The design of artificial water channels is aiming to mimic natural proteins that effectively mediate the selective transport of water across the bilayer and artificial polymeric membranes. Currently, impressive progresses on synthetic backbones, including self-assembled channels, helical unimolecular and other functional organic molecules have been made to provide artificial alternatives, furthermore applying in real systems for promising product development. In this review, several synthetic channels exploited during last few years were summarized according to their backbone architectures for water transport and ion transport respectively, showing their potentials as natural transporter analogs and their importance of artificial water channels for industrial environmental or medical applications.