Multi-download login from rapidshare, filesonic, megaupload etc. review
You have probably encountered the slow speeds and cumbersome login steps required if you ever use sites like rapidshare, filesonic, megaupload etc. to upload or download files. To bypass all those hurdles one option is buy premium memberships at each of those sites. However, this can be very expensive if you buy a membership at every site!
A relatively new phenomenon in this area is the multi-site “one stop” premium subscription service. There is not a definitive name yet for this category of site so I will refer to it as a “multi-download’ site. You pay a single membership fee (normally monthly) and then you use a single site to download from all the other sites (that you would normally have to pay for individually). The unique aspect is that all your downloads from the other sites are treated as “premium”.
How does this work? One centralized site shares their premium memberships with you
The multi-download site acts as a proxy for your downloads. Specifically, they likely have (multiple) premium memberships at all the other individual file hosting sites. When you submit a download request the multi-download site will use their preexisting premium memberships to download the files and relay them to you. The result is that you get the fast premium download speeds/features for a bunch of sites yet you only pay one monthly fee.
What are the names/URLs of some of these sites?
Here are the sites that I found:
Is this legal/legit? Not really, it probably violates the Terms of Service for all the individual download sites
Each of the multi-download sites most likely violates the Terms of Service for all of the individual download sites. Companies like rapidshare do not want users to share their premium memberships info with others, yet that is exactly what a multi-download sites does. They take a few premium memberships and then share the use of those memberships with many other users.
Likewise, most of these multi-download sites are relatively new and some of them look rather shady. There is no guarantee that your payment information is going to remain safe. If you must try one of these sites I would strongly recommend against giving them your credit card info. It would probably be a little safer to use PayPal (if available) as they tend to insulate you a bit more from potential misuse.
There is probably minimal legal risk to a customer using one of these services but it is quite likely that all the individual sites (rapidshare etc.) will be working to blog the multi-download sites as quickly and as often as possible.
Okay, I understand they aren’t ethical and they may be dangerous, but how well do they work!?
They seem to work to an extent. Though I am sorry that it is hard to say definitely. I can state that I tried the free 1-download trial of FilePunch.me (they most legitimate looking of the sites) to download a 1.27GB file from filesonic and had mixed results:
#1 the FilePunch.me interface was simple  and effective
#2 the download did start and it was treated as a premium download from filesonic
#3 speeds were pretty good, about 65-85% as fast as a normal premium filesonic download
#4 my test download did not complete (though this could have been due to connectivity issues, it can be hard to tell when using a site like this and a relatively large file)
Since it was only a trial I could not try to resume the download.
Recommendations: if you have to try it, use the trial first and proceed with caution
Again, I would recommend staying away from these sites. If you decide you must have them I would guess that they would work quite well for small files buy I would worry about reliabile downloads when dealing with larger files.
If you have experience with these sites, or you know of others, please feel free to post in the comments section. Thanks!
Nice weblog here! Additionally your web site quite a bit up very fast! What web host are you using? I want my site loaded up as quickly as yours
How good are these multi-downloading services? Thx bunches!