The service comes in various flavours, the basic of which is the Lite account-this allows you to send a file up to 1 GB in size; the file can be downloaded 100 times, and is available online for a period of one week. There are three flavours apart from the Lite account-these require you to pay anywhere between $5 (Rs 225) and $30 (Rs 1,350) per month. As you climb higher on this scale, the number of times the file can be downloaded increases, for a maximum of 500 downloads. Finally, a paid account allows you to send a file as large as 2 GB in size. Interestingly, the major difference between the paid tier services is the maximum number of downloads per file; other elements such as maximum file size (2 GB) and online life of the file (14 days) remain constant. If you routinely send across large files, you can consider the $5 per month YouSendIt Plus account as the best value for money.
To send a file to someone, you need his or her e-mail ID. YouSendIt sends the recipient e-mail account a link to your file, which can be clicked for the transfer. The paid accounts also keep track of which e-mail account has downloaded your file and when. Let’s take a brief tour to setting up and uploading a file through YouSendIt:
STEP1. Sign Up
Head to www.yousendit.com and click on the “Sign up for free…” link to get started. Note that you can also try the service out before signing up. The trial will only allow you to send a file to one recipient.
Sign up at the front page
STEP2. Take Your Pick
Choose between a Lite account and a Plus account. If you decide to opt for a paid service, note that the site only accepts major credit cards-it does not support PayPal accounts.
Choose your account type
STEP3. The Final Touches
Signup requires the usual personal information. Here, we signed up for the Lite account, which offers the minimal features of keeping track of your sent items and maintains a list of your contacts. Note that the 100 recipients advertised here basically implies that your file can be downloaded 100 times-assuming each recipient downloads once.
The service will now send an activation e-mail to the e-mail address you specified during signup. You will need to sign into your e-mail account and click on the activation link before you can sign in to use the service.
STEP4. Getting Around
Once you sign in, you will see a list of folders to your left. These are self-explanatory and keep track of items sent and people you have sent them to.
Organise your data
YouSendIt also offers a branded service: you can pay to upload your company’s logo to a YouSendIt custom page, sans ads. It’s an attractive offering if your business routinely transfers large files across distances and cannot afford the associated bandwidth. Click on the Branding link to the left to learn more.
STEP5. Get Sending!
The rest is simple: add recipients in the e-mail input box, add a message if you wish to, pick the file you wish to send to the recipient and click on “Send it”. Note that you can make a secure transfer by clicking on the “Need secure…” link; however, we aren’t sure what this does, since our browser didn’t detect any encryption settings after clicking the link.
STEP6. The Other Side
The recipient will receive a mail notification containing a link to your uploaded file. He or she needs to click on this link to be able to download the file.
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