Quickly and Easily Share Large Files with Crate

Looking for a fast, no-fuss way to share big files with friends or family members? Until recently, your best option was Drop.io.

Alas, the service shut down earlier this month, having been purchased by Facebook for an as-yet-unknown fate.

I’ve yet to find the perfect replacement, but Crate comes close. Like Drop.io, it gives you a dedicated repository for the files you want to share and a unique URL with which to share them. Instead of “drops,” you build “crates.”

It’s literally a two-step process. First, you do is drag one or more files to the crate image on the site. Second, when the upload is done, you copy the provided URL and e-mail it to whoever needs the files. Can’t get any easier than that.

You don’t even have to register, but there’s incentive for doing so: unregistered crates expire in 30 minutes, but if you have an account, they last indefinitely.

A free Crate account lets you store up to six crates, each with an individual-file size limit of 50MB and a total space limit of 200MB. A Pro account ($9 monthly) nets you unlimited crates and file sizes, with a storage cap of 2GB.

There are lots of other services that offer big-file sharing, but few match the simplicity of Crate.