I hate file size limitations on email attachments.

Yes, I suppose they’re there to prevent abuse of email… but when I need to send something large right away – it can be downright annoying!

Thankfully, we live an age where abundant online storage for consumers is available for little or no cost – leading to a number of free solutions to address our issue for today. One of the services which clearly stands out in the crowd is a little service called YouSendIt.

How it works:

• Send an email from YouSendIt, and attach your very large file.
• What YouSendIt is doing is it offers up temporary storage space on the web and you are actually uploading your files to it when you attach the file.
• YouSendIt will send that email along with a link to the recipient, who can then download the file from the web.

If you do decide to try YouSendIt, you should register (free) for their enchanced beta version which includes new features, which includes a proper status bar, as well as contacts list, and a tracking system to see who picked up your file.

Here’s the weird thing… Yousendit.com does not seem to provide a direct link to the registered version after you’ve signed up… so you may want to bookmark http://beta.yousendit.com for easy reference after you’ve registered.

Specifications:

At this point, it allows 25 downloads per file, up to 50 recipients in a single email, and you can send files of up to 1 Gig in size, and stores it for 7 days, which is pretty solid. You can also set emails to appear as if it came from your own email address, not a YouSendIt address so it does not confuse your recepient.

You can read more at techcrunch, which gave this service a good review.

Security:

Everyone of these services tell you they are secure, but if you’re paranoid concerned about security like me, you might want to zip up the files, and add a password. Of course, send the password to your recipient using your own email, not in the YouSendIt note!

Other services:
I’ve also tried Dropsend, which seems to be a bit more limited than YouSendIt, but I do consider it robust enough to be a backup solution. New services like these are popping up everywhere!

Here is a very good list of similliar services that you can try.

Bonus tip: You can also try this more conventional, but slightly more inconvenient workaround that works with Winzip.

Related Links:

YouSendIt
YouSendIt (enchanced) Beta
Dropsend
Collection Of Online Storage/Email Services
Winzip