Phun filesharing services - what to use?

A week has passed with the whole Megaupload mess and with fllesharing services acting paranoid in pulling out or shutting down, it leaves Phun a little short-handed for uploaders that want to share for the community here. Cayne and the mods are obviously discussing and debating if/when/should they add more filehosts, but for now we're stuck with the following options: Rapidshare, Hotfile, Mediafire and ZShare. Sure, there's the chance the Filesonic could come back, but with the unscrupulous way they stopped their filesharing services, I'm frankly surprised they haven't been banned from Phun.

Anyway, I'm still a little undecided whether I'm going to go through the process of massively reupping all my uploads from the past two years. But with that said, i still plan on trying to contribute and share what I can, when I can. With that said, I'd like to hear input from Phunsters regarding the four filehosts left - specifically, I've made a recent upload that has four mirror links to the respective approved filehosts allowed at Phun and would very much like to get feedback on your experience downloading from any/all of the filehost you've used.

Anyways, here are my thoughts on each of the allowed filehosts at this time. Btw, my plan is always the same; I do not pay for filesharing services and unless there's absolutely no choice, I don't intend to pay for premium services to filesharing.

Rapidshare
Seems like everyone's default at this time and it's not surprising really - across the board, Rapidshare has the least trouble from uploaders and downloaders with it's decent upload speeds and above average download speeds. File longevity is a concern for uploaders and, with so many uploaders jumping back on Rapidshare, there's some concern that RS upload and download speeds will be affected greatly.

Hotfile
My experience with Hotfile is somewhat biased in that they're the only filehost that has take really aggressive action against uploaders; I've had 2 previous accounts shutdown by Hotfile. And that 2nd account, I barely used! So, while uploading and downloading from Hotfile offers pretty good speeds, the aggressive nature in how they shutdown accounts at the smallest sniff of high activity has me pretty wary.

MediaFire
I used Mediafire a couple years ago, just to test them out; my files lasted exactly 3 days before they were removed. :|
So, I grudgingly try them again today to test out the experience. They have pretty good upload speeds but one thing that really sucks about them: unless you pay for an account, the max upload file size is 100MB... which means lots of split file uploads. :| But the one good thing that I nearly forgot about (thanks to jimmytee) is that you can download multiple files simultaneously from MediaFire. :thumbs:

ZShare
So I have never used ZShare and, unless there's some real extreme circumstance or if some Phunsters explain to me why I should use Zshare for my uploads I don't plan to ever again. :roll:
Their website claims Zshare is one of the oldest filesharing services; you know what, it sure feels that way with their archaic uploading system! That said, uploading speed was pretty good but their uploading system is kinda awkward. And like MediaFire, the max file size is 100MB (unlike MediaFire, where there's a +/-of 5MB, you HAVE to be under 100MB with ZShare). Lastly, when I tried downloading from ZShare, I get a few pop-ups (I have a pop-up blocker, but they did flash for brief moments), which is always a bad sign. :no:

So, like to hear all your thoughts as well and if you haven't tried all the filehosts, check out the recent upload I've made so you can try out all the options. Let's try to keep the discussion focused on the approved filehosting options at Phun - this isn't a thread about which filehost should be added to Phun, especially since the filesharing landscape is still in flux at this time.

Thanks.

 

Being primarily a downloader, I am mostly insulated from the problems that the great uploaders experience. For instance, for several other sites, I subscribe to Oron which seems to be poison here. As a downloader, Oron is seamless and trouble free. The same is true of Hotfile, but again that's from the viewpoint of a downloader. I subscribed to Rapidshare for many years, but when they changed several years ago, I had almost no clue as to what they were trying to communicate, as in their use of "rapids". I don't know what rapids are. I tried hard to know, but I could never figure it out. I was happy when Phun mostly discontinued their use.

 

May i please suggest an idea to everyone? I am in no way affiliated with the site and have been using it for around 7 months without problem.

It's www.real-debrid.com. Basically it unrestricts premium links. It works for all 4 of the filehosters mentioned above and the monthly cost is cheaper than any of them. It works with IDM and other download managers and can be integrated into your browser so you can just right click and unrestrict the link from the source page. And there are loads of other filehosters apart from the mentioned 4 it works for. And download speeds are great.

As i say, i am in no way connected with this site and don't care if you use it or not, but its a great concept and really works. Just wanted to share incase people arent aware of it.

Thanks

 

Hotfile
In my opinion this filehost is USELESS. They ban accounts easily after few DMCA notifications. This will be a problem for Phun cause The board will be full of dead download links soon.

Rapidshare
Solid filehost (for the moment). My only problem with them it's the LOW upload speed (for me) but the download speed seems to be good.

MediaFire
Reading on few boards I just discovered that MediaFire just started to delete massive amount of files banning accounts. If rumors are true this filehost will become useless like HotFile.

ZShare
Never used so I really can't give my 2c about this filehost.

real-debrid dot com it's a download platform that allow you to download from several filehosts using only a premium account. So it's not related to this discussion.

 

Hotfile is sucks. Continuous forbids all accounts.

 

not long ago the consensus was that "Rapidshare sucks" and phunners closed their accounts in droves
because of the Rapids system
now RS seems to be the only viable alternative....
what goes around comes around, i guess!

 

Waterloo, I appreciate the feedback. But again, let's focus just on the four options and how viable they really are... no need to mention Oron, which I find highly suspect that you mention anyway. You say Oron is seamless and trouble free since your subscribe to their service; I would HOPE any filesharing service that users subscribed to are trouble free! The main reason why Oron is "poison" here at Phun is pretty simple - it's hellaciously long wait times between downloads for free users, download limits and their notorious business practices have given Oron that poisonous reputation that many in the filesharing community at Phun know pretty well.

Quite true. Though I think most of the uploaders still have their Rapidshare accounts, so I don't think any of us really "closed" accounts per se.

But your observation is spot on all the same; we really don't know how good we have it until things change dramatically for the worse. I think my main concern for Rapidshare is file longevity - that is, unless you have a RapidPro premium membership, if you upload a file to Rapidshare, it will only last 30 days. I forget if that's 30 days regardless if the file has been downloaded or not.

 

Hotfile is the only one that I will never have an account with again.
Really though it doesn't matter, whichever one everybody decides to use will get popular, then it will attract more attention, and then it will have more trouble. It would be better if a lot of different hosts were used, and if somebody requested a repost on a specific host maybe another person would be nice enough to upload it or maybe it would get reuploaded several times by different people on different hosts. Since most of the big uploaders are more worried about making money they wouldn't want their stuff put on other hosts, so I don't think that will ever happen.

 

I think the forum needs to diversify the hosts allowed a lot more than before ! This way a demise of one host will not cause the forum to be full of dead links. Many elite forums allow more than 7 or 8 hosts , this way even if the forum makes a little % on sales their dependence on a major host like the case with FS won't kill them. diversification is really a key word in offering and in all kinds of investment as most know the popular " Don't put all your eggs in one basket". I think it would be appropriate to add DF, FF even more this way all people have many choices.


thanks

 

oron has suspended it's affiliate program, as their paypal account got blocked.

 

rapidshare seems to be the best of the lot right now. i still have a few files on there that i'd uploaded about 4 years ago; but i always added random files to the rars, so they were harder to detect by their deletion system, which i believe would auto-delete anything with a hash that matched something that had been reported.

 

I have been using Mediafire since the big fallout, they keep your files as long as you log into your account:
http://www.mediafire.com/faq.php#faq12

 

I have had Hotfile, Rapidshare, and Filesonic accounts. The only one that was reliable was Rapidshare. Hotfile and Filesonic each had spurts where the download speeds would grind to a creep. Filesonic was especially bad the last few months of 2011; I stopped using that account for the most part. I only did significant uploading to Filesonic, so I can't personally attest to the speeds of Rapidshare and Hotfile. The little bit I did do to Rapidshare seemed ok, but I usually set it and then left or went to sleep.

As for downloading, Rapidshare generally has the fastest speeds out of the three. Rapidshare seemed to do a good job of using bandwidth. Unfortunately and fortunately, I just let my Rapidshare account expire about a month ago, thinking I could survive on one account, Filesonic, since it seemed to be the most widely used across the internet. My Filesonic was set to expire in 3 days. Glad I hadn't renewed it. I am hesitant to renew the Rapidshare account for fear that they could decide at any time to follow the lead of other file lockers and limit sharing ... caught between a rock ...

Mediafire is nice for free downloading: no wait, parallels, decent speeds.

My vote is for Rapidshare, but I am leery of all of them now. I will likely survive on free links for some time or at least until the dust settles.

 

It seems like fileserve.com re-opened the gates to public up&downloading...

 

Yay!

 

Looking at the SVF section, I find it sadly humorous that the cashposters are posting TONS of hotfile links - and two days later, those links are offline. I guess they either don't realize Hotfile aggressively hunts down files and repeated offenses will get your account banned. :roll:

 

Been testing it all morning, seems like they also removed captcha & waiting time for free users...