The Best WeTransfer Alternative for EU Businesses

For an EU business, the best WeTransfer alternative is an EU-hosted transfer service that permits commercial use on the plan you are actually on, publishes where your files are stored, and gives you retention, expiry and download visibility as standard.
That sounds like a low bar. It isn't. WeTransfer's free plan has tightened considerably, and it now carries a restriction most teams have never read: free transfers are for non-commercial use. If you send client deliverables, you are outside the terms of the plan you have been using for years.
So the real decision is not which tool has the biggest free tier. Here's what changed, what to check, and how the options actually compare.

WeTransfer Free Limits That Stop Working for Business Use

WeTransfer's free plan allows up to 3 GB per transfer, 10 transfers per rolling 30-day window, and download links that stay live for up to three days. An account is required to send, though recipients still download without one.

The limit that catches businesses is not a number. WeTransfer states that free transfers are for non-commercial use, which puts client delivery outside the plan by definition.

• Maximum size per transfer: 3 GB
• Transfers allowed: 10 per rolling 30 days
• Link availability: up to 3 days
• Permitted use on the free plan: individual, non-commercial

In practice, the three-day window does as much damage as the size cap. Send a rough cut to a client on Friday afternoon and the link can be dead before anyone opens it on Monday. You resend, they apologise, and the delivery record now lives in two email threads.

Five Checks Before Choosing a WeTransfer Alternative in the EU

Judge any replacement on five things: where the files physically sit, whether your plan permits business use, how much control you have over retention and expiry, whether you can prove what was sent to whom, and how much work the recipient has to do. Everything else is preference.

• Data residency. Ask which country the files are stored in, and get it in writing rather than inferred from a marketing page.
• Commercial use. Read the plan terms, not the feature grid. A free tier that bans business use is not a business tool.
• Retention and expiry. You should be able to set how long a link lives and when files are deleted, so delivery matches your own retention policy.
• Visibility and audit. Download alerts and a transfer history turn "I sent it last week" into a record.
• Certification status. Ask whether a standard such as ISO 27001 is certified or still in progress. Both answers are fine. A vague answer is not.

Encryption sits underneath all five. The Data Protection Commission's guidance for controllers on data security treats encryption and access control as technical measures you are expected to apply, which is why transport encryption alone rarely satisfies a security questionnaire.

How an EU Hosted Free Plan Compares to WeTransfer Free Limits

On the free tier here, you can send up to 10 GB in a single transfer, across 10 transfers, with a total transfer allowance of 20 GB and files retained for seven days. Infrastructure is EU-hosted by default, and business use is permitted.

More than three times the per-transfer size is useful. Seven days instead of three is what stops the resend loop. Paid tiers lift the ceiling considerably, and the current plan limits are published rather than quoted on request, which matters when you are building a case for a switch.

Why EU Data Residency Matters More Than Transfer Size

Data residency decides which legal regime your client files sit under, and it is the one property of a transfer tool you cannot fix later with settings. If a supplier stores personal data outside the EEA, you inherit a transfer assessment you did not plan for. If it stores inside the EU, that question closes.

Hosting alone doesn't make a service compliant, though. Under GDPR you need a written contract with any processor handling personal data on your behalf, and the DPC's guidance on controller and processor relationships sets out what that contract has to cover. Three things are worth confirming before you sign anything.

• The data processing agreement names the storage region and any sub-processors.
• Deletion is automatic and evidenced, not manual and hopeful.
• Access to files is limited to the recipients you specify, with password protection available where the content warrants it.

Teams sending contracts, medical records or HR files usually need all three. A fuller breakdown sits in our guide to GDPR compliant file transfer, which covers encryption, audit trails and retention in more depth than a comparison post can.

What Agencies and Regulated Teams Need Beyond a Bigger Free Tier

Volume is the easy part. Agencies and regulated teams need branded delivery, a shared record of what went out, and retention long enough to survive a project cycle. Free plans across the category are built for one-off personal sends, so those features start on paid tiers.

Retention is the row to read twice. A 90 or 180 day window means a client who resurfaces mid-project can still reach the files, and your team can answer a delivery query without digging through sent items. Shared transfer history, custom branding and custom domains change how the delivery looks to the client, which is the argument for file delivery built for agencies rather than a general-purpose sharing tool.

There is no free trial on the paid plans here. The free tier runs indefinitely instead, so you test with real work before you pay for anything.

How to Move Client File Delivery Off WeTransfer

Switch in stages rather than all at once. A week of parallel running surfaces the problems that matter, mostly around recipient behaviour and internal habits, and none of them are technical.

• Check your last month of sends. Note the largest file, how many transfers you made, and which ones contained personal data.
• Send one internal transfer and one real client delivery on the new tool before you announce anything.
• Set link expiry and retention to match your own data retention policy, not the default.
• Update proposal templates, email signatures and any delivery SOP that names the old tool.
• Tell clients the download experience is unchanged. No account, no app, same click.

Most of the friction lands on step four. Old links live in old emails, and someone will use one for months after the switch.

Choosing a File Transfer Tool Your Clients and Compliance Team Both Accept

File delivery only becomes visible when it fails, which is why it stays unexamined until a link expires in front of a client or a security questionnaire lands. The tools have diverged enough over the last two years that the version you adopted in 2019 is not the version you are using now.

Work through the five checks against whatever you currently send with. If the answers are thin, send a test transfer on the free plan and judge it from the recipient's side, which is the only view that really counts.