I’m Ditching My Favorite File Sharing App After 10 Years—Here’s What I’m Using Now

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I'm Ditching My Favorite File Sharing App After 10 Years—Here's What I'm Using Now



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I’d have recommended WeTransfer to anyone, but in the last few months, it seems to have gone downhill, and now I’m looking to change.

I Used WeTransfer for Nearly 10 Years

WeTransfer was founded in 2009, but I didn’t discover it until 2017. I used it in a professional capacity at my first graphic design role as a way to securely send large files to external clients. After I left that role, WeTransfer has continued to be my go-to tool for sending files or folders that are too large for email attachments.

It’s always been super easy using WeTransfer, and I didn’t need an account to access it. Accessed via the browser, all I ever had to do was input my email address and upload my files using an easy drag-and-drop uploader.

WeTransfer provides different options for sending or receiving the files—firstly, you can generate a link to the folder for your recipient to download. This puts all the responsibility on you to contact the recipient(s) with the link.

The second option will generate an email directly and send it to your recipient on your behalf. This email has a link in it for them to open. WeTransfer gives you the option of writing a message and title for the email too.

How WeTransfer Has Gone Downhill

After WeTransfer was acquired by Italian firm Bending Spoons in 2024, things have started to change. These things happen, and we’ve seen them before with other tech acquisitions. Bending Spoons slashed the WeTransfer workforce, and added a higher-priced premium tier for users as well as making other changes.

WeTransfer Size Limit on Transfer Window

Ruby Helyer / MakeUseOf

Although the free model is still available, it’s largely limited compared to how I used WeTransfer years ago. Although each transfer is now increased by a gigabyte—taking it from 2GB to 3GB—the free tier is now rationed to a maximum of 3GB per calendar month. This is incredibly limiting for any users sending large files, especially for personal use.

It has also changed how long your file transfer is available for the recipient to open. Previously, you could choose between 72 hours and 7 days, giving your recipient plenty of time to ignore your email for a few days first—especially important if sending over a weekend. The new limits give free users the option of only 1 day or 3 days, less than half of the previous time allowance.

In July 2025, WeTransfer updated its privacy policy and eagle-eyed users spotted some worrying wording in the update. Similarly to back in 2023 when Adobe’s updated policy wording suggested it could use your content to train AI, WeTransfer’s update suggested users give WeTransfer a “perpetual…non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable license to use your Content…including to improve performance of machine learning models…”

As a result of the backlash, WeTransfer has since updated the wording to retract any suggestion it could use users’ content for AI training and its own commercial use elsewhere. The update and retraction left a sour taste in my mouth, adding to the downgrade of WeTransfer as a file transfer service.

Considering how WeTransfer seemed to be secure with how you share your files, and that it isn’t a social media where you’re uploading your private images to public space for all to see, its policy wording and suggestion that WeTransfer can use my files or commercialize them for its own benefit makes me second-guess if I should continue using WeTransfer at all.

Are Your Files Safe with WeTransfer?

WeTransfer addressed concerns in a blog post after updating its policies in July 2025. It has since clarified its stance and cleared up confusion in wording.

WeTransfer Terms of Service Page

Ruby Helyer / MakeUseOf

If you upload content to WeTransfer for file-sharing, anything uploaded is safe from becoming used for machine learning training, ensuring your files will never become part of an AI training model—one such thing that WeTransfer doesn’t currently offer in its services anyway.

All the files and content you upload to WeTransfer are owned entirely by you. You retain the rights of anything you upload, and WeTransfer only requires permissions to actually run its file transfer service. It does not keep your content or use it in any other way except how it is specified to do so.

WeTransfer does offer collaborations with creatives and partnerships, and you’ll find evidence of these on the website. It looks like it may move closer to being a home for creative visuals in a social-media-esque fashion, a little like how VSCO works for photographers. At present, though, WeTransfer doesn’t upload anything on your behalf or without your permission, so you won’t be finding your images, videos, or designs displayed on its website unless you go out of your way to submit them.

Since companies update their policies all the time, it can be difficult to read through the legal jargon and understand the root of the policy meaning sometimes. Whether WeTransfer clarifying its stance makes you feel better or not, it gives me a sense of relief knowing my files won’t be used for AI purposes. But I still want to find a file-sharing service that doesn’t cap my creative sharing.

Best WeTransfer Alternatives for File Sharing

Although I’ve been using WeTransfer for the best part of a decade, I know it’s not the only way to share or transfer my files. There are plenty of other options to use, all of which have their own unique benefits if WeTransfer isn’t my go-to anymore.

Free or paid cloud file storage

File storage is slightly different than file sharing, but there are some cloud storage tools which allow sharing easily too. These perpetual tools are household names, and you’ve probably heard of or even used some of these. They each have free plans and paid options.

Files being stored in Dropbox in a premium plan

Dropbox is one of my favorite cloud storage tools, and I only use the free plan. I use this mostly to share files with my team when I create designs that require sharing for marketing use or when they need to share documents with me.

Dropbox’s free Basic tier is capped at 2GB of storing and sharing. Users who’ve had Dropbox accounts for a long time may have a larger and variable amount of storage in the free plan, but 2GB is what new users receive at present.

Google Drive is another fantastic way to store or share files. With the extensive nature of the Google Suite, you can share files in a multitude of ways, including simply inviting someone via email to view or edit a document, rather than strictly sending a file to them. Google Photos also allows you to share images and videos in a similar way.

Free users receive 15GB of storage, but this is set across your emails with Gmail, photo and image storage with Google Photos, document storage with Google Docs, and other G-Suite tools.

Overall, Google Drive users retain the file, but you can choose your settings for who, how, and when you share files with others. It can be more convenient than using WeTransfer since you don’t have to wait out the upload times.

Open-source file storage and sharing

Using open-source tools is a great way to ensure control, privacy, and security of your documents. One of my favorite image and video storage options is an open-source tool called Ente Photos.

An Android phone and a MacBook Pro both with Ente Photos on their screens.

Ruby Helyer / MakeUseOf

For visual storage, Ente Photos rivals Google Photos pretty well. It also allows you to share your files with other Ente Photos users and send links to non-users for sharing elsewhere. Although Ente Photos isn’t the best option for sharing files in a professional capacity, it is a fantastic tool which puts privacy and security at its highest priority for your files.

You can access Ente Photos for free with a free-forever plan, including 10GB of storage. Paid plans offer more storage options. You can self-host or access Ente Photos on all major desktop and mobile operating systems.

ProjectSend is an open-source tool specifically for sending files to others. While it’s entirely self-hosted, which may require some learning from you, it pits security and privacy first, so you don’t have to worry about who else can access your files (hint: only people you choose to share them with).

With ProjectSend, you can use it for personal or professional file sharing, and your clients or friends can upload their files to your server—with your permission—from their own account for all-round file cohesion.

Although many alternatives to WeTransfer don’t offer the exact same service, the alternatives do allow for file sharing in ways that can work for you. Whether you agree with dropping WeTransfer from your file-sharing rota or not, it’s always helpful to know the availability of other options.

I’ve been disappointed by WeTransfers slow changes, especially losing the amount I can send per transaction and in the space of a month, so having alternative options is important for me now.



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