WinZip in the Cloud Seeks to Centralize, Secure, and Manage All Your Cloud Storage

WinZip, the company that brought file compression and encryption to computing in the 1990's, is pushing out to the Cloud in an effort to make sharing and securing all of your personally owned files easy.  ZipShare is the name of the new service and it's currently in public beta.

ZipShare does has storage facilities just like OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox and others, however the intent is not to be permanent storage, but temporary storage to make it easier to share files. Using the web-based service you can choose to upload files directly from your computer, or, after connecting all of your various Cloud storage locations, can copy files stored there directly into ZipShare. When files are uploaded from the local PC or copied from Cloud storage, they are automatically compressed and encrypted, ensuring they are securely stored. A password for the file can also be set to build better security.

Once the files have been transferred to ZipShare, you are given options to share with someone or a group of people through email, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

While this isn't a groundbreaking service (myITforum has been offering this type of service for years HERE), there are a couple pieces that could provide found value, particularly for businesses.

WinZip's file security and encryption technology has always been considered top-notch, so companies can rest assured that sharing sensitive corporate information externally comes with additional safeguards.

The other interesting piece, is that ZipShare helps centralize Cloud storage accounts into a single console view, allowing for various management aspects such as monitoring storage and moving files between Cloud services.

ZipShare is currently in public beta and is free until the beta ends. After that, you'll need to decide between 3 different service levels: Free, Pro, and Ultimate.

The Free version gives you everything except the management pieces. The Pro and Ultimate versions are only separated by the maximum size of the Zip file that can be stored in ZipShare. The full service level comparison is HERE.

Beta testers will be able to test ZipShare using the Pro-level service. After the beta, the Pro version costs $39.95 per year, and Ultimate goes for $9.95 per month.

You can sign-up for the beta here: https://www.zipshare.com/