Rapid-Share

RapidShare is a German owned One-click hosting site that operates from Switzerland and is financed by the subscriptions of paying users.

It operates as both a pay and free service (with limitations), allowing any user to upload files of up to 100 MB. The user is then supplied with a unique download URL, which locates the file and enables anyone with whom the uploader shares it to download the file. Non-premium users are required to wait a time period after each download depending on the size of the last downloaded file). Their homepage states they have 170 gigabit/s of Internet connectivity and 4 petabytes of storage for users. Registration and payment allow benefits such as download of several files simultaneously, queue-skipping, and the facility to interrupt and re-start downloads. No user is allowed to search the server for content; all files have to be downloaded by following a given URL.

On October 19, 2006, RapidShare announced that "Unfortunately all drives of RapidShare.de are full right now". A new website, RapidShare.com has been made in an attempt to transfer usage from RapidShare.de to RapidShare.com. Premium accounts for RapidShare.de were not lost as a code could be used to transfer the account between servers. However, this code was only good for as long as the account did not expire, and the promotion did not finish. It is not possible, however, to use a RapidShare.com account on the German site. Despite the one-way compatibility with paid accounts, both sites claim to be entirely different organisations and entities. The new site originally did not impose any download limits, but on October 27, the "Happy Hours" came to an end, bringing back the download limits. The file size limit was also reduced from 300 MB to its current 100 MB.