Rapidshare to drop unlimited storage plans

Martin Brinkmann
Mar 17, 2013
Internet
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It has certainly not been easy for file hosting providers ever since Megaupload was taken down. Rapidshare back then decided to change its plans completely to something that looked and felt more like classic hosting plans. The idea behind the change was the following: instead of limiting file downloads by bandwidth, they were now limited by bandwidth limits linked to the account of the uploader of the file. Files that free users uploaded were limited to 1 Gigabyte of traffic per day for instance, while the limit for paying customers was set to 30 Gigabytes per day instead.

The amount of files were not limited at all and quite a few users seem to have made use of that to archive large quantities of data on Rapidshare.

Rapidshare announced a major change to its hosting plan last Tuesday on the official company blog. The available storage for RapidPro customers will be limited to 250 or 500 Gigabyte from March 20, 2013 onwards. This change affects all paying customers of the service, even those who have paid for a plan in advanced and beyond March 20, 2013.

Existing users have two options if their storage exceeds the new limit. They can either delete data, or have Rapidshare delete the data automatically if not done in time by the user, or increase their payments to the file hoster if they want to keep the storage that they are currently making use of.

Rapidshare only mentions two plans and their prices in the announcement, but there are more than that.  The prices that have been publicly announced are the following:

  1. 250 Gigabyte of storage are available for 9.99 € per month or 99.99 € per year.
  2. 500 Gigabyte of storage are available for 19.99 € per month or 199.99 € per year.

RapidPro users are notified about the change and the emails seem to include offers that match their current data storage. A user on Reddit reported that 4 Terabyte of storage are available for roughly 300 € per month or 3000 € per year while 8 Terabyte of storage would cost 700 € per month or 7000 € per year.

The accounts of free users will be set to a 5 Gigabyte data limit, and all files exceeding this amount will be deleted by Rapidshare unless done so by users first. The only option to retain access to those files is to sign up for a paid account on the site.

Before the change, all customers will have the chance to choose an account type and potentially decrease the needed storage space by deleting files. If a RapidPro customer hasn't selected an account type by the time the change comes into effect, he will get 250 GB of storage space automatically for the remaining run-time. The storage space can be upgraded to 500 GB or more at any time. In this case the remaining run-time is cut in half. Before the deletion of the files which exceed the storage space limit, you will receive an email.

What's interesting in this regard is that Rapidshare plans to make the change for existing users even though those have paid for a specific product, in this case unlimited storage among other things. It is also not clear how files will be deleted. Will the company delete the oldest or newest files first, or use another method of deciding which files to delete and which to keep.

I can't really say anything about the legality of the change, but it is certain that many users of Rapidshare who are affected by it won't be happy at all.

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Comments

  1. Franck Dernoncourt said on March 26, 2013 at 12:37 pm
    Reply

    Such a dramatic change without warning is outrageous indeed.

    > “500 Gigabyte of storage are available for 19.99 € per month or 199.99 € per year.”
    Are you serious?? At this price I can buy 2 hard drives of 3 TB.

    Once again, bye bye RapidShare!

  2. blue_bsod said on March 18, 2013 at 3:04 pm
    Reply

    The thing I didn’t like about Rapidshare was the annoying, captcha’s and wait time to upload and download files in the free accounts. I myself use MediaFire, no download / upload wait times and limited to 50Gb per month. Unlike Rapidshare’s 1Gb per day. Though they say free account files will be deleted over time due to inactivity, I’ve never lost any files and sometimes I don’t even visit for several months at a time.

    On free accounts we are limited to 50Gb storage and max file size of 200Mb per upload and split files are allowed. And though they said free accounts are paid for by ads, since using their services for over 5 years now, I’ve never seen an ad anywhere on my pages. Their paid accounts start at $1.50 / month have the same 50Gb limit as the free account but max file upload is raise to 1Gb and ads (which I’ve never seen) are removed.

    As for bandwidth issues, I’ve never had an issue and I used to be part of several Yahoo and Google image file sharing groups and had several hundred plus people downloading my files and I’ve never been charged for bandwidth or gone over this invisible limit.

    To test if Mediafire is good for you, click here to download a test image from my files (1M picture file JPG format – upclose image of defective glasses):

    http://www.mediafire.com/view/?b6mkc916h78dbaj

    No wait times to download, no captcha’s no count down timers. Just click and go. To upload files we don’t need annoying separate program uploaders. Simply drag and drop files into the browser page, or you can add a context menu item to upload the files directly from any program. Easy eh?

  3. notimportant said on March 18, 2013 at 1:34 am
    Reply

    FYI: http://www.ghacks.net has been redirecting to https://www.ghacks.net/cgi-sys/defaultwebpage.cgi for more than a week.

    “Great Success !
    Apache is working on your cPanel® and WHM™ Server

    If you can see this page, then the people who manage this server have installed cPanel and WebHost Manager (WHM) which use the Apache Web server software and the Apache Interface to OpenSSL (mod_ssl) successfully. They now have to add content to this directory and replace this placeholder page, or else point the server at their real content.

    ATTENTION!

    If you are seeing this page instead of the site you expected, please contact the administrator of the site involved. (Try sending an email to .) Although this site is running cPanel, WebHost Manager, and A”

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on March 18, 2013 at 3:31 am
      Reply

      Hi, please clear your cache, it should resolve the issue for you.

  4. Anon said on March 17, 2013 at 11:19 pm
    Reply

    How the hell is RapidShare still alive?
    They keep making the service worse for *paying customers*!

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