I was trying to find a good file hosting service, but I couldn’t find any good review or comparison of such services. There is a wikipedia list/comparison (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_hosting_services) but that’s not really helpful except if you don’t know these services 
Anyway let’s start with the list of the main players. Just try a basic search on FilesTube and you’ll get the 6 first:
RapidShare and MegaUpload are the most known (and most used) but when it comes to premium memberships I feel more comfortable with the MegaUpload than buying rapids for each transfer…
Anyway all the premium offers for these hosting service are really similar: no waiting, bigger or unlimited upload, direct links/hotlinks, no download limit and (theoretical) speed. With prices ranging from 35€ to 60€ for 1 year subscription.
So how can you choose your service? I see 2 ways: a) compare the features or b) what would google do ?
I can’t really help you with the first, because you know better what you need but MegaUpload, FileSonic and WUpload seem to have nice features. And a special mention to FileServe who adds a manager tool that can be handy.
I can’t really help you with the first, because you know better what you need but MegaUpload, FileSonic and WUpload seem to have nice features. And a special mention to FileServe who adds a manager tool that can be handy.
An easier approach is to have a look on Google Trends (red-rapidshare, blue-megaupload, yellow-hotfile):
As you can clearly see, RapidShare seems to be old school and MegaUpload is the current reference.
But you can zoom in on new players, to detect early trends in file hosting (blue-hotfile, red-fileserve, yellow-filesonic, green-wupload):
FileServe and FileSonic are gaining traction, and wupload is fairly new in the area.
At first I was considering some lifetime membership but as you can see, time goes fast for hosting services and each year you got new competitors with bigger offers. So I would advice to stick with 1 year membership or 2 years maximum.
As a conclusion, I didn’t have time to test speed and overall quality, but for now I would stick with MegaUpload.
And you could try one of the newcomers (fileserve, filesonic or wupload) if there are some specific feature that matches your needs.
Where did you see that you have to buy rapids for each transfer ?
It’s 10€ for 1 month, 30€ for 150 days and 100€ for two years.
The one I choose depends on which one I need most at the point in time. Some websites give you a choice between a few hosters but sometimes, they are affiliated with a specific provider. I used to have megaupload but the prices increased too much, so I switched to hotfiles. Then hotfiles lost its appeal and I now have Rapidshare and Filesonic.
Paying usually gets you better performance. But sometimes you go from 10Kb/s to 100Kb/s. On Rapidshare, I’m downloading at a blazing 3.4MB/s. On Megaupload, it varied a lot over time.
The thing with the rapid has changed, they realized it was a bit too complicated and came back to a more traditional formula