WeTransfer’s expiry dates have been a major pain point for users — especially creatives. The thing is, if you don’t download the files the moment you get the link or email, you can easily forget to do so before the link expires. At which point you’ll have to ask for it to be resent — which can get pretty annoying for both sides.
The company is aware of the issue and now appears to be trying to mitigate the problem by letting receivers modify the expiry date of files on their mobile app — through a new “Save for Now” option. However, it’s not a total fix.
On Tuesday, WeTransfer made a confusing announcement on its X account — writing that users can extend the expiration date up to 30 days in its mobile app and also claiming “WeTransfer links will no longer expire.” The company later clarified that the number of days for extending the expiry date will depend on your plan. If users don’t use the save option, links can still expire.
Users were not impressed with WeTransfer’s messaging because it gave the impression it was doing away with link expiry altogether, which is not the case. You still have to take action to stop the link from expiring.
To prevent link expiration, users can now save links sent to them to a separate folder on WeTransfer’s mobile app — through the “Save for Now” feature, which resembles a bookmark icon.
The feature may be useful when you don’t have time to download the files immediately but want to access them later without having to go through your email inbox.
In our testing, we found that with a free account, you can extend a link’s expiry date for up to seven days on the app. The default is just three days from the link creation.
Italy-based Bending Spoons acquired WeTransfer last month, adding to an app portfolio that includes other veteran properties such as Evernote and Meetup. At the time of the announcement, WeTransfer CEO Alexandar Vassilev said the file transfer platform had amassed 600,000 subscribers and 80 million monthly active users over the last decade of the platform’s development.
