Free Data Storage and File Hosting
Where to Find Web Storage Hosts for Free File Uploading and Sharing
Online data storage used to be an expensive luxury, affordable only to wealthy individuals and to businesses. While bandwidth has become cheaper with each passing year, the cost of hosting gigabytes of files that will be downloaded repeatedly without charging the downloader remains prohibitive.
However, the advent of one click file hosting services such as Rapidshare, Depositfiles and Mediafire has made personal online file storage not just affordable: it has made hosting and sharing files online free.
Share Files with Free Web Storage Hosts
One click file hosting services are easy to use, allowing anyone with internet access to upload a file from their computer to the servers of the web storage host. Once uploaded, the user is provided with a web page URL. This link can be used to download the uploaded file. The uploaded files can be used as a virtual backup for important files, or for file distribution by posting the file link on the web, and all without incurring bandwidth costs.
File storage service companies are able to afford the bandwidth costs by making revenue from advertising to free users, and by charging a fee for a premium account with advantages such as faster uploading and downloading, larger maximum file size and the disabling of adverts.
Free Data Storage: Filehosting Services
While a huge number of file hosting sites emerged between 2006 and the present, three data storage providers in particular have come to dominate the market in terms of number of clients and the number of files they have hosted on their servers. These file hosts are:
- Rapidshare
- Depositfiles
- Mediafire
These three file hosting services have certain traits in common. They all allow free filehosting. They all have a premium service with additional benefits for account holders and they all include SSL encryption for the security of uploaded files.
Free File Uploading with Rapidshare
Rapidshare is almost ubiquitous with one click file hosting, and it is not uncommon to find rapidshare file links in media forums across the world wide web. Rapidshare's free service allows for the following:
- Files uploaded may not exceed 200MB in size, though split archives are allowed.
- Files uploaded for free will be deleted 90 days after the last download of the file.
- Downloading files uploaded to Rapidshare for free incurs a limited download speed, and free users must wait for up to an hour between downloads.
- Free users may only upload or download a single file at a time, and may not use download managers.
- Banner ads may be displayed to the free user.
Rapidshare also offers a premium service, with the following advantages:
- 2GB maximum file size, with up to 500GB of online data storage space.
- No file deletion except for those deleted by the uploader.
- Fast upload and download times, and an internet download manager can be used.
- Multiple files can be uploaded or downloaded simultaneously.
- No adverts will be displayed.
- Less than $10 a month.
Premium users can also generate Rapidpoints through the Rapidshare loyalty program, with each file download. 10000 rapidpoints can be traded in for a free month of premium usage.
File Hosting with Depositfiles
Depositfiles shares the same free limitations of Rapidshare, except Depositfiles has a 300MB maximum file size limit, and a 30 day storage limit for free files.
The Depositfiles premium account – Depositfiles Gold – costs $11.95 a month, and like Rapidshare, allows a maximum file size of 2GB. However, files uploaded to Depositfiles will be deleted 30 days after the last download for free users, and 80 days after the last download for Depositfiles Gold account holders, so it is wise to ensure that all files uploaded to Depositfiles remain active by downloading them at least once a month.
Depositfiles also have a loyalty program, although unlike Rapidshare, their loyalty program is open to free users. Both free and Gold users can:
- Generate U-points for downloads of files uploaded by the user. Each unique download a day awards 1 U-point, and 5000 U-points can be traded for a free month of Depositfiles Gold membership.
- Generate D-points for downloading files larger than 20MB from Depositfiles. For each file downloaded, the user is awarded 1 D-point. 300 D-points can be exchanged for a free month membership to Depositfiles Gold.
Web Storage with Mediafire
Mediafire has an advantage over both Rapidshare and Depositfiles for the free user. Mediafire offers a maximum file upload size of 100MB a file, but there is no limit on how many many files can be uploaded, no delays between free downloading of files stored on Mediafire servers, and download managers can be used to speed up the download process without a Mediafire Pro account.
The Mediafire premium account, Mediapro, costs $6.97 a month, and allows files of up to 10GB to be uploaded and disables ads. Mediafire does not currently support a loyalty program, since its lack of restrictions for the free user largely makes the need for such a program obsolete.
Free File Uploading and Sharing: Which Service is Best?
Rapidshare is without doubt the most popular digital data storage host, but its popularity is mainly due to the large number of premium account holders who generate enough Rapidpoints each month to pay for another month of premium service free of charge. Free users are often unhappy with the waiting time between file downloads. Depositfiles suffers from the same complaint.
As such, Mediafire is gaining ground on Rapidshare and Depositfiles in terms of popularity for the free distribution of files on the internet, as there is no delay in downloading a sequence of files for the free user.
The best advice when choosing a file storage host is to try uploading and downloading a file to each service, and see which is the easiest to navigate, and the fastest in terms of uploading and downloading speed. After all, they are completely free to use.
For the next article in this series, see: More Free Data Storage and File Hosting, which suggests online data storage hosts which pay the uploader when their files are downloaded.
Free Data Storage and File Hosting
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