Best Online File Sharing Services

Whether you're trying to share megabytes worth of music with a friend or send an important document to a coworker, nothing outshines a fast, easy-to-use file-sharing service. On Tuesday we asked you to share your favorite file-sharing service, and over 200 nominations later, we've rounded up the five most popular services. Hit the jump for a look at the top five, and then cast your vote for the ultimate file-sharing service.

Box.net

Popular for its simple interface and large feature set, file-sharing site Box.net provides 1GB of free space. Users love it for its collaboration tools and open format, which enables fun features like mounting you web space on your desktop and web service support, and RSS feeds. Like many others in this Hive Five, Box.net provides direct links to files so users aren't held up at a landing page to get their download. Box.net's biggest drawback is its free account's filesize limit, which sits at a rather paltry 10MB.

Drop.io (Web-based, Basic: Free, Premium: From $19/Month)

   

Renown by users for its simplicity and impressive interface, Drop.io (original post) doesn't require registration for use and specializes in document sharing, offering built-in previews of everything from images to PDFs. The innovative service has recently added a couple of new features, like free sending and receiving of faxes and voice recording. The free account has a 100MB storage limit, so unless you're ready to spend some cash, Drop.io is best-suited for smaller files.

The drop.io service is available in two primary flavors. The free service supports "file drops" which can consume up to 100MB of storage. Premium services start at $19 a month and expand the available storage from 100MB to 10GB and up, depending on how much storage and how many drops you'd like. Drop.io's "file drops" are where it really stands out compared to other file-sharing services. File drops are active pools of files to which you can add batches of files, share with others, allow other people to add files and collaborate, and view the media directly from drop.io's media viewer.

MediaFire (Web-Based, Basic: Free, Premium: From $7/Month)

 

Users love unlimited storage, and MediaFire (original post) offers just that. The service is free, offers unlimited disk space, and requires no sign-up to use any of the site's features. The files you upload, however, can only be up to 100MB in size.

MediaFire offers multiple tiers of file sharing. At the most basic you can upload as many files as you want, limited by a 200MB cap per file. Free accounts will hold files for 30 day from the last time they were downloaded. Premium accounts start at $7 a month and boost the file cap to 2GB per file, enable site-to-site transfer to your MediaFire account, enable embeddable Dropbox folders, and offer direct file linking—no MediaFire splashpage when you share a link to a file. The folder-based organization of MediaFire makes it simple to share entire batches of files with others, like vacation photos or project files.

Windows Live SkyDrive

With an impressive 5GB of free storage space, Windows LiveSkyDrive (original post) is one new product out of Redmond that's quickly found a place in users' hearts. SkyDrive works on a folder-based system, emphasizing the ability to organize your files in personal, shared, and public folders. SkyDrive requires a Windows Live account to get started, individual uploads are limited to 50MB.

FolderShare

The cross-platform FolderShare (original post) is more of a file syncing tool than it is a traditional file-sharing service. (In fact, it's what we used to sync Firefox extensions across the internet.) FolderShare lovers emphasize the ease with which they can share a folder on their desktop, then quickly sync the folder's contents to a friend's computer. All you have to do is set it up, then any file you drag into a shared folder is automatically replicated on computers you're sharing folders with.

Dropbox (Web-Based/Windows/Mac/Linux, Basic: Free, Premium: From $10/Month)

Dropbox has won over many users by combining online file sharing with local storage and syncing. You can use Dropbox exclusively as a web-based file sharing tool to upload and organize files in folders, easily sharing them with yourself or friends. Grabbing the Dropbox client, however, allows you to share any file from a folder on your computer. Files stored in a local Dropbox folder are automatically synced to Dropbox on the web—useful for all sorts of tricks like syncing your OneNote notebooks among computers or keeping your password keyrings up to date.

RapidShare (Web-Based, Basic: Free, Premium: From $9/Month)

The RapidShare service has multiple layers of user accounts which, at first glance, can be quite confusing to a new user. Without signing up you can upload a single file of 200MB, and your file can then be downloaded up to 10 times—perfect for just sharing a file with a few friends. When you upload files, you're offered the chance to set up a free "collector's" account which gives you further options to store and organize your files. Collector's accounts accumulate points, which you can convert into a premium account—but no clear explanation of the process is anywhere to be found on the RapidShare site. Purchasing a premium account boosts your storage to 20GB and raises your per-file-cap to 2GB.

Megaupload (Web-Based, Basic: Free, Premium: From $10/Month)

Megaupload, like other popular fire-and-forget file sharing tools, has three tiers of service. You can share files with no sign up at all—they'll be limited to 500MB in size, have a 45 second splash page when downloaded, and be given lower priority in the server queue. Signing up for a free account boosts your priority in the queue, raises your maximum file size limit to 2GB, and gives you 200GB of online storage—not bad for a free account. Premium accounts give you unlimited storage, unlimited file size, remove the wait time for downloading, and enable a host of features like batch downloading, password protection for files, and support for FTP and direct HTTP linking.