Hey You! Yeah You with the Big Attachment!

So this morning I received a 12MB attachment in an email, and thought, “Wow, this person should lose email privileges for a day for that!” It’s a good thing I’m using Gmail for Domains and its web interface, and not something like a Blackberry or Outlook, otherwise, I’d be waiting all day for that download to finish before I could actually see the rest of my inbox.

After dealing with that attachment — and jokingly threatening the client’s well-being if he did it again, I wondered if some people don’t realize there are better options for attachments, both large and small.

Personally, I’m a big fan of YouSendIt. It’s quick, secure and easy, and if you use the Windows/Mac uploader, it’s even able to resume a crashed upload. Once the file is uploaded both you and your intended recipient receive a link to download the file, instead of a massive attachment. There’s a very usable free account, and the paid accounts each offer something for every user. I find the “Pro” level does more than enough for me.  I’ll take using this over FTP any day, and my clients and contacts likewise find it useful.

Of course, there are other options, two that I’ve tried and find useful are Senduit and Drop.io. Senduit doesn’t seem as secure, and doesn’t offer additional tools like a client application, but it gets the job done. Drop.io is my preferred alternative to YouSendIt, as while it doesn’t have a client app, it has other features that allow you to define the name of your upload folder and allow others to add/remove files from the folder. So it’s more collaborative than YouSendIt. Instead of sending a link automatically, like YouSendit and Senduit, you define the link, then copy/paste it into an email.

Now, next time you’re thinking “That PowerPoint file can’t be too big, I’ll just attach it,” do us all a favor and use an upload service!