Zippyshare, the popular file-sharing website bids farewell after 17 years of operations. Zippyshare has been running since 2006 and has been free. On average the website reached 45 Million visits per month. 

What is Zippyshare?

Launched in 2006, Zippyshare is a free file-sharing service that makes money from advertisements. The website is among the most popular on the internet and receives over 45 million visitors per month.

The website has a history of being noted as one of the “notorious markets” in the U.S. Trade Representative Office’s “notorious markets” report.

The 2015 report claims that Zippyshare is allegedly offering more pre-release music, i.e. music that has not yet been commercially released, than any other cyberlocker and is well-known for downloads and distribution of allegedly infringing music.

According to reports, Zippyshare is hosted in France. It is said that its income comes from paid advertising, which apparently targets millions of users worldwide, especially those in India, where the website has an Alexa rating of 278.

Why was Zippyshare successful?

Zippyshare started their operations with basic and hassle-free offerings. At the time of it’s starting, the services it offered were exceptional. For example – 

• Free hosting of files
• Clean interface
• Zero cost to the user
• Hardware upgrades
• Updates over the years

Why did Zippyshare close down?

Rising costs and less revenue. This has been a common model for businesses since covid and the war started. Zippyshare becomes the latest victim. 

The operators also were concerned that the audience were going for more modern file-sharing websites with more features.

Ad blockers also became a concern as ad reach has been dwindling. 

Here is the statement of Zippyshare – 

“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.”

“Sure, we all use [adblockers], 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.”

“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 [for closing down], 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.”

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