We are aware of the Seacom development and like many of you out there, we read every news article on the topic with bated breath, hoping to mine a little more hope out of the development. Having said that, it’s also more than likely that it will take a while before the cheaper bandwidth starts trickling down to us.

It’s extremely important to us that we maintain a high level of integrity with our users and that people who rely on QuickShare for backups or people who have given links to files in their CVs (and similar scenarios) can always access their data. After giving it a lot of thought, we have decided to do the following:

Our Temporary Solution

• We have disabled new uploads on all accounts while we continue to look for new ways to sustain QuickShare. Users will still have access to all the data that they currently have on the site.

Our Plans for the Future

• As the cost of bandwidth becomes more manageable, we will open up full functionality on the site again.
• As things progress even further, we plan to offer bigger (free) storage space and eventually introduce paid accounts to accommodate those who want greater storage and flexibility.

Other Thoughts

We ask for the support of all our users during this time. To give you an idea, even though we get our bandwidth and infrastructure at the most competitive prices available, our bills are quickly approaching the R10,000 per month mark. As mentioned earlier, this comes out of our own pocket and offers no return at this point. We have done everything we can to keep things going.

We knew this might happen, but we’re passionate about the idea and wanted to give it our best shot.  We will be back and when we come back, we’ll be better, stronger and faster than ever.

We will be updating users from time to time using our newsletter option. To stay informed with developments on our side please make sure you’re subscribed to the newsletter in the My Account (requires user to be logged in) section of QuickShare.

Bye for now…
The QuickShare Team

• Improve upload and download speed and general performance. Since the site will be hosted on its own server, QuickShare will not have to share resources with other websites.
• Position QuickShare for growth and scalability.
• Provide better security and flexibility for us to explore ways of improving and adding value to the service.
• Reduce costs. While the initial cost of hosting a dedicated server is substantially higher, the cost of bandwidth is significantly lower than the shared accounts of most reputable hosts.

While the move promises many improvements, there will be a small price to pay. Fortunately, it will only be temporary and once the move has been completed QuickShare will be back to normal and all your data will be available to you.

What to expect during the move:

Once the transfer ticket has been accepted certain features on QuickShare will be temporarily disabled. You will not be able to upload any new files or delete current ones during the transition period, however, all files already uploaded to QuickShare will be available and will not be interrupted during the transition.

We will have to disable these features to ensure that your data is kept safe and secure during the transfer.

As the DNS propagates and the transition is completed, QuickShare’s full functionality will automatically return. The whole process should take a maximum of 24 hours.

Thank you…

Please bear with us as we make this important move. We look forward to taking QuickShare to new levels during 2009! Thank you for your continued support and for joining us on our journey as we strive to offer South Africans a much need and ever improving file sharing and hosting service.

Kind regards,
The QuickShare Team

We aboslutely love doing what we do but we are faced with a major catch-22 in that hosting QuickShare in South Africa has become prohibitively expensive. This is because the cost of bandwidth is easily 600 times more expensive in South Africa than what it is in the USA or Europe. For the price of 1MB here we can get 683MB on a popular hosting service based in the UK.

Since our users are the most valuable part of QuickShare, we decided to share our thoughts with you and get your opinions and thoughts on the situation.

After giving it some thought, it seems we have 2 viable solutions.

Solution 1

• We continue to host QuickShare in South Africa, limit the amount of bandwidth available on the free account and introduce paid accounts for users who require more bandwidth.

The pros:
Users will still be able to sample the service and use it for hosting and sharing of small files. Users will be able to access files on local-only bandwidth and will be also enjoy the faster speeds associated with hosting a site locally.

The cons
Due to the costs of bandwidth mentioned above, the cost of the paid plans will be quite high even though we would be able to secure bandwidth at fraction over cost price.

Solution 2

• We move QuickShare over to an international server in order to reduce bandwidth and hosting costs.

The pros
Cheaper bandwidth and hosting costs would mean that we could operate as usual but offer our users a significantly more powerful free account and users accessing files from other countries would experience better speeds than they currently do.

The cons
International hosting would bring slightly reduced speeds to local users due to the higher latency between South Africa and the rest of the world. Users would also no longer be able to access QuickShare on local-only bandwidth.

Comments are open on this post and you do not need to be registered on the blog to post. We would appreciate your thoughts and feedback regarding this situation.

Kind regards,
QuickShare Team

Registration is now open on the main site.

Thank you for your patience!

QuickShare Team

Recently, we had a bit of a catastrophe on the technical front. We don’t want overwhelm you with unnecessary details, but the short story is that in the end we lost a small portion of our database and as a result we lost exactly 8 files. These files were uploaded between the 5 Nov – 10 Nov. This is not what we’re about and we are taking huge measures to ensure that an incident like this does not happen again! We want to extend a sincere apology to any members who have been affected. If you have been affected please read on:

The problem we’re faced with is that the physical files are still on our server but the database link that allows it to be downloaded and shows which member owns the file has been lost. If any of the “lost” files belong to you and if the file is needed as a backup or because it’s your only copy, we are willing to work with you to recover it. Of course, the privacy of our users is of absolute importance so we will need to discuss a few things to ensure that you are the rightful owner of the file. If the situation has affected you, please contact us at support@quickshare.co.za

Registration Issues

We are also having a problem with our registration system at the moment. We are working on finding a solution to the problem ASAP! If you would like us to mail you once the registration system is working the way it should, please click here and give us your name and email address (email will only ever be for the above-mentioned purpose.)

Thank you…

…for supporting us. We hate the glitches as much as anyone (maybe even a bit more) and we are doing everything we can to get site functioning with absolutely no issues in the shortest time possible.

Kind regards,
QuickShare Team