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I have a lot of problems with sending attachments with my email, either the file can't be scanned for viruses so fails, or exceeds the filesize limit (2/5/10MB), or there are simply too many files (+20) and my email/webmail/client hangs up leaving me unsure whether to retry, or let the mail get sent anyhow.

I've tried many methods in the past but they all had some problems:

  • Pando requires my recipient to download its 4MB client before file transfer can begin.
  • Free file hosting like DepositFiles requires recipients to wait some time before downloading.

Is there a solution to this? most importantly a system that's easy for recipients to download from?

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    Shouldn't title be something like: "Good alternative to sending files via email?" ? Aug 23, 2009 at 23:32

11 Answers 11

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You could create a Dropbox account and copy/paste link to the file in "Public" folder. Just remove them after a few weeks when recipient downloaded the file.

Yes, it's a "hack", but it might be more convenient than having to upload files to one of those "file hosting" websites.

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    Just want to add that people can use DropBox through the web without having to download/install the client.
    – Ken Liu
    Aug 23, 2009 at 22:37
  • An illustrated tour of DropBox, woot! - getdropbox.com/tour#1 Aug 23, 2009 at 22:49
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You could try drop.io (similar to Dropbox) or MediaFire (one-click) hosting. Both have free plans without waiting times or bandwidth limits.

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    Just to note, from their website:We've discontinued the ability to create free drops from the homepage. Read our our blog for more details. To create drops at this time you must have a previously established account.
    – Kez
    Nov 26, 2010 at 10:50
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Here's a (beta) solution that keeps you in control of your own files - Opera Unite. They've got a very fast server built-in, and methods to bypass firewalls so one can easily serve your own files over the web. The current 10.1 snapshots contain the latest release:

http://my.opera.com/unite/blog/

I use it to serve out large files that mail would choke on, but I want to keep hosted on my machine.

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What I do, which I'll admit isn't for everyone, is drop the files on a web server using WebDAV and e-mail a link. The recipient has to try real hard to mess it up! Which, unfortunately, has been the problem in pretty much every other technique I've tried. Other pluses, I can delete it, replace it, etc., whenever I want. Shared hosting is cheap or you could do it home-brew style on an old computer and a dynamic DNS updater.

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You could try StreamFile or HotShare

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Keep exploring the file hosting options. You'll find some good ones.

I've had luck with sendspace and YouSendIt. I can't remember whether these have wait times but try them out

Edit: No wait time on sendspace but files do expire after a certain amount of time

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Not free, but you can accomplish what you want with File Savr:

FileSavr's goal is to simplify the process of file hosting. We provide fastest and easiest file hosting service as an alternative to sites like MegaUpload and RapidShare. Unlike the other sites, we do not force users to sign up for paid accounts to download files, we do not show long countdown timers, pop up ads, or any other spam related activities. Our goal is simple, to offer the most basic file hosting service so you can share your stuff quickly.

Why is FileSavr doing this? To make the process a lot simpler, and because we know how annoying it is to not be able to share files.

How long are the files kept? The files are kept forever as long as they are being downloaded.

Is the upload size really 10 GB? Yes.

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try http://streamfile.com/ which i recently discovered. its limit is 150mb and you can send multiple files.

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Upload to Amazon S3 and give out the signed URL that expires after some time. For example with Cyberduck.

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Several websites of previous answers are offline thus I'll add a more recent website. I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned before:

https://www.wetransfer.com/

Up to 2GB per file.

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https://instant.io is what you want. It works using WebTorrent so you can start downloading right away.

There's also https://send.firefox.com/ which lets you upload and encrypt large files (up to 1GB) to share online. When you upload a file, Send creates a link to pass along to whoever you want. Each link created by Send will expire after 1 download or 24 hours, and all sent files will be automatically deleted from the Send server.

Both are free and free software (https://github.com/webtorrent/instant.io and https://github.com/mozilla/send).

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