There are many file-hosting sites out there. Rapidshare, MegaUpload, Mediafire, Bitshare and the like. Then, there’s Fileserve.
My experience with Fileserve has been both good and bad (mostly bad.), and here’s why.
As a Regular User
I have few qualms about Fileserve as I used their service normally. Like other filehosting sites, they had the usual timedelay and limited download rule. Because of that simple fact, nothing seems bad as it seems.
The better part for Fileserve is that the download page that they present to you is only average at best when it comes to annoyances. Some hosting sites just love misleading Download Now links and horrible procedures (such as countdown + captcha + download now + ticket expiry if you didn’t click download now in the last 30 seconds, etc) To be honest, I do not know what the other hosts are achieving with this kind of tactic, besides annoying their users to download less, or avoid their services completely.
The bigger benefit is that most sites use Fileserve anyway, thus making downloads from their service abundant. Because of this, I considered subscribing to their premium, hoping to download more stuff, fast.
As a Premium User
The good part of their premium is that it works as you’d expect: You can use download managers, download multiple files in parallel, and you’re no longer pestered by the download page. (like other sites as well) However, Fileserve tends to twist their words as they advertise their premium features:
Fileserve states that premium users can attain maximum download speeds. However, this is both true and false. It is false because an individual download still has a certain threshold limit (on my end, it’s an average speed of 250KB/s per file). However, you’re free to download as many files as you want, and have about 250KB/s download speed each (For those who rely on multipart files, this isn’t a problem). The deal-breaker is if you’re downloading only one file, or you only have one file left because you’ll end up with a single disappointing 250KB/s download rate for it (rather than maximizing your internet connection to the fullest). It’s a serious bottleneck to hate. Just imagine having a 1MB download rate and only to find out that you can only get a quarter’s worth of it, and spending 4x the time to get the file.
It gets worse as download speeds are usually erratic. It doesn’t constantly stay at 250KB/s and actually fluctuates from 0KB/s to 300KB/s. Sometimes, downloads completely pause for prolonged periods of time for no good reason. (hence the 0KB/s)
Another annoying thing is that they keep payment subscriptions as a default. When I signed up for their service, I expected it to be a one time option, not an automatic wallet blackhole. Other sites don’t default to this, or they usually present the opt-in upon payment. Fileserve doesn’t.
Conclusion
I think that Fileserve has its good and bad parts. However, it is mostly bad once you’re not in the norm (e.g., you have faster internet than average, you signed up for a premium, etc.) If you’re willing to spend money, go spend it on Megaupload instead (my last experience with it resulted in my downloads maxed all the time!) or better, Usenet.
3 Comments
Well, i’m not a premium user for Fileserve so i can’t really say for sure its good or bad. But as a free user, i find that Fileserve always have this problems “error…you’re currently downloading a file….” and “you need to wait for 600 seconds to start another download”. And the funny thing is you’re not downloading anything so what is the error message about! I know its regarding the limitations and something to do with the proxy servers. As most sites use Fileserve, you’ve got no choice but to download files from there or you have to search for other sites. But what if the other sites doesn’t have what you want? The answer is, it’s back to the same situation again. In my opinion, i think Megaupload is better than Fileserve because it doesn’t have the shared IP’s problem(or maybe not). Also, i think Megaupload downloads are faster than Fileserve. I’m not hating Filerserve..it’s just that the “error messages” is very irritating and annoying at the same time. Not to forget, a waste of time waiting for the download to be available.
@Elaine
Yeah, it’s an annoying problem indeed. It also happens on other filesharing sites but Fileserve shows it a lot because a lot of files are there (and as you said, it’s harder if the files are only on FS)
It’s expected to happen when you’re at work or school though, since it’s likely that someone already took a download before you did, although if you’re absolutely sure that you’re the only one, then it really is Fileserve’s fault.
>_<
As a free downloader, Fileserve is a nightmare. Its captcha placement is annoying, but its waiting time is rage inducing. You type captcha and wait 20~ sec, okay, but after they send you the Slower Download link, you got around 10-15 sec to press it or the link will expire. 30 sec late will refresh that page.
I learn to hate the FS dl link on sight. This bullpuckery is worse than Rapidshare.