This is one of those online storage and online backup services that really subsist on advertising more than their premium subscriptions. The service works very well, overall, but it isn’t by any means an enterprise quality sort of backup service, nor does it provide anything very remarkable in the way of file sharing.

Full Review

Overall Rating

This is one of those online storage and online backup services that really subsist on advertising more than their premium subscriptions. The service works very well, overall, but it isn’t by any means an enterprise quality sort of backup service, nor does it provide anything very remarkable in the way of file sharing.

4shared makes for a no frills, but also zero fluff, no nonsense sort of online backup service, storage, and file sharing service suite. If you’re looking to get started with file sharing and backing up quickly and cheaply, then this is a service worth looking at.

Features

Signing up is pretty straight forward. In fact, if you have an Open ID, which your email service likely is, then you’ll be able to login that way, and import your name and other demographics from your mail server.

After signing up and confirming your email address, it’s pretty self explanatory about how to get started. You can upload from the web or from the desktop, both processes are basically identical.
Once you log in, you simply begin creating folders and backing up your files. It really doesn’t get any simpler.

In order to upload en mass, there’s a multi upload feature that basically allows you to upload multiple files in one fell swoop. This is one way to get around the file limitation on the free subscription (i.e. breakup the video file into several chapters).

We honestly didn’t like the UI very much; it was cluttered, messy and clunky. Even with multi-upload, nothing about this service felt very streamlined. Again, the service seems tailored to the customer on a tight budget that has a very narrow objective. We can see this service being really useful for users that really just need to get a bunch of files out to several people quickly (and so email really isn’t practical), and cheaply (plans start at just $5, check out the section on Price).

And because of our gripes about the UI, we really don’t recommend installing the various toolbars, desktop apps, etc. Again, (and again) what we’re seeing here with this 4shared offering is no frills, no nonsense, with the widest possible market appeal possible. And to prove this point, you can actually share over the iPhone, there’s a nice little app that they offer for doing this pretty conveniently and productively.

File Sharing

To get started, surprisingly, you don’t even need to log into the website. Head over to the domain and find the big UPLOAD FILES section to the website, and the rest is rather self explanatory. And just that simply you can begin uploading files to the public web. (In the screenshot below, you can see that us uploading an mp3 of a song.)

Now, if you don’t have an account, after the file’s been uploaded, you’ll be greeted with a “Login or Sign Up” webpage, which is pretty self explanatory. Luckily, there’s a completely free plan, no strings attached. Sign up, and you’ll get the URL to the file that you just uploaded.

As soon as you start up a plan and get registered, you can start sharing your files, even with non registered users. You’re given an access link that you can send out via IM, email, etc. You can also shre via email directly, having 4shared email the people you want to address the files to.

And when you share files, there’s the standard set of privacy settings:

• Public: the whole web and its users have access to the file and link; in fact, search engines will eventually index 4shared and have your file available to its consequent set of users
• Permissioned: this status of a file or folder won’t be indexed by a web search engine; and, in fact, in order to access the file, users will have to log in with credentials, i.e. they’ll have to register with 4shared.
• Completely private: nobody but you has access to these files and folders

Here’s the rundown of operating permissions that are worth noting about shared folders:

• Upload files lets users upload any folders they want into the folder that you’ve shared
• Disable anonymous uploads means that only registered users will be able to upload to your folder that you’ve posted to 4shared
• Notify me when new file uploaded is a simple email based reminder that’s sent whenever an uploaded file has completed to the folder that you’ve shared
• Web Grab is a nice little feature that gives you a direct link to the shared item (file or folder), as opposed to an URL to a page with ads that make you wait 30 seconds before a download link appears or is activated (this is premium feature only)

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Support

For support you almost entirely have web content; no support staff. You have two venues for support content, though: the Wiki (what they’re calling the “How to”) and the FAQ (which is probably the most extensive “FAQ” we’ve ever seen; it’s actually a knowledge base).

We really didn’t see any need for support, but it’s always nice to see at least a support staff to call or that would be available, just in case; so we were a little disappointed in that regard. But then again, the motif: budget, economy, no frills. So, that all makes sense. And for plans that start at $5, you really can’t expect that much in the way of support. At any rate, we found the service to be completely reliable and didn’t very much worry over the lack of support for either the free or the premium service.

Price

Again, the budget crowd is the apparent target market here. At $1 a day, which is what you effectively pay with the $5 “premium” plan, there’s something in here, in terms of price, for most anybody. And you can pay by any method you can think of that’s possible over the web. Major credit cards, major web based financial services are all accepted.

What you have with their pricing scheme is basically an ad supported service which is completely free, no strings attached; and then you have the premium service. Here’s what you get with the premium service that we think are notable features:

• Instantaneous downloads (with the ad supported, free service, you’re required to stay on the page for 30 seconds)
• Ad free sharing and downloading
• You can resume downloads, which is nice if you’re downloading from various locations, e.g. a bit of a movie from the coffee shop, resumed downloading at home, and then finishing it off at work (or something like that)
• You get the Web Grab feature, which is convenient
• You get direct URLs, where as the free subscribers merely get a website with the file embedded in.

Again, starting at $5, the price really isn’t an issue. And you’ll be hard pressed to find 100 GB of online storage anywhere on the web for just $77.95 for the year.

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