Zippyshare, the 17-year-old file storage service, announced its shutdown in March 2023. The platform was a pioneer in its field, offering simple and efficient file storage services, and its sudden closure has left them in a lurch, scrambling to find alternative file storage solutions.
When Zippyshare was launched in late 2006, it was a different era; the concept of online file storage was still new, and the players like Dropbox or Google Drive were yet to enter the market. Despite being an early player, Zippyshare ultimately was unable to sustain itself in the market. In this blog, we will examine why Zippyshare couldn’t survive and explore an alternative file storage option that is less likely to meet the same fate.
Why did Zippyshare shut down?
Zippyshare was a file storage platform that had always offered its services for free without charging its users any fees. The company’s revenue model was based on advertisements displayed to users while they used the platform. However, with the increasing popularity of adblockers in recent years, this business model has become less effective and has contributed to the company’s inability to sustain its operations.
In its closure announcement, Zippyshare says it can no longer afford to maintain the site. The statement reads, “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.”
It further states, “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”.
During its journey of nearly two decades, Zippyshare has introduced a few upgrades to stay relevant in the game. However, they were never enough, and slowly it turned into a dinosaur.
What’s the alternative?
At Blomp, we do not depend on ad revenues to run our operation. We have a transparent and sustainable business model where users have to pay once they exhaust the free storage. However, we keep our services affordable so anyone can use them by paying a nominal fee.
On signing up, you get 20GB of free cloud storage space, which should be enough for your personal use of storing documents, especially if you clean up your storage regularly. You can increase this free space up to 200GB by inviting friends to use this platform. You get 20GB of space for free for each friend who joins with your referral code. Our paid plan starts at $0.99 per month, which gives you 250GB of storage.
With this mix of free and paid plans, we can sustain our operations smoothly and make any necessary updates whenever required. Also, we promise that we will never sell your data to advertisers or other third-party entities.
Final Words
Whether you choose Blomp or any other online file storage, always make sure you read the privacy policy to know how your data is used. You should also try to understand their revenue model to ensure that the platform is not going to shut down in the future.