SCP/SFTP, provided by most SSH implementations is what I use for just about all simple remote file transfer. This is available in any Linux/BSD setup either by default or very easy to setup/install and there are several options for Windows including cygwin which includes a port of the same OpenSSH clients and servers used by most Linux setups.
Another option is to setup a VPN, using something like OpenVPN, that you connect to the server, you can then FTP over that without making the FTP service available to the outside world (or use any other file transfer option such as using Windows shares directly).
FTP can work without its passive mode in many cases, but I would recommend moving away from FTP anyway for various reasons:
- security: everything is sent plain (i.e. unencrypted) with FTP
- security: this includes your login authentication credentials
- efficiency: SCP/SFTP usually works out quicker (esp. over a high latency link when sending multiple objects) as it all happens over one connection not requiring a new data link per object like FTP
- efficiency: SSH (and so SCP/SFTP) support compression as do most VPN solutions which could make a difference depending on what you are transferring
- firewall/routing issues: the FTP protocol's use of separate data connections per transferred object can be a source of failure depending on firewall setups at either end - SCP, SFTP and anything-over-ssh (like rsync) use a single bi-directional connection for everything.
Another good option for efficiently updating remote content from a local reference is rsync over ssh which does a very good job of just sending the minimum needed to update the remote end - I use this for maintaining off-site backup copies and such.
Note: Don't confuse SFTP with FTPS. SFTP is "SSH file transfer protocol" and FTPS is "FTP over SSL" which solves the encryption related security issues but not the other disadvantages of FTP.
