Disclosure: This blog post is sponsored by WPForms. WPForms (owned by Awesome Motive) gets no say in what the headline is, or what’s written in the article. Everything written in this article are my own words (or those taken from sites that mention the product) and are my own opinion. WPForms are simply providing this opportunity to do more publicity about their file upload feature. I do not get WPForms (or anything else mentioned) for free (or any discounts except those that are provided to the general public). There may be more article’s like this in the future but I will continue to provide a disclosure similar to this every time. There will be multiple affiliate links in this article but they will be clearly labelled by mentioning in brackets after the product name that it is an affiliate link.
When you work with clients you most likely will need files from them, it could be anything from a logo, to pdf, to tons more. If you are physically close to the client then you can easily get a usb flash drive from them with the files on them, but if you aren’t close to them then you will have to use another way to get those files. Here are 4 ways to get files from clients when you can’t physically get files from them.
The most well-known is email attachment, it’s easy just click attach while sending an email and there you go. The problem is that there is a size limit to what you can attach to emails, it varies based on what email provider you use, but I would say to be safe if your files are bigger than 7MB then use another one of these methods.
Cloud storage is very popular and well-known, and while it may seem like all the cloud storage companies offer a way to get files from someone else, only certain companies offer this. This includes Dropbox (referral link which gets you an extra 500MB for bonus space for free) file request (available on their free plans, which starts at 2gb of space) and box.com‘s file request (only offered on paid plans). You may be wondering why so few cloud storage companies offer this, since this is something that many people want. Dropbox patented this so that if any company wants to do something similar they will have to pay Dropbox a licensing fee (the actual fee I couldn’t find in my research).
Something similar to cloud storage would be using something like a file upload so that your client can just upload the files you need. There are many ways to do this, from using a forms plugin on your WordPress website, to using WeTransfer (2gb for free), or FileTransfer.io (6gb for free) which the client can upload the file(s) then just email the download link to you.
If you need text of some sort along with the files there are many options for that, from using a free forms site (like Google Forms which requires a Google account) or Jotform, if you want something paid Content Snare has a good reputation of making it easy for your clients to use. All these places have a section for upload so that your clients can easily upload the files or text that is needed.
Of course all of these do have some sort of restriction, from the price, to storage size and more, so make sure to do your own research and find the right one for you and your clients. If you are looking for reliable ones then consider WPForms (affiliate link) or Content Snare.
