How to Send 500 Megabyte Emails

Recently, we showed you how you could use your GMail acount as a virtual hard drive for storing up to 3 Gb of files remotely. Great for backing up your digital photos so you can access them anywhere. But, what about sending those sometimes enormous image or media files you create?

Google Mail recently doubled their attachment allowance to 20 Mb, which is fine for most users. However, occasionally you might want to send a multi-layered Photoshop file, which could be ten times as big as that allowance, or perhaps you want to email a truly hefty e-book or your band’s demo video, all of which could be a couple of hundred megabytes? No fear mashable.com recently published a round-up of services that allow you to mail very large files.

YouSendIt

MegaUpload

zUpload

DropSend

mailbigfile

LeapFILE

MediaMax

These various services allow you to send files up to around 500 Mb, some require a premium (paid for) account others are free for basic use. YouSendIt, for instance, allows you to send 2Gb files at a cost of $4.99 per month for their premium account, and DropSend 1 Gb for $5/mo. There are limits on the number of file transfers (uploads/downloads) that can be carried out on some of these services. mailbigfile, for instance, allows users to download any one file only 25 times per month, although there is no limit on the number of files that can be transferred.

With most of these services, you are not really emailing the files, you create an account, upload the file to their server, and send an appropriate link to your addressee via which they can then download the file. Some of them even allow you to “send” smaller (100Mb approx) files without registering.

There are other file transfer services out there that offer similar limits - http://www.box.net, http://www.orbitfiles.com, and http://www.drivehq.com, for instance. Mashable readers also suggested http://www.mediafire.com as being one of the more useable and fast services. Then there is http://www.transferbigfiles.com, http://fileho.com, http://www.senduit.com. Also, many file storage sites now allow file sharing as part of their service - among them, http://www.flipdrive.com and http://www.xdrive.com. For a more complete list try here.

Some instant messenger programs also offer relatively large file transfers. Yahoo IM, for instance, allows 1 Gb transfers, but relies on both you and your addressee running this program, as does Skype although file size is not limited to 1 Gb.

Similar systems are available that rely on a download - http://www.tubesnow.com - for instance. And, then we’re entering the realm of novel P2P applications with tribler.org.

Finally, if you and your addressee do not have the fattest of pipes on the intrawebs, you could always try good old-fashioned snailmail, as suggested by one mashable reader. Simply burn your vast files to a DVD and stick it in the post. Job done.