Android App Comparison: SSH Clients

. Published on April 22, 2013. 7

Until recently I have been using (read: worshipping) my beloved Nokia N9, whilst continuously ranting about it to everyone I came across, touting it as “The best smartphone in the world!” and whatnot, however it’s plain to see that MeeGo is quickly becoming dated, so I decided it was time for an upgrade. This post is brought to you by Australian VPS hosting provider, Crucial.

I looked long and hard for an Android phone that fit my particular needs, and after a series of deductions I finally came across the Motorola RAZR M, which fits what I was looking for like a glove.

Now that I have jumped onto the Android bandwagon, I am finding myself surrounded with a wealth of apps and options for the things I want to do, due to the bustling ecosystem of Google’s operating system, and one of the first things I thought of was “How am I going to administer my Blaze VPS when I’m out and about?”. Thankfully this is easily done by installing an SSH client from Google Play, and to save you the hassle of figuring out which one is best; I’ve done the hard work for you.

Enough back story, on to the comparison!

The two awesome SSH clients I will be comparing are ConnectBot and JuiceSSH. I have made comparisons based on the simplicity of the “first run” user experience, feature set, and style and customisation options of each app.

Simplicity:

I think many people would agree that their Android phone will not be the primary device for administering their servers, so when that time comes that there is an emergency and you are not near a computer, or when you’re on the couch and just want to run some quick updates before the ad-break ends, you certainly don’t want to be messing around with a clumsy interface to get your work done. In this case ConnectBot was the clear winner for me, simply because the UI barely existed, where JuiceSSH had me browsing through menus and configuring options, ConnectBot just asked for a username, hostname, and password, then before I knew it I was logged in.

Winner:
ConnectBot

Feature Set:

If you are a heavy user of SSH and have a large number of servers you need immediate access to at all times, you will probably want a bit more out of your SSH client, and with features like synchronised 1 touch logins across all of your devices, and all of your team’s devices, the trophy goes to JuiceSSH hands down. It takes a bit more configuration than ConnectBot, but the end result is 1 touch access to any server you set up, from any of your devices.

Winner:
JuiceSSH

Style/Customisation:

With a complete lack of colour customisation in JuiceSSH, ConnectBot wins this one by default, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth mentioning the truly extensive colour control in ConnectBot, as seen in the images below.

In summary, both apps are great and would suit anybody looking to make SSH connections from their Android device, however due to its simplicity and low footprint I will likely be sticking with ConnectBot for the time being (sans the hot pink of course).

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Tom@JuiceSSH

Hi Aden,

Thanks for considering us in your insightful review. It’s a fair and interesting point of view and we’re proud to be comparable with such an already well established app.

You’re right in your view that we’ve aimed our user experience more towards repeat users. We think that by allowing user/auth sets (or identities in JuiceSSH) to be reused across multiple servers, user journeys will in fact be faster because there’ll be no need to re-enter passwords or locate private keys for each connection. Thats not to say, however, that we couldn’t achieve the same thing by abstracting those details from a “Quick Connect” feature. We’ll add this to our road map and hopefully make the process more streamlined soon.

With regards to colours and theming, we do offer a few options via the settings menu. This is however restricted to our Pro users. Currently we’ve implemented Dark (default), Light, Solarized Light and Solarized Dark themes. However, we’re considering ways to make the themes customisable.

Thanks again for sharing your views on JuiceSSH. We’re constantly working on making it better and love the feedback! Please get in contact if you’re interested in reviewing some of our Pro features further.

Kind Regards,
Tom
Damien

Really have to say I strongly disagree with the review conclusions. I came over to Android from an iDevice world where I previously enjoyed iSSH (despite the rather heavy price tag).

Naturally the established SSH client for android is connectbot, so that’s what I started to use. I got along just about OK with it on my old HTC DesireHD, but after upgrading to the Nexus 4 I found the stock keyboard answered some of my prayers (like tab, pipe) and caused new problems (no arrows).

So once again I resumed my periodic search for a decent SSH client for android that actually works! This time I was lucky to run into juiceSSH and it’s really a breath of fresh air. The UI is clean, it brings its own extended keyboard for the tricky keys (so you don’t have to install some third party keyboard: can still use your preferred one for all the normal keys and your other apps etc), and contrary to this article I actually found setup much easier (to import my key) than on connectbot.

Maybe connectbot is easy if you’re using passwords, but with keys it really is a rather awkward and clumsy experience – juiceSSH got it so right…
Jacques

I must say, my experience cannot quite agree with this article either. I simply installed JuiceSSH, told it quick connect to a machine, and presto! And it worked nicely in landscape mode on my Nexus 10 without any “intervention” on my part.

The fact that one can, on the fly, resize the terminal’s text simply by using the volume rocker, rocks!
John

I too very much liked juice. I came from iSSH where there is a keyboard interface similar to Juice’s and it is oh so useful on soft keyboards. iSSH Let’s you customize the keyboard unlike Juice, however I found Juice’s implementation to be very good and cannot complain. Also Juice includes mosh support for free, in iSSH this is an add-on. I also liked having managed identifies in Juice.
Onur

I don’t agree with the simplicity argument either. I know nothing about juiceSSH nor other android ssh applications but I actually came in this page to find something else than connectbot (I used to have a ssh client on iphone too). Because I even couldn’t figure out how to use “tab” nor “ctrl” buttons on connectbot, maybe there is a bug for my phone model.
david

Connect Bot is absolutely thr winner for me.

Considering everything I get for free, the low foot print, the immense number of additional functions you can set up with minimal fuss and that it’s adfree even thought it’s free is just fantastic.

Pairing Connect Bot with Hacker’s Keyboard is the way forwards.

I like the simplicity of Juice but from a professional POV Connect Bot is more useful. Perhaps that might change in the future as Juice release more features, but until then….
Petr Vernadskiy

Well, juice and connectbot are good, but Admin Hands tool is best, it have embedded ftp,ssh,sftp,telnet clients and have many other features and quite modern UI…