Update: Someone from Streamload has replied in the comments. Some of the issues raised in the post are in fact incorrect. Most notably there is no upload limit. The limit is applies to downloads. See the comments for more info.

There are plenty of cool things about having 25 GB free storage online, heck that is more than the storage I pay for. But what is never immediately clear is what the catches are. How can they be offering something so good without people like me moving their whole sites over to Streamload?

Well there is first of all an instant catch. You can only transfer 500 MB of stuff a month. So that means it would take you 50 months to reach the incredible 25 GB they advertise. That is over 2 years. And the way things grow storage will not be worth very much in two years time so I am pretty sure the investment that Streamload are making here is not such a significant one. They are really only giving you 500 MB of space today, and then 500 MB more if you stick with it for a month. The 500 MB catch also has other implications. It means that you have to be careful about how much you are uploading. It isn’t some massive 25 GB store where you can drop anything anytime worry free. It is more like a small letter box into a well size storage area.

Second problem is always going to be the experience. If you have to upload one file at a time then it is really worth paying for something more usuable. In the case that you were forced to upload a file at a time it would be clear that the 500 MB uploads per month was some figure they just plucked from the air. They could have offered 5 GB since no one could literally pass enough files through the system in a month to reach the limit on a one upload at a time basis. But luckily Streamload it not one upload at a time. They have this neat thing where you drag and drop files and they upload. Ace. So where is the catch then?

Man! What a cool company they have some sort of joke message after you have uploaded some files. And you can see the need to keep you smiling because it is no joke. Your files will not be in your file manager after you have uploaded them. I imagine they have some process backstage that they work through pretty slowly that gets yours files in the list. I uploaded some files before I started to write this review. And there is still no sign of them. This is a major blocker for me. If I am going to upload something I want to be able to see it online and I want it to be there straight away.

What you want is FTP transfer for an easy to use UI, and no worries about uploading lots at once. And I was amazed to find that they offer an FTP upload service. It is not well advertised, and so far I have had little success in making it work. I mean the files I have FTPed up are not there yet. And I am not sure they let you download by FTP which is odd. But if you want a go with FTP it is ftp.streamload.com with your streamload username and password.

There is also a maximum filesize that you are allowed to upload at once. I find their documentation difficult to follow but I think it is 25 MB. That is pretty reasonable I guess. Most people don’t have photos bigger than 2 MB. But for movies and big data files. They could be 50 MB or so. So Streamload will no allow you to upload your biggest files, but for most files I must admit this is really not an issue.

The final thing is this is not web hosting. I don’t think that you can make these files univerally available with a URL. Or if you can I think the amount of stuff you are allowed to place “in public” is very limited. Why would they limit this? One word: Bandwidth. If you have your photos stored on their servers that only costs them the initial transfer costs, the storage costs and the cost whenever you transfer back. But having something public more people can download it all the time. Several hundred download means a big bandwidth bill.

The overall user interface is pretty nice though. There is nothing major to complain about. Apart from the fact of course that my files still aren’t there.