File transfer woes? Say hello to Estonian startup SendGB

Now that you’re working from home, transferring large files may have become a daily headache for you. Estonian startup SendGB wants to solve your file transfer woes by focusing on speed and ease of use.

“File transfer is a need for those working in every industry. The file sizes are getting bigger and it is not possible to share large files by email. There are also many restrictions on existing file transfer sites. We established SendGB to solve these needs. Our goal was to create a fast, easy file transfer site. Speed is very important today. Time is a priority for people. The issue of speed is of course not just up to us. However, if our users have high speed, we want them to use it for file transfer,” SendGB Co-founder Uğur Çakır told Digital Life Asia.

Çakır and his co-founder Okan İlhan launched SendGB in Turkey in 2015. In 2019, however, SendGB became a company in Estonia under the e-Residency program. SendGB has users from 169 countries and supports 13 languages.

File transfer, not storage

“We are mostly a file transfer service. Google Drive is a storage service. Our goal is for our users to transfer files quickly,” Çakır said.

One of the great things about SendGB is that you can easily and quickly transfer large files of up to 5 GB without having to sign up. Unlike other file transfer services, SendGB gives importance to speed. The biggest problem in file sharing is the upload and download speed of large files. Some services limit the file upload and download speed when they provide free services. SendGB, however, does not put such limits. According to the company, if the internet speed allows it, users can use SendGB with up to 500 Mbps speed.

“Our main advantage over our competitors is flexibility. For example, we have a product called SendGB Extend. Our users can extend the storage period of the files they share for up to one year without being a member. We save our users time. This feature is not available to any of our competitors,” Çakır said.

Speed and security

Apart from SendGB Extend and having no speed restrictions when uploading and downloading files, Çakır also cited the following features:

• 500 files transfer to 20 people at the same time up to 5 GB
• Files can be stored for free for up to 90 days
• Automatic deletion of files after downloading, if desired
• Password protection for each submission if requested, without being a member
• No limit for downloading files
• Ability to send files from mobile devices without the need for a mobile app

Çakır also said they will introduce a premium service called SendGB Extra in June. This will give users 1 TB of storage and they will be able to share files of up to 20 GB at a time.

“In April, we collected pre-orders for this service. We received about 5,000 pre-orders,” he said.

Social responsibility

One of the things you will notice when you use the free SendGB service are ads promoting social responsibility. These appear while you are waiting for your files to be uploaded or downloaded. SendGB made a conscious decision to promote social responsibility campaigns. It dedicates 70 percent of its ad inventory to up-and-coming social responsibility institutions that can’t afford to pay for advertising.

“As SendGB, we have a large background area. Site visitors will see from desktop devices. We thought about how we can put value to this area. Social responsibility was a good option for this. We communicate with many corporate social responsibility groups in Turkey. In our broad background, we included the works of social responsibility institutions and enabled them to reach more people. We paid a lot of attention when choosing social responsibility institutions. We used our background for about four years for social responsibility institutions, and announced many social responsibility projects to our users,” Çakır said.

Estonian e-Residency program

Why did they decide to make SendGB an Estonian company via the e-Residency program?

“Estonia is a country that attaches importance to digital projects in Europe. Moreover, it invests in the IT industry. Estonia is a country we have been following for a long time. We were especially following the e-Residency program.

“Estonia offers the world the opportunity to establish a company in Europe and to reach the European market. It has an easy and fast business model. Establishing and operating a company is easy. Many things are digital. Estonians are very helpful. These features affected us. That’s why we opened up to Europe with Estonia. I recommend the Estonian e-Residency program to those who want to own a European company without changing location,” Çakır said.

Çakır also said that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the company remains bullish.

“We plan to increase our membership income in 2020. We want to be a known service for file transfer, especially in Europe. Our long-term goal is to be among the top three services in the world in file transfer,” he said.

Looking for an alternative to the file transfer services you’ve been using? Check out SendGB today.