When comparing Xshell 6 vs SecureCRT, the Slant community recommends SecureCRT for most people. In the question“What are the best SSH clients for Windows?” SecureCRT is ranked 10th while Xshell 6 is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose SecureCRT is:
Some of us still need actual VT220 emulation to log into OpenVMS machines. SecureCRT does a superior job at it.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Connections management
Pro Has tabs
Pro Compose bar to send a string to multiple servers at once
Pro Local shell interface to control Xshell
Pro Great option for enterprises
Xshell 6 caters to enterprises with features such as multi-tab UI, dynamic port forwarding, scripting support, support for ASCII as well as non-ASCII characters, etc.
Pro Can use any system font
Pro Tunneling bar
Channel monitoring and dynamic port forwarding.
Pro User defined key map support
Pro Task automation with VB script
Pro VT220 emulation
Some of us still need actual VT220 emulation to log into OpenVMS machines. SecureCRT does a superior job at it.
Pro Buttons bar
SecureCRT while not free has the ability to make common commands in to button for faster command processing. Commands like: exit, clear, :wq!, ls -lha and the etc.
Pro Scriptable via Python API
Has a Python API to control most aspects of the terminal and sessions. Scripts can be bound to buttons, menu items, and keyboard shortcuts.
Pro Puts emphasis on security
SecureCRT has strong data encryption and secure authentication through the support of password and public keys.
Cons
Con Not free
The subscription costs $89 per year.
Con No stable portable version
Any portable version present is wrapper. It moves files from portable folder to appdata and backward, which often cause dataloss
Con Not free
Paid product. Some nice additional Cygwin type features and server version are integrated, but for most users the feature set probably does add enough value for a paid only client.
Con Expensive
