Great news - SendAlong can now use your local time zone when displaying information like when a file was sent or downloaded.

One note: if you already have a SendAlong account, your time zone has been automatically set to US Eastern Standard Time (EST). Of course you can update your time zone at anytime by going to the My Account page and then clicking on the Change Time Zone link.

Along with making it easy to send large files, another one of SendAlong’s goals is to make collaborating on those files easier. To that end, SendAlong now supports posting comments on the messages you send. These comments are permanent and are visible anytime you (as the sender) or any of your recipients view the message online. Comments are also automatically emailed to everyone on the message.

Here’s an example of how this would be helpful: say you’re a graphic designer and you use SendAlong to mail 3 different logo designs out to 10 different people, asking for their opinions on which logo they like best. Instead of hoping that the 10 recipients make sure to “reply-all” on every email they send, they can view the message on SendAlong as well as have their discussion there using the new comment system. Everyone will be automatically emailed anytime a comment is left, and even better, there will be a permanent record of those comments located right alongside the files themselves.

Combine comments with SendAlong’s ability to attach detailed descriptions to each file, and you’ve got the basis for a very handy document and file management system.

Of course, no new feature post would be complete without some screenshots, so here they are.

This is what you and your recipients will see in SendAlong:

And here’s an example of the email that will be sent anytime a comment is added:

Comments are available in all plans, so sign up now (or sign in if you’ve already got an account) and give them a shot!

Some major new features were just added to SendAlong that should make a lot of people very happy.

Advanced Download Tracking & File Descriptions

Have you ever wondered if the person you sent a few files to has downloaded any of them? Or what if you sent multiple files to several people - have you ever wanted to know who downloaded which files? What about being able to tell if the recipient has even viewed the message you sent them? Good news - you can with SendAlong.

Sometimes pictures speak better than words. Here’s an example of what you, as the sender, will see if you’re using one of the Personal or Plus plans:

What you’re seeing:

1. Track which recipients have downloaded which files.
2. Track which recipients have viewed this message (no more “I never saw your email…” excuses!).
3. Annotate each file you upload with a description - this saves you from trying to explain what each file is in the message body itself.

(note: the Free plan doesn’t include Advanced Download Tracking, so if you’d like to try tracking out, make sure to choose a free trial of a Personal or Plus plan when signing up)

Let’s see regular email try to do that!

Improved Download Pages

The download page - the page that recipients see when downloading your files - has been revamped to be easier to navigate and understand:

Now that you know what SendAlong can do for you, why not send a file now? Remember, if you want to use Advanced Download Tracking, make sure to choose a free 15 day trial of the Personal or Plus plans.

The available plans for SendAlong have been updated, thanks to some great user feedback (keep it coming!).

Here’s a summary of what’s changed:

• The Free Plan has been reconfigured - you won’t be able to send quite as much now, but that’s actually ok because…
• The Personal Plan has been introduced - at $5 a month, this is great news if you find yourself outgrowing the Free Plan or needing some power features (like secure uploads/downloads and password protection). Your files will be available for a whole 10 days now, and the plan features a more than adequate 1GB of monthly upload bandwidth. Enjoy!
• The Plus Plan has been reconfigured - the price has been decreased and the feature set (downloads per file, file expiration) has been increased.
• The Pro Plan has been removed (for now) - other than the bandwidth that was offered with Pro, there wasn’t enough reason to justify its existence. There are a lot more features in the works for SendAlong, and when more of them are complete an upgraded Pro Plan will be reintroduced that will be much more useful.

Have a look at the available plans to get an idea of which one might be right for you.

Other new features in this release include:

• Upgrading/downgrading your plan has been drastically simplified (it’s dead simple now), thanks to some user input (thanks Patrick M.).
• Various small bug fixes (I guess bug fixes aren’t really a feature, but…).

Did you know that you can use SendAlong to send files and messages in any language?

Special thanks to Kimmo H. for requesting this feature.

Today marks the release of a new version of SendAlong!

There are quite a few things to mention. Let’s get right to the most important one:

Contact Management

SendAlong will now store and manage your email contacts, just like any other email program.

• Import your existing contacts from Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and AOL.
• In addition to importing, every time you send a file to someone not already in your contacts, SendAlong will add them to your contact list automatically.
• You can view all of your contacts, add new ones, delete old ones, and…
• Select multiple contacts from the list and send files to all of them at once with a single click.
• Plus, when entering recipients, just type a letter from your contact’s name and see a list of matching contacts to choose from - also known as “autocomplete” (see #2 in the image below).

With contact management, you can sign up for a free account and have all of your email contacts imported in less than a minute from start to finish. Why not give it a shot?

Other New Features

Several other features have been added to make sending files even easier.

• The “You have been sent a file” email now tells recipients how many days those files will be available
• The messages you type to go along with your files can be much longer than before - 2,000 characters long to be exact (thanks, Steve D.)
• File names can now be up to 256 characters long
• Logging in, navigating, and sending files is now slightly faster
• A “Remember me” option for staying logged in has been added
• The process for entering your credit card information has been simplified
• Of course, there were several small bug fixes
• Lots of little enhancements too numerous to mention

Special Thanks

A special thank you goes to RapLeaf (and Dan Scudder in particular) for generously allowing the use of their contact importing software which so nicely lets SendAlong import contacts from Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and AOL.

It’s been a long time in the works, but it finally happened - SendAlong has been officially released as of today!

Here’s what you can do with SendAlong right now:

• Sign up for a free or trial plan - choose the free plan if your requirements are small, or do a 15 day free trial of any of the other plans if you need a bit more horsepower
• Send large files to anyone with an email address - up to 100MB file size for free plans, and up to 500MB to 2GB (that’s big) for the paid plans
• Password protect your files - just type in a password so that only people that have the password can get the files
• Upload securely - SendAlong uses SSL to encrypt files as they’re uploaded and downloaded so that no eavesdroppers can steal your data
• How many people downloaded that? - page through the file history to see how many times each file was downloaded
• Did I mention the 15 day free trial (no strings attached, period)??

So head on over and sign up for a free account to give it a try!

Looking Back…

I thought it would be fun to see what SendAlong looked like in its early days. What follows are a few pictures of what SendAlong used to look like.

Here’s a shot from the very first running version:

Here’s a much more recent shot. Notice all of the fancy shadows and gradients that have since been removed to speed up the site:

That’s all for now - I’ve got a lot of work ahead - there’s quite a large list of features that people have been asking for - including things like file sharing (not just sending!). Subscribe to the blog if you want to keep hearing more.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again - go try it out!

Just a few small things to mention today.

• The “you have been sent a file” message now lists all of the recipients of the message (this is helpful when trying to figure out who a message was sent to - thanks for the suggestion Julie C.)

• Secure (SSL) downloads now work correctly in all browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, and Opera)
• A few minor formatting issues for Internet Explorer have been fixed

With the new release this morning, download speed for sent files has been increased by an order of magnitude. What’s this mean for you? Much, much faster downloads for anyone who you’re sending files to.

Other than the big download speed increase, there were several small bug fixes (mostly related to Internet Explorer) as well.

A new version of SendAlong was released this morning. Here’s what this release was all about:

Faster

• You should notice that SendAlong’s pages load much faster now - thanks to the removal of extra formatting and images that looked nice but slowed down the overall experience - I hope you like the new streamlined look and faster page loads!

Better Email Notifications

There are some nice new touches in the emails that are sent out when files are sent. These include:

1. Each file has its size listed next to it, so that just glancing at the email tells recipients how large their new files are (thanks for the suggestion, Chris).
2. When your recipient hits “reply” in their email client, the reply email will go straight to you - not to noreply@sendalong.com (thanks again, Chris).
3. Email subjects no longer include the “[Sendalong.com]” prefix in their subjects - recipients now see a much friendlier subject like “Jon Chase (jon.chase@example.com) just sent you a file” (thanks yet again Chris!).

Help

• I’ve added a Payments FAQ - although not very useful yet (paid plans will not be available until the 1.0 release), I wanted to put it out there to get feedback so that it can be improved in the coming weeks. The FAQ should also give you a better idea about SendAlong’s pricing structure and free trials.

Thanks for reading this far - now have a great week!