Switching
A WeTransfer alternative that keeps the work after the link expires
A transfer link does one job and does it well, which is getting a large file out of the building today. We make both halves of what a studio needs around that: Vidual Send, a free transfer with no sign-up, and Vidual Spaces, cloud storage and review for photography, film and music work, built in Oxford by a small team, with files held on Backblaze B2 at a data centre in Amsterdam. So when we offer ourselves as a WeTransfer alternative, we mean it twice over — the quick send is here and costs nothing, and behind it sits a place the work can stay.
This page is about the point where a transfer tool stops being enough for studio work: what a temporary link can’t hold, what each part of the sending habit becomes in Spaces, and how to move without giving up the simplicity you liked in the first place.
What a transfer tool is genuinely right for
The recipient needs nothing explained to them: a link they already recognise, and a file that arrives. That’s all a one-off handover to someone you may never email again requires, and it’s why Vidual Sendexists in exactly that shape: drop the files in, either email them or take a link, and the transfer expires in four days. It’s free, there’s nothing to sign up for, and there’s music playing while you wait.
What a transfer tool never claimed to do is remember. It is a courier, not a home, and studio work asks for both. The mechanics of the send itself — email caps, WhatsApp compression, and keeping the quality on the way out — are set out in our guide to sending large video files.
Where a temporary link runs out
Expiry is the visible one. A delivery that vanishes on a timer leaves the email you sent it in as the only lasting record, so re-sending the same files means uploading them again, and which version a client used can be argued about but not checked.
The less visible cost is that the feedback comes back somewhere else — a reply, a marked-up screengrab, a voice message — and none of it ever meets the frame it was about. Approval has the same problem in a worse place: a yes typed in an email sits a long way from the cut it approved, and is hard to find at all. And because nothing is organised by project, the work of a job lives as a list of past sends instead of a place you can open.
What each part becomes: transfer tool, Send, Spaces
| What you rely on today | Vidual Send (free, no sign-up) | Vidual Spaces |
|---|---|---|
| Getting a big file to someone | Drop the files — up to 2 GB per transfer — and email them or copy a link | Uploads go up in chunks and pick up where they left off, so a multi-gigabyte export survives a flaky connection and keeps climbing while you carry on working |
| Whether the recipient needs an account | No | No — a share opens as a tidy branded page, served from your own domain on the Team plan and above, with nothing to log into and no nudges to sign up |
| How long it lasts | Four days, then the link expires | It stays; a share link is what expires, and only if you give it an expiry or revoke it |
| Restricting who can open it | An unguessable link | Access can be limited to named email addresses, with each person confirming theirs once using a short code |
| Knowing it arrived | An email the first time your files are downloaded | Opens and downloads are counted separately, and you’re told the first time someone lands on it |
| Notes coming back | A one-way handover; replies land in email | Notes pinned to a spot on a frame, fixed to the exact second of a cut, or left against the bar in a mix — with a mix played at full fidelity |
| A revision | Another send, named final-final-v3 | Each version sits alongside the last, and a note can be marked resolved once it’s dealt with |
| Sign-off | An email you hope you can find | Held against the file it approved |
| Where the job lives | A list of past transfers | An Area per project, with the files, the thread and the decisions in it |
| Finding it eighteen months later | The original email, if it survived | Search in plain words — what a photo shows, the camera and lens, the place, and the text inside documents |
| What it costs to add people | — | Storage tiers, not seats: unlimited team members on every plan (see pricing) |
If the thing you’re really weighing up is a general company drive rather than a transfer tool, that argument sits on its own page: Google Drive alternatives for creative studios.
- Fettle — Spring Rangeopened 2h ago12 opens5 downloads3 recipients
- Director’s cut — v2not opened yet0 opens0 downloads1 recipient
Review and approval, instead of download-and-reply
The reason a studio outgrows sending is that a client’s job is rarely to receive the file — it’s to look at it and say something useful about it. In Spaces the client does that on the same page they’d have downloaded from, without an account, when you turn comments on for the link: a mark drawn on the frame, a note against the moment in the cut, an answer to the mix. Your team’s internal thread stays internal, so the candid version of a note and the considered one can live on the same frame without meeting.
The client portal page sets out the client-facing side in full, including how a share is scoped so someone sees only what they were sent.
Common questions
What does Vidual Spaces do differently from WeTransfer?
A transfer sends a copy and forgets it. Spaces keeps the work as the studio's library, so the file arrives with its notes attached to the exact frame or second, its versions sitting beside each other and its sign-off recorded against it, findable later by what the shoot contained. The sending is still there — a share link anyone can open without an account — but it's one thing the library does, not the whole product.
Is there a free way to send large files without signing up?
Yes. Vidual Send is free, has no sign-up, and sends up to 2 GB per transfer — email the files or take a link. Transfers expire in four days, which is right for a one-off handover and is the reason Spaces exists for everything you want to keep.
What happens to files after they're sent — do they expire like on WeTransfer?
Files in Spaces don't expire; the link does, and only if you choose. A share can be given an expiry date or revoked once it has done its job, while the files stay in the workspace. Anything you delete sits in a recoverable trash for a month, and should you ever move on, everything exports in formats other tools can open.
Can clients review and approve files directly instead of just downloading them?
Yes, and without making an account. On a share with comments turned on, a client can pin a note to the exact spot on a still with arrows, boxes and freehand, leave a comment welded to a moment in a cut, or answer a mix that's playing at full fidelity with drag-to-loop on the waveform. Sign-off can be requested on the file, so the approval is kept beside the thing approved.
How does Vidual Spaces fit into an existing photo, film or music workflow?
It starts where you already work. Lightroom Classic and Capture One gain Spaces as an export destination through a plugin you install once, so selects arrive at full resolution with subfolders intact and nothing to drag afterwards. There's a Mac app that shows the entire library in Finder without eating the disk, no format allow-list, and a public API with your own tokens if the studio runs its own systems. Existing libraries come across as a dragged folder tree or folder by folder from Dropbox — details are in the FAQ.