Zippyshare is a free file sharing website launched in 2006 and has been in operation for 17 years. Compared with Dropbox, Google Drive and other platforms on the market, Zippyshare does not provide particularly rich functions, and the interface of the website is also very retro. Even so, according to statistics, Zippyshare still has more than 43 million monthly visits.

Behind the seemingly high number of visits, it is actually unable to make ends meet and unsustainable. ZippyShare announced yesterday that it will close its service at the end of this month.

We have decided to close the project at the end of this month, please make a backup of your important files, you have about two weeks to do this. Until then, the website will function normally.

Born in 2006, Zippyshare’s profit model was also in line with the background of the times at that time, which was to rely solely on advertising revenue. But as time goes by, there are more and more file sharing platforms on the market, which provide better performance and more functions, and many platforms are backed by large technology companies, and get more resources and support. Zippyshare lost many users to fierce competition. Fewer users mean fewer and fewer visits, which in turn reduces advertising revenue.

Secondly, nowadays users are paying more and more attention to personal privacy, and ad blocking/blocking tools are everywhere, whether it is built into the browser, or a browser extension, or exists in the form of DNS service, which further shrinks Zippyshare’s revenue, and fell into a vicious circle (in order to pay for infrastructure such as servers, Zippyshare was forced to place more ads, and then users used more and more ad blockers).

Last but not least, electricity prices go up. Zippyshare revealed that in the past year, the local electricity price has increased by 2.5 times. With a large number of servers, their operating costs have increased significantly, resulting in no way to balance the balance of payments.

At the end of the day, as Zippyshare’s revenue continued to decline, costs multiplied and it was no longer possible to maintain the site.