According to the FileSender deployment map updated in April 2026, there are 54 countries in the world where the FileSender service is provided to the corresponding national R&E communities. At the national level, in the vast majority of cases the FileSender service providers are the National Research and Education Networks (NRENs). As trusted academic partners, they operate FileSender installations and offer this service to their connected organisations – universities and research institutes. We also see an increase in the deployed footprint of the FileSender software in non-NREN organisations, such as government entities, municipalities, universities, colleges, medical institutions, private manufacturers, high-tech and IT companies, that adopt it as a trustworthy corporate solution. Under growing digital sovereignty requirements, they can use FileSender and rest assured the data will not fall into the wrong hands. But what makes FileSender a popular choice? Below we highlight 5 key reasons to use FileSender.
FileSender aims to be a widely deployed service enabling anyone to easily and securely transfer files of any size from any person or machine to any other person or machine through a trusted intermediary. FileSender explicitly targets mass usage and is built to service the 99% of users who would rather spend their time on other things than figuring out how to perform large file transfers.
1. Suitable for large files
Traditional email services limit attachments to around 25 MB (with a few stretching to 50 MB), while FileSender efficiently handles very large files such as massive datasets or videos. Depending on the provider installation, it can typically send up to 1000 files with a combined maximum size of files from 10 GB to 10 TB in a single upload.
2. User-friendly web interface
FileSender works entirely in web browsers: no software downloads are needed, and it is accessible from any device. With the new modern user-friendly interface, significantly enhanced in version 3.0, it has become even easier to use. No specialised technical expertise or skills are required to navigate and perform key actions – such as sending, receiving, and managing files – all in an intuitive and streamlined way through the web-based application.
3. Privacy by design
Some files contain sensitive information, but need to be shared regardless. Think of personal information, patient data, research databases, or policy details. Unlike commercial services that may scan or archive user data, FileSender was built around privacy. It features an optional, high-security end-to-end encryption protocol using AES-256. Thanks to browser-native encryption, user files are encrypted directly within the web browser before reaching the server, meaning the platform operators never see unencrypted data.
4. Full access control
The sender has full control over who receives and can access the files (through authentication of users) and for which period of time – as it should be. A custom expiry date can be set after which the files are permanently deleted from the server without a trace. Additionally, if someone outside of the organization needs to send a large file, the user can facilitate external collaboration by issuing a guest voucher invitation that grants temporary upload privileges in FileSender.
5. Open-source software transparency
Because FileSender is an open-source application, its code is fully transparent, auditable, and free of hidden commercial monetization hooks. It integrates directly with federated logins (like SAML2 and LDAP), meaning users can log in securely using their existing organisation credentials. Open source, so it can be further developed by the community for new use cases. Available as white-label, so service providers can offer it to their customers, solving a piece of the complex data security puzzle for them.
Through FileSender, organizations can offer their users an online service with which they can share their files securely whilst using local storage options. Organizations are completely free in the way they install FileSender in their infrastructure and organizations are able to host FileSender on-premises, in a private cloud in an appropriate data centre or on a public cloud of choice. This means they can offer the FileSender service in line with their own preferences, policies, and legal compliance requirements.
There are a range of use cases that are served, and many more that users find for a tool like FileSender. Users are incredibly creative and have found novel ways of using FileSender that were never envisaged. We hope over time more users for FileSender will emerge beyond the obvious service of shipping files too large for email. These novel uses will encourage people to explore the FileSender code base, create an issue/ticket for a new idea, or even provide code updates.
Download the latest FileSender 3.13 release on: https://github.com/filesender/filesender/releases/
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