Crucial Updates : Recently they switched everything to premium, but as of now they are shutting down their service on 15th October 2015. All the data stored there will be lost.
Reason for shutting down according to their blog post : Hive sold its technology platform and as part of the transaction was required to shutdown the service.
Hive is a new buzz in the cloud storage area as they are are offering unlimited free cloud storage. Since they are in the beta version so you may find small hiccups with the service.
So why Cloud storage rather than local storage like ?
With a huge growth of internet around the world and availability of high speed for data transfer, its more easy to store the items on secure servers which helps you and friends to access the contents from any corner of the world.
Contents
Hive unlimited free cloud storage features and review
Signup options
Like any other service first step is sign up, to make the process easier you can do it via url Facebook, Google account, Twitter and the traditional email sign up. We preferred to go with Google account and it took only few seconds as there is no email verification.
After successful sign up , Hive brings you a simple and elegant user interface for ease of use as shown below in the picture
Hive dashboard
You may also like : Imgur Offers Unlimited Free Space For Your Photos
Folder in the dashboard seem to be permanent(no renaming and deletion is possible), but the sub-folders in it have better features like lock folder option.
How to add/upload your first files to hive.im ?
A pretty simple task
- Drop the files into the folder that you choose.
Does this unlimited free provider support upload via Url option ?
Yes, you can paste up to two links at a time and wait till its completed. The time depends on the size of the file you are trying to add to your space
Note : P2P url not supported, but offer magnet link support.
How many simultaneous transfers are permitted?
- Currently when we tested, hive offered no more than 2
Which all file extensions are permitted?
File extension supported
Is direct linking possible ?
- Seems like hive links have validity of 4 hours only.
Ultimate question, is it truly unlimited?
Plans
No, there are limitations according to a tweet by hive which says, 4TB is fine. Limits are SD video and LQ audio streaming after the beta.
Looks like we were again in line to get the access to the full version, we were wondering why ? As we had an account in beta and we had some friends, looks like we lost it. May be we will see them after we get our full account. So here is proof that we received the friend request.
Our one of friend request
What we saw today when tried to login !
Concerns
- No dedicated apps for android and other smart devices, only web app. They said on their twitter account that they will soon come up with this.
- Not supported on widely used mobile web browser, opera mini
- There was an ad bottom right not a big one in the download popup
- Can’t minimize the windows when done, it says ” I Can’t Breathe ” but when we dropped a file for uploading it just went fine.
So after testing hive, do you think it as an alternative for GDrive, Dropbox, Onedrive ?
Note : Right click is disabled for this service
Out final thought
Hive free cloud storage seems to be light weight web app for handling and streaming huge heap of data for free.
