The Upload Thingy

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Kirstie

Kirstie

PFG, Picture Framing God
Joined
Jan 16, 2007
Posts
8,395
Loc
Berkeley, CA
Is anyone using a form like The Upload Thingy to add an upload link to your web site for customers to upload their print files to you? I've been looking for an upload service like this for a while now, and just found this appropriately named one. This one is $9. per month. My web hosting service (Earthlink) offers FTP uploading but I have no idea how to use it or set it up. The Upload Thingy looks like a piece of cake.

Other suggestions? I also just found Jotform
 
What does the person that maintains your site say about this? There a zillion free upload scripts out there that will do the job at no cost.

I used to have one on my site. I just looked at it: 30 lines of php code.
 
Larry Peterson said:
What does the person that maintains your site say about this? There a zillion free upload scripts out there that will do the job at no cost.

I used to have one on my site. I just looked at it: 30 lines of php code.
Click to expand...

He could create the form but the files have to be hosted somewhere for easy download. A Dropbox file seems like a natural. I see there are also security issues with these forms.

Still researching...

Jotform is free for a limited amount of uploads and the files can go directly to a Dropbox folder. It also has Pay Pal payment integration and captcha (sp?) is optional. This service is a bit more complicated to set up but has more options and is free for limited use. This may do the trick. Still not sure about downloading a virus on the other end though.

Thoughts?
 
We have FTP functionality for select customers, however dropbox is by far the most popular with our clients now, so much so that I don't think any use FTP anymore.
 
I wouldn't be overly concerned about the data other than you will be storing to UploadThingy's Master Amazon S3 account. Amazon S3 security and Service Level agreement of 10 Nines uptime probably cannot be surpassed. UploadThingy does seem to be very user friendly.

I'd be more concerned about my own hosted webspace security since php below 5.3.28 or below 5.4.18 is cause for security concern.
 
your not really storing stuff for long, its not like your using uploadthingy on s3 for storage, once you have grabbed the stuff that people send you, delete it from there
 
Thanks for the information! So my choices are to use The Upload Thingy and pay $9 per month to have them store my uploaded customer files temporarily on their server until I download them, or to go with Jot Form, initially free, to create a form with more options and upload the customer files to a folder on my Dropbox.

Upload Thingy looks very user friendly, but it does not have the bells and whistles that Jot Form does. Jot Form looks a bit more complicated to set up.

Jot form also allows you to put your Pay Pal link on the form so that customers could potentially pay for their restoration/printing with their upload.

I will show both to my web designer tomorrow to get his take on this.

Anyone else have experience with this?
 
stcstc said:
i use it

works great

i also have an ftp server for clients who upload big batches
Click to expand...

Your form on this page looks great! It also has more options than I realized one could create. Paper type and size options are important and I had not thought of that. I thought all of that would have to go in a notes field. You did all of this with The Upload Thingy?

I'm having a second look at this service now....
 
yea i just paid uploadthingy to create the form for me

i just pasted the code into my site

its not perfect, but works great

i pay the slightly higher rate, as i have enough uploads a month to go through the first band

it wasnt even a lot of money for the custom form either, cant remember how much but not a lot

for me it was the convenience

doing the form integration myself was really easy. if i had to build something myself it was gonna be a learning curve

for me the cost is insignificant compared to the amount of business i get because of it

in thruth i use a few different methods.

dropboax - with photographers i do a lot with each month, have a share and they just update with orders
have own FTP server in office - use it for big orders, like wedding photographers
website/uploadthingy - new customers, arty photographers, generally sending one or 2 etc. great as means anyone rings, i just say fill the form in when i get it will ring you and talk through etc etc
 
Jot Form on Site

We set it up today. Fairly straightforward, and free. We are linking to the page from our Photo Restoration page and our Printing page. We are not adding the Pay Pal link at this time because we want to make sure people price their projects properly before paying.

Here's the upload page.

Thanks for your help and advice.
 
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