Smash is WeTransfer, But With No Need to Register
Looking for the best way to send large files, without needing to register nor to verify your email address, unlike WeTransfer requires? Smash is your best choice: a file transfer service with no size limits, without registration, without email verification. And more: it’s free and so easy.
You’d think that sending a large file would be simple: go to a website, hit upload, grab a link, and send that link to someone else. Unfortunately, there are often additional steps to take and hoops to jump through so that you can send that file, or so that your recipient can download it. One of the most annoying? Being forced to register and sign-in just to send or receive a large file. Trading your email address ad other personal details for the chance to send a large file is a pain, and a privacy pain point, too – luckily, there are alternatives that will allow you to avoid all the WeTransfer registration prompts and send your large files where they need to go.
In this article we’ll explore the sorts of barriers that so many file transfer services throw up in front of their users and explain how you can send a large file of any size without ever needing to sign up, log in, register, or trade away your privacy with Smash.
Four Ways WeTransfer (and Others) Make it Hard to Send Large Files for Free
WeTransfer is one of the market leaders in the file transfer service market. As such, it’s not much of a surprise that their anti-user friendly UX has spread through the industry. While paying users expect to have to register their billing and account details, it’s increasingly common for these services to prompt free users to share their personal details, too. Here are four ways that WeTransfer and other platforms push free users to trade their privacy just to do something as simple as send a photo to a friend.
1. Obligatory Registration
You’re all set to send a large file and – even better – you are sending it for free. Just upload, click, confirm and…a pop-up takes over your screen: to send this file you need to create an account? Ugh.
A lot of file transfer services want you to register to send a file to someone using their service. It’s justified in part by a desire to avoid becoming an on-ramp for the distribution of malicious files, but it’s also a way for the service to gather data about their users. Even if those users aren’t spending a cent, that’s potentially valuable data that can help support advertising strategies or be leveraged in the hunt for paying users.
Don’t want to register just to send grandma her snapshots or get that presentation to the boss on time? Smash allows you to send photos, Powerpoint presentations, PDFs, large videos, and any other file of any size for free: no sign up required and no sneaky data gathering, either.
2. Create an Account – It’s Worth It!
So maybe you don’t have to create an account…but some file transfer services will really go out of their way to try and convince you that it’s worth it!
WeTransfer, for example, has a whole page where they try and convince their free tier users to create an account. Their argument is three-fold:
You only need to verify your email once – apparently a user request
You can track transfers with a unique overview page
You can save your contacts on WeTransfer to save typing in email addresses
Convinced? Neither are we. Tracking transfers is something that most file transfer services offer for free through email, anyway, and giving another digital service access to your address book is really not all that enticing these days. And as for user requesting to launch yet another online account to avoid the odd verification email? That’s far from convincing, too, and the promise of additional security peace of mind makes us wonder what other security features are being held back.
About the request to verify emails, it’s other feature decided by WeTransfer to make it hard to send files. It’s contrary to user experience optimizations: you as an user, you just want to send your file to your recipient, but Wetransfer doesn’t let you do it as quickly as you want to. First, you need to check your inbox and verify your email address. You’re at the beginning of your experience with the service, but it doesn’t start well.
At Smash, you get top-flight security and encryption on every transfer, no matter how large. Free tier users can send files of any size as often as they like and not only never have to pay, but also never need to register or to verify their email addresses before uploading their files. They also never need to trade their privacy or (gulp!) save their email contacts on a Smash server.
3. You Deserve a Personal Experience
“If you never create an account, you’ll only ever get access to the standard user experience – but if you create an account, we can offer you a personal experience on our site!”
So goes the standard sales pitch, the same one that every website from Facebook to The New York Times to WeTransfer makes to its users. As WeTransfer puts it, for example, only users with an account get the all-in experience with a transfer dashboard:
Keep track of all your available transfers in one easy overview. See how many times your files are downloaded. Resend, forward or delete your transfers with a click.
To get that dashboard you’ll need to part with information like your email address, your first and last name, or your Google or Slack account details, and you’ll need to accept a loooong Terms of Service, too – and when was the last time you read one of those before clicking ‘OK’?
With the Smash plugin for Outlook, you don’t have to worry about signing up to get a personal experience, and you can track all of your transfers from your own inbox. Yes, with Smash there’s no need to be logging in to another website with another username and password combination just to know that you sent a file to someone – Smash lets you know in your inbox which is already yours!
4. Easy to Send, a Pain to Download
Sometimes the experience of sending a file can seem perfect: no account to create, no address book to upload, no pop-up pressuring you to sign up – just a smooth process with a couple of clicks or taps. But there’s always a chance that it’s not the same on the other end of the transfer.
Some file transfer services will encourage or even force the person who will download your file to create an account. And, sadly, a lot of people will do exactly that with barely a thought because they think it’s the only way to get the file that you sent them.
In such case, the file transfer service isn’t providing a better user experience, they aren’t providing a personalized dashboard, and they aren’t helping smooth things along. Instead, they are just gathering data on a group of people that haven’t even really used their service but know someone who has. Hello unsolicited emails, marketing campaigns, and personal data for sale.
At Smash no one asks anyone to create an account. You can send or receive a file of any size without ever signing up for an account or even spending a cent. Yes, Smash won’t even prompt you to create an account if you send file after file on their free tier – it’s a free file transfer service, not a ‘fleece the users of personal data’ operation, after all.
Conclusion: Send Large Files Without the Sign Up
Web services employ a variety of tactics to try and coax you – or force you – into creating an account to send a large file to someone else. Whether WeTransfer or one of the other competitors in the space, it’s increasingly common for a site to try and find a way to get you to trade your full name, email address, and even your address book for access to a service that they promote as ‘free’.
But in these days where all data has some value and personal data is especially valuable to corporations and criminals alike, signing up for an account with a file transfer service is a decision that should not be taken lightly.
Linking an account to your credit card because you have a paid plan? That makes sense.
Linking your personal details to an account because you just want to send a file for free? Not so much.
| Smash | WeTransfer | Others | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forced to create an account to send a file | NEVER | NO | YES |
| Encouraged to create an account to send a file | NEVER | YES | YES |
| Personalized experience reserved for accounts | NEVER | YES | YES |
| Forced to create an account to download a file | NEVER | NO | YES |
As the table above explains, when it comes to these sorts of dark patterns, Smash is out in front of WeTransfer and other file sharing services. With Smash, you can send a file of any size to anyone in the world, and you’re never encouraged or coerced into creating an account – and neither are they. You get all the benefits of a top-tier service without paying a cent: no compromises on security, encryption, or tracking – and you can customize your links, add password protection, and enjoy lightning fast transfer speeds just like paying customers.
