Before the rise of social media platforms, and their role as places to store unlimited amount of photos and videos, and before cloud storage providers become popular, Zippyshare was born.
Born in 2006, Zippyshare allows users to upload an unlimited amount of files with a size of up to 500MB each. Without requiring users to register to the platform to upload or download files, and that it provides unlimited times a file can be downloaded, Zippyshare is unique in its own way, and has proven itself exceptionally useful.
Providing an easy way to store and share files, Zippyshare has a lot of fans.
But with ad blockers and the rising cost of electricity and hosting, Zippyshare has been struggling to make ends meet recently, despite still seeing around 45 million visits a month.
This is why Zippyshare is shutting down.
Announcing the closure of the project on its blog post, which is the first post in five years, the team said that:
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.
There are several reasons for the closure:
– 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 in less and less over the years, as the arguably very simple formula of the services we offer is slowly running out of steam. I guess all the competing file storage service companies on the market look better, offer better performance and more features. No one needs a dinosaur like us anymore.
– All sorts of adblockers, whether built into the browser, as add-ons, or in the form of DNS services. Sure, we all use them, but they take away any control the site owner has over the site. Eventually we get to the point where a vicious cycle begins, in order to pay for the server infrastructure you are forced to place more and more ads, then users fire up more and more adblockers and we get to a point like today.
– Rising electricity prices. Over the past year, electricity prices have gone up 2.5 times, which, with a large number of servers, gives a significant increase in costs that we have no way to balance.
There are still a bunch of smaller reasons, but we could write a book on this, and probably no one would want to read it.
To sum it up, we can no longer afford to maintain the site.
You can send us any comments to (we’ll read them all, we’ll probably respond to just a few):
[email protected]
Thanks for being with us over the years.
See you in the depths of the Internet. o7
In short, in the world where things have moved towards the cloud with cross-platform access and mobile, Zippyshare is somehow stuck in its era.
Zippyshare downward spiral can be traced back to 2015, when it was listed as a notorious market by the Office of the United States Trade Representative. At that time, it was reported that Zippyshare is "well-known for downloads and distribution of allegedly infringing music."
Then, in 2018, Zippyshare was also noted in the Recording Industry Association of America's report to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, with the RIAA saying that Zippyshare should be listed as a notorious market, and that the website is allowing users to upload and download infringing content.
In March 2019, the UK blocked access to Zippyshare, followed by Germany, and Spain, all in the same year.
Even when social media platforms thrive and cloud storage has become common, Zippyshare has been credited for being resilient.
In fact, the hosting site has outlived many similar websites, such as RapidShare, Hotfile, and Megaupload.