Help me find professional FTP hosting!

January 2, 2008 7:32 AM

Can someone recommend a professional FTP host? Storage space is more of a concern than transfer limits.

I need to host 100MB-20GB files. The files will be downloaded once or twice at most.

I would need to be able to easily create accounts for my clients and manage my files.

Reliability and ease of use are a must. I've also looked into Megaupload.com's business services, which seem to be what I need for the "Diamond" package, but the price is too high. I need something in the 50-150 dollar range.

I'd hate to have to provide my own hosting locally, as my upload is limited to 150kbps. Any recommendations?

posted by mhuckaba to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Its not FTP but have you checked out Amazon's S3 service?

I have to admit I'm not terribly familiar with it but its supposed to be inexpensive.
posted by bitdamaged at 7:55 AM on January 2, 2008

S3 is cheap, but there's no easy interface for management of client accounts, etc.

I use Joyent's Strongspace, which seems to fit your price range, and is accessible either by SFTP or their well-designed web interface. Also includes good account management, and you can restrict clients to a certain directory.
posted by mboszko at 8:04 AM on January 2, 2008

Dreamhost offers 500 gb of space and terabytes of data so you should be golden. Loys of ftp accounts shouldn't be a problem.
posted by DJWeezy at 8:51 AM on January 2, 2008

Read up on Dreamhost, though. I've heard a lot about them overselling massively, but don't know enough to actually chip in an opinion.

$50-150 could buy you your own dedicated server if you're comfortable managing it yourself. Expect 80-160GB of disk and about 1,000GB bandwidth for that price. I can point you to some well-known companies in the industry if you're interested, but don't want to do so if it's not what you're looking for.
posted by fogster at 9:18 AM on January 2, 2008

Strongspace seems to be pretty much what I am looking for. Anyone know of any similar services?
posted by mhuckaba at 10:00 AM on January 2, 2008

The ones I often hear about with what you're looking for are Strongspace, box.net and Omnidrive. The latter's pricing page seems whack right now. Hrm...

Some focus soley on backup. Strongspace is a strong contender for your needs, though I don't believe it lets you set a sunset and forget about it. Take a look at Dropsend for short-term file sharing.
posted by pedantic at 12:52 PM on January 2, 2008

Doh. On post: Dropsend only allows up to 1GB uploads.
posted by pedantic at 12:53 PM on January 2, 2008

Hmmm, I wouldn't get too tempted by Dreamhost if I were you. I use them for my website and they're pretty good, but they recently posted this reminder that:

DreamHost services are intended for the purpose of hosting web sites (item #6, Material Products), and files uploaded to your accounts should be provided with the intent of distributing them to others from your hosted sites. With exception of our Files Forever service, we do not support the use of our hosting services for personal file storage or back-up purposes and the use of your hosting account for that purpose is prohibited.

I have the impression that your intended usage isn't for the purpose of hosting web sites, and since you mention clients, I imagine you wouldn't want to be toodling along using it for a while and then find yourself in a bind if they decide that you're falling afoul of their policies.
posted by thatgirl at 6:24 PM on January 3, 2008