Yahoo Mail offers unlimited email storage space, but unfortunately limits the maximum attachment size to just 10 MB. Gmail is in the same situation with just a 20 MB attachment; and is very picky about the file types.
If you want to send a movie of your lolcat, that is 150 MB, to your aunt Lilly what would you do? Or, maybe a PowerPoint presentation to business partners that has a lot of graphics?
Five years ago you probably had to split the file into multiple pieces and send each one over e-mail. Now you may use web services like FileDropper where you have a 5 GB size limit, but these type of services are not very reliable. Your connection may drop, and you have to restart the upload process all over again.
Solution:
Luckily today there are two noteworthy alternatives for your large file needs, based on the BitTorrent protocol: PodMailing and Pando, both working on Windows and Mac (no glimpse of a future Linux client).
How does it work?
Pretty simple: drag & drop a file or a folder over the application window or the desktop/dock icon, specify the email address, subject and body text and click send.
The files are uploaded into the cloud (Amazon S3- Podmailing, own storage- Pando) and then seeded as a normal torrent files. When the upload is complete, if the sender remains online it will also seed the torrent along with the server. Same happens when the file is completely downloaded: the recipient becomes a seeder.
Besides email, Pando allows you to get a download link for IM or a web widget to put on your blog/page (feature not working on the Mac version in my tests).
How to receive files
Because they’re using a hybrid scheme, a combination of peer-to-peer (BitTorrent) and client-server model, the delivery is asynchronous. If the receiver is online, the transfer will start immediately, even if the file upload to the server is not yet completed. Also, the receiver can download the file at a later time even if the sender is offline.
As soon as the file begins uploading, the recipient receives a mail with instructions for downloading the file.
PodMailing offers three ways to download a file:
- direct http link to the file when the file finished uploading to the server
- using PodMailing client to open the .zed package (sort of a torrent file)
- using favorite BitTorrent client
The only option you have with Pando is to open the .pando package, which means if the recipient doesn’t have Pando he must install it in order to download the file. If a Linux user receives a .pando package he’s out of luck.
Resume support
If the upload is interrupted (lost connection, shutdown,etc) it will automatically be resumed when the application comes back online. If recipients start downloading the file when the sender interrupted the transmission, they will be able to get the chunk that has been uploaded to the server prior to the disconnect.
Same happens if the recipient’s connection is lost. It will resume downloading from where it left off when it comes back online.
Usabilty
Luckily, neither application require registration, which is always a big plus in the overall experience.
Both share a clean, simple and easy to use interface with two important tabs: Received and Sent.
The free version of Pando displays ads and you must complete a captcha before sending your first package.
One extra feature of Pando for Windows is Internet Explorer and Outlook plugins. While using Yahoo Mail or Gmail in Internet Explorer, when you try to attach a file larger than 5 MB a Pando pop-up appears asking if you want to “Pando” the file. If you choose yes, the file is replaced with a .pando package and the selected file starts uploading in Pando.
Limitations
With PodMailing you have no file size limit and no speed limit. The files are relayed by the servers for maximum 30 days. All that for free!
With the free version of Pando you can send files up to 1 GB in size, you have a throttled download speed, e-mail and IM packages are hosted on the server for 7 days and web packages for 14 days. The PRO version has a 3 GB file size limit, 5x faster download speeds and twice the length of hosting time. The PRO version is $24.95 a year.
Because of the underlying BitTorrent engine, on both services, if a file expires you can still get it from the original sender and other recipients, providing they are online and still have that file.
Conclusion
These two applications are very similar, both in look and functionality (although in my two days of testing, there were a few times when Pando didn’t want to upload the file to the server straight away).
Why choose PodMailing over Pando:
- PodMailing comes in one flavour: Free! (at least for now)
- Recipients are forced to install Pando in order to get the files, while with PodMailing they can download files via a web link or BitTorrent clients.
- The limitations of the free Pando:1 GB file size limit, just 7 days of storage for e-mail/im packages, 5x lower download speed than the PRO version and it displays adds, while PodMailing has no file size limit or speed throttling and it allows 30 days storage. (In my tests the upload and download speeds of Pando were comparable to those of PodMailing’s )
Why choose Pando over PodMailling:
- It has a nice plugin for IE and Outlook
- You can easily get a widget for your blog so folks can download your stuff
- You can see how many times a file has been downloaded
- You can subscribe to full-screen TV shows, but this is not the subject of this article.
Stefan Neagu
October 28, 2008
I used Pando a couple of times – worked for me.
Louis Choquel
October 28, 2008
Hi Bogdan,
Thanks or the showdown.
I’m the creator of Podmailing and happy to let you know that we have a new release coming out next week including a plugin for email client Mozilla Thunderbird and the possiblity to get a widget for your blog. Oh and for Web sharing we will take the relay duration up to 3 months.
Please email me and I will send you the pre-release.
(for full-screen TV shows too, stay tuned we will have something awesome for you pretty soon)
Louis.
//You can get in touch with me or our writers using the ‘Meet The Staff’ page.//
Bigbluealien
October 28, 2008
I’ve used Pando before and found it was more hassle than putting the file on a usb stick and passing it on the good old fashioned way(whenever thats possible), and now it’s useless since I’m on Linux most of the time.
Will definitely be checking out Podmailing from what I’ve read here.
Louis Choquel
October 28, 2008
Thx Bigbluealien
Unfortunately Podmailing is not available for Linux… yet.
In fact we’ve had a working Linux version for a along time now but we want to clean up the code and make it open source before we release it and that keeps being pushed in time, duh!
In the meantime there will be a Web upload option starting next week, so that works on all platforms
Bigbluealien
October 28, 2008
: ( , I’ll wait then, but if you have a working version why not release that now then make it open source once its cleaned up? For the mean time I still have an XP install I can test it on.
Louis Choquel
October 28, 2008
Well Bigbluealien the thing is, on Linux we don’t have an installer or package. It’s just a bunch of python source code, which requires to have all the proper versions of python and extra modules installed. There is no closed source Linux version.
But you’re right to insist. Tomorrow I’ll try to talk my lead developer into admitting the code is “clean enough” and we’ll see what he says.
Bogdan Stroe
October 28, 2008
The new features of the future Podmailing release will cut back on Pando’s strong points. But will it still be FREE or there will be a paid version like Pando PRO? That Linux client would definitely turn the balance in favor of Podmailing.
Louis Choquel
October 29, 2008
@Bogdan: we will a free version, that’s for sure.
A paid service is also in the works. We’re designing it so that the free service will still be great, and the paid service to bring more features for demanding users.
Compare this to a service like RapidShare: because we have P2P with BitTorrent, we can move more data for a lesser cost, which enables a better service for free users.