After almost 17 years online, file-hosting veteran Zippyshare will shut down at the end of the month. Founded in 2006, Zippyshare was known for its free, no-nonsense, no-frills approach to storing files online. Having changed very little over the years, Zippyshare’s operators say the platform is now a dinosaur that costs too much to run in a world where ad-blocking is widespread.
Goodbye, ZippyShare. It has been announced that the file hosting service, which has been established since September 2006, will be asked to close the service at the end of March 2023, Sunday (19/3/2023). “We plan to close the service at the end of the month. Back up all your important files. You have two weeks to do it. Until then, the site will run without any changes,” the company wrote on its official blog. For those who are not familiar, ZippyShare is a service that allows users to store and send data/files via the internet. These files include databases, photos, videos, e-mails, applications and so on.
When file-hosting service Zippyshare showed its first signs of life in September 2006, accessing the site using an iPhone was impossible; the smart phone’s existence wouldn’t be announced for another four months.
Zippyshare’s success was built on solid yet basic foundations; straightforward free hosting of files, via a clean interface, at zero cost to the user. With relatively few options available elsewhere, Zippyshare was a huge success and to celebrate its first birthday, Zippyshare went BIG.
“A few days ago Zippyshare.com turned one year old,” its operators wrote in 2007. “For Zippyshare’s first birthday we are raising the filesize limit to 100mb.”
ZippyShare makes it easy for users to store and send files in various formats, has a simple and minimalist interface. In fact, this service is free of charge, alias free.
Users are also possible to store and share data with a size of 500 MB each per file. Users can access the service by visiting ZippyShare.com or the ZippyShare Uploader application. The application allows users to access services without going through a browser. It was this characteristic that made ZippyShare successful in its time and was widely known by many people. In the same announcement, the company explained the three main reasons behind the closure of the ZippyShare service, namely competition, ad blocking, and first, when ZippyShare was established in 2006, the company was able to become the people’s first choice. This is because one of the selling points of ZippyShare is that it can be accessed free of charge. However, over the years, fewer and fewer users are using the ZippyShare service. Plus, increasingly advanced technological developments make the company a little behind.
Upgrade After Upgrade
After repeatedly upgrading to meet rising demand, Zippyshare launched Zippyshare Uploader, a software application that allows users to upload files without using a web browser.
Almost three years after the surprise 100mb limit was introduced, Zippyshare doubled its filesize limit to 200mb. A little later, when the internet was consumed with Megaupload being taken down, Zippyshare was carried on as if nothing had happened, or it did once its email servers had been fixed.
Zippyshare Breaks Five-Year Silence With Bad News
When Zippyshare’s operators announced the shutdown of the site yesterday, that was the first update posted to the site for almost five years.
“We’ve decided that we’re shutting down the project at the end of the month. Please make backups of your important files, you have about two weeks to do so. Until then, the site will run without any changes,” the announcement reads.
In addition to hardware upgrades, Zippyshare also received visible updates over the years, but in broad terms, the view for users stayed much the same. As the file-hosting market developed and competition increased, being zippy was still good but wasn’t enough.
Simple Formula Meets Innovation and Mass Ad-Blocking
“Since 2006 we have been on the market in an unchanged form, that is, as ad financed/free file hosting. However, you have been visiting less and less over the years, as the arguably very simple formula of the services we offer is slowly running out of steam,” Zippyshare continues.
“Thanks for being with us over the years. See you in the depths of the Internet.”
Zippyshare (2006-2023)