standard that everyone else is copying. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** OpenSSH works on all the servers. It provides secure connectivity and file transfer using rsync. ### 5. The definitive way to administer servers **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Massimiliano A. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 25, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** OpenSSH is secure and powerful. authentication by a public/private key pair with different cyphers and has lots of configuration options. It integrates a secure FTP client/server which should be preferred to other traditional dedicated FTP server solutions. Although it is mostly a command-line interface to a system, can also be used to establish a secure encrypted tunnel to other services running on a server, for instance to RDP, Windows shares (Samba on Linux). **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Sometimes, communication with the server could be quite slow especially if there are multiple hops to reach it. Some errors (such as when configuring passwordless login through public/private key pairs) are not clear to understand and debugging such situations can prove to be rather difficult. **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** Try to implement it on a Linux server because it is already integrated in the system. If installing it on recent version of Windows, go to "optional features" and you'll find the most recent version supported by Microsoft. On older versions, you might quite easily install it through Chocolatey. Do not try the Cygwin route because rather outdated. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm using OpenSSH to administer several servers remotely in the cloud. This way, I can manage the whole infrastructure of my clients through smart working, without being physically present in the datacenters. I also use it to perform remote backups, by chaining it to RSync and RSnapshot ensuring an encrypted communication between servers. Through SSH I'm also creating secure RDP connections to Windows servers passing through a middle server. I used it on Windows server too, although it is more complicate to install and can require half a day to find out the proper way to set it up (which is different depending on the version of Windows). ### 6. OpenSSH gets the job done. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Charlie B. | R & D Lead, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 09, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** Clean file based architecture and excellent privilege separation. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** The Microsoft port of OpenSSH is functional, but lags behind the full capabilities of the BSD/Linux packages, and does not have as clean of a user interface. **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** There is an initial learning curve to any system using public/private keypairs that can be hard to surmount. OpenSSH is one of the easier paths to mastering such systems, but it can still be daunting at first. Stick with it and you will get all your time back in the long run! **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** OpenSSH is a good tool for managing co-ordination between multiple systems in a secure, scalable and easily upgraded fashion. It can trivially convert legacy processes based on less secure systems (such as telnet, FTP and the Berkeley R-protocols) and is the basis for remote control software such as Ansible and hardlink backup systems. Updates are timely and operational problems are virtually non-existent; OpenSSH is highly reliable. ### 7. Windows OpenSSH provides enhanced management. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Charles E. K. | Customer Service Representative / Concierge, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** OpenSSH provides a universal peer-to-peer communications channel among all Operating Systems. Using OpenSSH service on Windows 2012 servers I was able to develop scripts running on Linux to extract information from Windows. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Scripting some commands can be a challenge when operating between Linux & Windows. There are some situations which could require upwards to 8 sets of quotations to issue a Windows command from Linux. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** True peer connectivity between Linux & Windows. I designed an automated inventory system running on Linux with a MySQL database. Pearl scripts would issue Windows WMI commands to retrieve hardware inventory information to update the database. I always had a 100% accurate database for my on-line systems. ### 8. Basic required service on all new machines **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John b. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 15, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** simple to use, ease of install, cross system authentication easy for new users. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Single vendor/developer issue for security reasons. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** remote maintenance of machines, and all general secure communication for machine to machine. ### 9. OpenSSH review 9/2/20 **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gregory C. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 02, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** The inherent security the product offers as well as the excellent support provided by the community. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** The lack of a native GUI makes it more challenging to use for novice users and administrators. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have met a requirement regarding multifactor authentication leveraging OpenSSH passing tokens residing on the users machine as part of the authentication process. ### 10. Best method to connect remote machine **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Swapnil h. | Senior Software Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 08, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** OpenSSH works in realtime. After login it didn't even feel that we are working on remote machine. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Sometimes connection gets disconnected if we leave it on idle. OpenSSH should keep the connection alive. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** As I am currently working from home OpenSSH is helping me connect all my office machines from my Linux machine at home. I am able to connect multiple machines in multiple tabs of Linux terminal. ### 11. OpenSSH is backbone for remote access **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** indravadan j. | System Administrator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 28, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** It is most useful to access Linux servers and Computers to access remotely and sort out the problems of users. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Noting special that dislike but it should be by default installed in all linux systems. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am sorting problem with openssh are patch updating, installation of software, download, lamp server problem, etc. ### 12. OpenSSH is trusted by community, It is used by almost every person who manages servers **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Online Media | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 24, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** Speed, Native, And simplicity.,It has every thing needed **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** UI could have been better. It should basically have its own client. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** remote login to AWS machine. ### 13. Unusable examples **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Defense & Space | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 08, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** Not convinced by the libraries. The putty libraries worked without issues. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Example code wouldn’t connect to test ssh servers whereas putty did. This was enough to convince me the libraries would be more trouble than they’re worth. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** None. Openssh was the problem. ### 14. Very secure way of accessing the remote server **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Security and Investigations | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** You can access using encryption key and simple to manage it **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Passphrase need to enhanced in terms recovery of the passphrase if someone forget. **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** Key management system need to be in place **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's greatly help in automation, like deployment of application ### 15. The best tool for remote control on linux **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 06, 2019 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** It's already pre-installed and it is very easy to use. I like the sharing of the keys most because typing a password can be a problem in a terminal sometimes. Also, the SFTP protocol is really really useful for file transfer over ssl-encrypted lines. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** It would be cool if it was readily available as a server on windows too, but Windows is just so different as it doesn't use bash. **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** Know your commands. That all I have to say. Knowing your network stack and topology can help too. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easy and pre-installed remote control access and tunneling. All using bash. ### 16. Essential tool of all linux **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Eduardo G. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 10, 2018 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** OpenSSH it's a tool integrated in all Linux operative systems that allows to connect between different Linux computers. With OpenSSH and a terminal you can open ssh tunnel, secure and safe. Throw this tunnel you can copy files and run commands. One of the best things that you can do with OpenSSH it's transmit a port of remote computer to your computer. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** In OpenSSH there aren't a graphical interface to configure it or to use it, and you needs wide knowledge to use it in safe mode **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** OpenSSH it's a free software to connect different computer. There aren't better alternatives, in fact OpenSSH it's the only option in the majority of systems. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** Basically I use to communicate with my servers to admin them. ### 17. One of the essential programs if you work in linux **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Program Development | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 30, 2018 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** OpenSSH is one of this programs that are essential for everybody that works in Linux, it's a GNU progrma that gives you the option to connect to other machines with the terminal. There are interesting options like open a ssh session with X environment forwarding, or use ssh to make tunnel a port **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** There are nothing bad in this software. From the last 10 years I can say that it's perfect. **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** Its an essencial program to every user of linux. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** Allows me to connect to another computers of partners or connect to the servers of code. ### 18. The Great OpenSSH **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Amr M. | Senior Business Analyst, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 10, 2018 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** Its a great software makes you to create secure connection encrypted for advanced users because it work with Dos Commands based on secure shell and providing secure tunneling. you can use it to connect anything with no leak in data because its fast and save it works with multiple authentication for secure tunnel between server and client . **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** it works under Dos no GUI to interact but instead it give strong encrypted connection **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** it helps me well to connect another machines in another country as VPN. its good and easy to use with small commands it can bypass internet firewall to access the blocked sites . it helps if we want to transfer some important data over the internet with secure connection so we use Openssh ### 19. Essencial application for administrators **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Judith C. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 14, 2018 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** OpenSSH is a simple application that allows you to connect to other computers running linux. You simply open a terminal and decide which computer you want to connect to. It should be noted that only terminal port works, although you can redirect graphic applications traffic through the tunnel **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** In general, OpenSSH fulfills its mission, allowing to connect to computers. For my use it is perfect **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** OpenSSH is a basic application for administrators and users of linux environments. Basically it allows you to connect to different computers and move files between them. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** OpenSSH allows me to connect to the different servers I manage, such as web or database servers, as well as connect to colleagues' computers to pass files. ### 20. Default SSH services on all environments. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Pilar M. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 10, 2018 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** OpenSSH is the most used SSH services in production / non-production environments. It's a terminal application that works really good, without any doubt is one of the most important tools of the Sysadmins. It allows the port forwarding throw the ssh tunnel, that means that you can connect to a port of other network although you don't see this port. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** It's easy to configure, but a bit difficult to configure security settings, like certificates to use or policies of discovering. **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** It's the best alternative. Also you can pass graphical applications throw the ssh tunnel. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** Basically we connect to servers with SSH or between our computers. Also it's used to connect from home to work computer ### 21. Great **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Krithika G. | Software Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 06, 2019 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** I like it because it is flexible and easy to use **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** I dont like it because it can be more optimal **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** nothing so far ### 22. great easy ssh tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sherman H. | Technology Specialist, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 06, 2019 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** easy to learn. great tool. highly recommend using **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** sometimes it can hang. But not all time. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** updating and pushing sofware ### 23. Universal intergalactic terminal **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrei V. | Freelancer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 21, 2018 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** It allows point-to-point connections with any of elements of interconnected network of any scale. It is fast, because it has no Graphical User Interface [GUI]. It is secure because it uses encryption methods of sophisticated nature. IT is easy to install and use and customize. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Sometimes remote sides are difficult to configure. **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** $ man ssh **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am getting remote desktop solutions implemented over the ssh that allows me to use cloud desktop. ### 24. Our default SSH server on RedHat **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Christopher M. | Lead Software Developer, Building Materials, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 22, 2017 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** We have been using OpenSSH on our RedHat 6 and RedHat 7 servers for several years. I'm not sure if this is somethibng that comes default on Rackspace's Redhat servers or if they make it for us. Either way it generally just works. The thing I like most about it is that I have no problem running our JSCH programs that connect to the various servers running SSH from within a Java Thread **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** One thing I disliked, and this might be nitpicking or might be my ignorance, but I couldn't get it working on Windows with Cygwin. For whatever reason I just couldn't get it working **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** Go for it? Not sure really, it just works. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** Jenkins automation. We've always used SSH for remotely accessing a box, but it;'s become especially useful to run some of our post deployment shell scripts that execute bash on a remote server via ssh after a jenkins build. ### 25. Amazing free software! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Duccio M. | Special Education Paraprofessional, Education Management, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 22, 2018 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** I love how openssh lets me access my private network from outside in complete safety. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Nothing really, it's a great software which very little for bugs and annoyances **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** Openssh lets me access my server from wherever in an easy and fast way. ### 26. Been using OpenSSH FOR MANY YEARS **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 02, 2018 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** It’s an all in one for secure access and file transfers to machine across the lan, wan, and internet. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Sometimes the security requirements don’t match the server and it can be difficult to figure out. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** I work in infrastructure so accessing many machines from Linux to Solaris to AIX as well as machines in AWS is very convenient with OpenSSH. ### 27. openSSH in action **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** ANKIT A. | IT Analyst, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 12, 2017 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** easy to use , familiar command like access **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** nothing as such to dislike as of now , this software is satisfying my project needs **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** connecting to remote mechine and provides authentication ### 28. Very capable remote login software. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Retail | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 14, 2017 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** The degree of protecrion given to avoid unauthorized access. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Not as easy to deploy as more commercial products. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** The ability to mobitor business securely when away from the site. ### 29. A must-have tool for security. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Milad T. | Software Engineer, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 21, 2016 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** OpenSSH is mature and de facto standard in industry. I use SSH on a daily basis, it is a reliable and stable technology. It is compatible and works across many platform and is battle tested. Must have tool for every developer. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Despite of the fact that openSSH is very stable, some of the patches/updates break compatibility with older softwares. Specially wrappers in different languages can suffer from backward incompatible patches. OpenSSH team does a great job providing documentation but it can get confusing. **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** It is a must have tool. Learning ssh is essential. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** Secure data exchange between internal servers and managing remote/local servers with ssh. ### 30. An easy, secure way for remote shell connections and thensome **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Scott K. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 10, 2016 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** I like the fact it's the industry standard for establishing remote secure connections, whether it be shell (cli) or using it for other features, such as copying files, or even VPN tunnels. Having the ability to custom configure hosts in your ssh config is really nice (along with being able to import features on every host) -- I absolutely love using ControlMaster's and Port Forwarding. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Security vulnerabilities in the past with openssl (which is typically what is linked to ssh via the library for encryption). **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** SSH is very powerful, it's not just for connecting to remote hosts/shells or other network devices -- you can do port forward (local or remote), VPN tunnels, ControlMaster's (which allow you to re-use any existing, open connection held by the ControlMaster), X11 Forwarding, etc. Plus I don't know any admin in their right mind who wouldn't utilize and require ssh for remote connections. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** It enables us to securely connect to other servers and network devices, along with having PAM integration, we're able to use a custom OTP module for 2FA that makes it easy to deploy to other systems without having to modify the source code. ### 31. The de facto standard for remote shell access **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ricardo R. | CTO, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 19, 2016 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** OpenSSH is the standard and omnipresent solution for secure remote shell access. It provides security and encryption for several other protocols as well such as git+ssh, sftp, scp amongst others. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Given its popularity, it is a frequent target of security exploits. **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** Easily available on any UNIX or Linux distribution. Do not even thing on using it on windows. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** - provides secure and encrypted access to remote shells on servers - secure source code transfer on git servers - provides secure file transfer between office and datacenter servers - tunneling connections ### 32. Best service for tunneling and secure application deployment **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mahmut B. | Senior Software Engineer, Internet, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 31, 2017 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** Robust and fast usage of OpenSSH. It provides many features like easy installation, secure and fast access to servers. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Nothing I would say, it is extremely vital piece of software for application developments. **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** Use it without any suspicion or dread. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** Secure communications over single and/or multiple servers. Muxed through many-to-many pattern and suuplies transportation security. ### 33. Administration Made Easy **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Connor H. | Application Developer, Internet, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 23, 2016 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** OpenSSH is the default SSH package installed on most *nix distributions, I've never had to install anything else to make SSH work, it just does out of the box. OpenSSH is easy to configure and is packed full of useful features that make server administration a breeze. You can define various settings on a per-host basis using a dead simple configuration format so you never have to remember what arguments to use. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Like many *nix tools, OpenSSH serves its documentation in a format similar to man-pages. To a user unfamiliar with man pages finding the right thing can become a witch hunt when all you need is a single argument. More newcomer friendly documentation would definitely make OpenSSH the perfect tool. **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** Make sure to learn the man pages format first or you may find yourself struggling to look up the correct information. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** We needed a way to give developers access to things like databases and various network applications that were hosted off servers on a private network, through SSH tunnels we were able to give them the access they need without exposing the servers to the outside world. ### 34. How else do you plan to access a *nix server remotely? **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** James D. | IT Infrastructure Engineer, Oil & Energy, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 27, 2016 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** Open SSH is a very powerful remote access tool. It runs on just about anything *nix based, from Linux to BSD to OS X. I use it daily for server configuration and monitoring. Its fast and secure. Provides full console access as if you were siting in front of a terminal. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** There really isn't anything to like about OpenSSH, it is the industry standard of remote connection to a *NIX server. **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** There really isn't anything better than OpenSSH for remote administration of a *NIX server. It is by far my most used tool in administration! **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** Open SSH allows us to manage headless servers without the need of a resource window server. Its faster and more secure than telnet and saves the time and effort of switching monitors around on servers or connecting a console cable. ### 35. There is OpenSSH, and nothing else **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Marc S. | VP Product Development, Information Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 22, 2016 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** Free, Open Source, easy to use. OpenSSH/ssh is such a common part of a developer/ops person's toolkit, that it's basically taken for granted. I've been using OpenSSH tools for 10+ years, literally almost every single day of my life...and i've never once had a second thought about using something else. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Nothing. Honestly, nothing. If you're comfortable on the command line, then ssh (et. al.) will just be a part of your everyday language. **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** Just make sure you're familiar - and comfortable - with the command line. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are running large & small scale applications, mostly web based, built using open source technologies (java/tomcat/etc). Nothing is on-prem (using AWS), so it's critical i can connect to all of our machines via ssh. I'm ashamed to admit, i can't even name a competitor in this space. ### 36. I use it every day **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Josh V. | Senior Software Engineer, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 10, 2016 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** I love being able to connect to my various systems and have a complete system at my finger tips. Most of what I do with my systems can be done with the command line, but occasionally I will fire up a graphical program with some delicious X forwarding. I also use the tunneling and SOCKS proxy features quite regularly. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** I honestly can't think of anything I dislike about OpenSSH. It's been great for the last 16 or so years that I've been using it. **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** OpenSSH opens up a lot of doors for interacting with remote systems. It's a great tool, and I think anyone who deals with any unix-like system should be familiar with it. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** I can administer virtually any system as though I were standing right in front of it, all over an encrypted connection. ### 37. Administer Remote Servers Securely **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** M. Serhat D. | Senior Software Developer, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 11, 2016 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** OpenSSH is a key tool for system administration. It is totally free and provides you secure connections with any remote machine. OpenSSH is the default SSH agent of many popular linux distributions. I have been using Ubuntu for a long time and I never needed to install another package to handle my remote connections. OpenSSH is highly customizable, you can set your own connection settings both from command line and configuration files. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Learning all the SSH commands and tricks takes time. Generating SSH keys, configuring the environment and setting up preferences requires experience. OpenSSH is an old software but it is not well documented yet. **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** OpenSSH is the most popular SSH client for Linux distributions. It is simple, efficient and secure. OpenSSH will cover mostly all your needs to administer a remote machine and run commands on them. If you are looking for an SSH client solution, I suggest you to try OpenSSH first. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm managing my personal website with SSH connection and OpenSSH. I made all my remote servers managable with SSH connection. VPN and SSH are pretty efficient together. As an experienced linux system administrator I have been administering all the remote servers with SSH connection, which is kind of industry standard. ### 38. Easiest way to admin a remote server **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Cesar I. | CTO, Computer Games, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 30, 2015 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** SSH and OpenSSH's implementation are the easiest way to get into a remote server and manage it. Getting a remote shell is just the beginning, port forwarding, and even X forwarding are key features that make ssh a great protocol. Password-less logins with public keys it's very useful as well as being able to automate tasks across servers saves tons of hours and repetitive work. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Configuration and hardening can be hard. Also windows as a server it's mostly out of the question. The handling of RSA and DSA keys can be a bit difficult sometimes. It's easy to loose a key and then you could be left out of a server. To remedy that there are some other tools that can help with the backup and handling of keys but it's not part of OpenSSH. **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** Stick to the distributions defaults but check them yourself. Depending on what you need, you might have to tweak those. A bare-bones installation is only recommended if you really know openssh from top to bottom and you are sure that you need to do something like that. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** Administering remote servers is something that most software companies have to do most of the time. Having an standardized and ubiquitous way of accessing them is just a relief. ### 39. I can't live without SSH , Can you ? **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Phil C. | Community Volunteer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 20, 2015 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** It just works and very configurable, and this is so magical you will never stop learning all possible tricks can SSH offers to you and makes you life easier and simpler, specially if you want selfhosted services for managing your data. One other cool thing is to be able to use it on your phone and get back your sessions using GNU screen and use CLI or ncurses utilities (IRC, mutt etc) **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** For advanced usage, It's not that obvious to use without a litle of network knowledges. Also I use mosh , orautossh and GNU/screen to make my session persistant, It could be also neat to add honts for relay services managed by community .or yourself to avoid NAT blockage (think teamviewer).. I wish to have nice mobile app that use SSH as transport and "emulate" local processing, like file editor or chat client or webbrowser seamless., and eventually manage disconnection or cache, Last feature It would be good to have support for very asynchronous sessions on offline system, like a POST / RECEIVE over days or reboots, maybe a "shell service" over mail already exists **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** Look at listed utilities , mosh autossh screen then get along well, also -D to setup a local SOCKS proxy is very convenient **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** Remote maintenance or developmentm, remote sharing, backuping, tunneling, git, rsync the list is too long... ### 40. Secure Shell Tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 16, 2016 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** It's an opensource and secure tool for connecting to linux and other appliances with shell console connections. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Not much to dislike about this tool. I use it daily! **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** Secure connections between servers. ### 41. Everyone should learn SSH! OpenSSH is the common implementation. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sunil W. | Consultant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2016 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** It's everywhere. It's mature. It works pretty much the same way across platforms. The development team care about the security of the user. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** Despite OpenSSH's own work, SSH, the underlying protocol, is still not that easy to understand. There isn't enough education for end users. **Recommendations to others considering OpenSSH:** There's no alternative to using it. Most people who need secure comms for network administration are already using it. A small few simply don't know that they are already using it. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm using OpenSSH for secure comms across my networks. Having a common implementation of SSH makes life simpler. ### 42. OpenSSH is powerful and secure **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 16, 2016 **What do you like best about OpenSSH?** We use OpenSSH to access production and development servers. It's easy to set up and maintain, well-documented, and powerful for all of our needs. **What do you dislike about OpenSSH?** This isn't meant for casual users, so starting out might be a bit daunting for some. **What problems is OpenSSH solving and how is that benefiting you?** We can access a variety of computers and servers from one workstation, from any other type of system. - [View OpenSSH pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/openssh/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-28+11%3A53%3A04+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=45927926-7b81-4354-8f7c-5c3190569907&secure%5Btoken%5D=ea6122d48bfe3dab1c25f72f6726848b4c00d05f53f8fce132dd9e231f84d0f3&format=llm_user) ## OpenSSH Features **Functionality** - Durability - Envelope Encryption - Automation **Compliance** - Access Management - At-Risk Analysis - DLP Configuration - Sensitive Data Compliance **Availability** - API/Integrations - Service Integration - Regional Support - Scalability **Administration** - Database Management - Deduplication - Backup - API / integrations **Administration** - Auditing - Compliance - Management Console **Security ** - Multi-Factor Authentication - Data Transport - Data Types - Security Tools ## Top OpenSSH Alternatives - [Egnyte](https://www.g2.com/products/egnyte/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (1,134 reviews) - [Virtru Email Encryption](https://www.g2.com/products/virtru-email-encryption/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (411 reviews) - [AWS Key Management Service (KMS)](https://www.g2.com/products/aws-key-management-service-kms/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (30 reviews)