UPDATED 07:47 EDT / JULY 26 2011

YouSendIt Greatly Expands Cloud Service, Competes with Dropbox

YouSendIt is a file-sharing service that you’re probably familiar with.  If you’re like me, you’ve used YouSendIt on an as-needed basis, shooting over video files to your coworkers to edit, not really thinking much of YouSendIt beyond your specific needs. YouSendIt is pretty good for this, but it’s ready to move on.  The service is adding storage and management features to its file-sharing service, layering in dozens of interaction points for managing files.

With this update YouSendIt is targeting the business sector, looking for a way to extend its initial product to the enterprise level.  Storage is cheap these days, and is an important part of file management for any service.  Tack on the series of options YouSendIt has incorporated into this new service account, and you’ll gain a better understanding of what YouSendIt is looking to do.

“We did the classic thing first–focus meniacly on winning in one area.  You can’t just come from nowhere on this,” says Brian Curry, Vice President, Product and Business Strategy  of YouSendIt.   “We’ve won in this category and we’d like to get more relevant and more engagement–more than sending a big file.  Let’s do all files.  We asked our users and asked what they’re doing.”

What their users are doing is sharing more files and looking for more ways to interact with those files. Save them to various folders, access them from the cloud and share them accordingly. You get unlimited storage to save and sync content in the cloud, with file and folder access anytime, anywhere through desktop or mobile devices.  There’s a string of collaboration features for secure file and folder-sharing, with tracking options for professional use.  You can even review and sign business documents online, at a desk or on the go.

During a demo of the new features last week, I was particularly drawn in by this new document-signing tool.  It doesn’t seem like a significant feature, but it’s one of those incredibly useful functions you’ll be glad to have whenever you need it.  You can use your mouse or finger to sign a document, resize and rotate your signature, and place it on the document as needed.  Your signature is actually saved as an image file, so you can access it to sign other documents in the future.

Some of YouSendIt’s other features were impressive as well.  Integrated with your desktop’s existing folder system, your files are saved where you want them–not in a remote, cloud-only platform that mimics a desktop interface.  To sync or manage a file or folder, all you have to do is right-click on it, and YouSendIt options are included in the menu. There’s even icons that appear on files, so you know when they’ve been updated, synced or modified.  What I like about YouSendIt’s management features is that they’re fluid and intuitive, and give you a good range of options from nearly every point of access.  This goes for the YouSendIt mobile app as well, which is currently available for the iPhone and iPad.

YouSendIt is looking to offer a scalable cloud solution for collaboration and efficiency.  It’s an introductury offering YouSendIt is launching, with plans to leverage its tens of millions of users, which reportedly includes 20 million registered users, 450,000 paid subscribers, and 32 million unique users in the last 12 months alone.  It’s built on YouSendIt’s proprietary cloud-computing environment, which has always focused on ease-of-use.  The new service extends that initial offering, looking to help businesses accomplish things in the cloud as easily as they would in the office.

The company is following a three-pronged strategy for growth, starting with this large user base.  From there, YouSendIt’s hoping to translate this consumer-level adoption to company-wide deployments, and expanding adjacent features and enterprise-grade solutions from there.  It’s not entirely different from the plan many consumer-level products take, even as HomePipe looks to make a similar leap based on its growing demand.

To ramp up quickly, YouSendIt is pricing its new services pretty low, with the highest plan at $15/mo. for unlimited features.  The company also made a couple of acquisitions in recent months.  Zosh was one such deal, providing YouSendIt with the document signing feature I outlined above.  It’s been an important factor in YouSendIt’s growth, ensuring that the company has a strong position whenever it rolls out new features in this heavily crowded market.

“We’re also looking for other [acquisitions],” Curry goes on.  “It’s a great way to accelerate our way into the market and extend our reach.  There’s no denying the way people are working is changing.  You don’t want to unplug from your personal life to print a PDF, sign it and fax it back.”


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