What is the difference between Web deploy and FTP deploy in Visual Studio?

Question

Recently I need to deploy our website into a QA environment. I find that there are a lot of options in the deployment methods, including FTP and Web Deploy. Before, I often used FTP deployment, which would copy all the website files from Visual Studio to the Server.

But this time, I noticed the Web deploy method. It also requires an account and password to upload the files. But what is the difference between the two methods?

Answer 1

Web deploy offers several benefits over FTP. Here's the sum up:

Web Deploy is faster than FTP. Web Deploy is secure. Web Deploy can apply transforms during deployment. Web Deploy integrates with Visual Studio 2010 and WebMatrix. Web Deploy is extensible.

You can read the full comparison details here.