ConnectMeNow

ConnectMeNow is intended to facilitate managing network shares with support of various protocols. The application is quite unobtrusive and straightforward.

In this regard, it can be set to start automatically with the system and even mount the selected shares without user intervention. Unfortunately, necessary or not, the product's help documentation is quite poor and is only available online.

In order to connect one of the already configured shares, you just need to click on the application icon on the menu bar and select the name of the share from the menu. Likewise, should you need to configure new shares, you can do so by clicking on the Preferences option.

Some configuration data is necessary when adding a new share. For instance, you can give it a name or use automatic naming instead. Moreover, it is essential to select the server type. Luckily, the tool allows the most commonly used protocols, including SMB (for Windows) and AFP (for Apple) as well as FTP, SSH and NFS. Besides, its support of the WebDAV protocol permits it to establish a connection with the most popular cloud storage services. It is also possible to set the new share to connect automatically when the application is started. And, in case it needs providing authentication credentials, it is possible to do so as well. Finally, you can send a wake-on-lan signal to the host machines to make the share available.

All in all, ConnectMeNow solves the problem of automating connections to network shares using a wide range of protocols. The good news is that this product is absolutely free to use.