Green WeTransfer alternatives

If you want a file transfer service that is genuinely low-carbon, the two things to check are what powers the data centre and how long files are kept — and the second matters more. Storage is a continuous cost that runs for as long as the file exists; the transfer itself is over in minutes. A service that expires files quickly beats one that keeps everything forever on renewable power.

That framing does most of the work. Here is how to apply it.

What to actually check

Named energy source. Not "green energy" — which supplier, which facility, and is it renewable supply or renewable-matched certificates or offsets? Those are three different claims and only one of them means the electrons were clean.

Default retention. What happens to a file nobody downloads? A provider that deletes after a week is doing the largest available piece of work for you.

Replication. Three copies across three continents is three times the storage footprint. Many large providers do this by default and describe it as durability, which it is — it is a trade, not a free win.

Something falsifiable. A location, a supplier name, a PUE figure, a certification with a public registry. A claim you cannot check is not a claim.

What the services publish

Here I have to be straight with you about the limits of this page. I am not going to characterise other companies' sustainability positions from memory or from a summary, because the rules this site holds to require first-party sourcing, and sustainability pages change more often than pricing does.

What I can give you is the checklist and the retention figures, which are documented and verifiable:

• SwissTransfer deletes files after 15 days, with an extension to 30 days offered to the sender by email on the twelfth day (Infomaniak's own documentation, checked 1 August 2026). That short default is a genuine efficiency property, whatever else is true.
• Filemail lists file availability as permanent on its Pro plan, and 7 days on free Basic (own plan comparison, checked 1 August 2026).
• Smash free expiry is up to 7 days, Pro up to 30 (own pricing page, checked 1 August 2026).
• Dropbox Transfer keeps transfers 30 days by default (checked 31 July 2026).
• WeTransfer offers never-expiring transfers on its top tier (checked 31 July 2026).

Read those as footprint figures rather than as feature figures and the ranking inverts: the "worst" retention is the greenest, and the most generous plan is the most expensive one to run.

For each provider's energy claims, go to their own sustainability page and apply the four checks above. It takes ten minutes and you will be able to tell the difference between a substantive disclosure and a logo very quickly.

What Yungle does

Mine, so weigh it as an interested party's account. The checkable parts:

• One server in Germany, on renewable power, with backups in the EU.
• One primary copy, not three regional replicas. A deliberate efficiency choice, and equally a deliberate availability trade. I would rather state that than let the green framing hide it.
• Free transfers expire after 7 days. Paid collections do not expire, which is a feature people ask for and is straightforwardly worse for the footprint. Both things are true.
• A tenth of the profit goes to protecting rainforest.

The argument against treating this as a climate decision at all: a small file transfer service's absolute footprint is not where anyone's emissions live. Choosing carefully here is a five-minute act of not funding the alternative, not a material reduction. If you want the material version, it is in flights, heating and how often you replace hardware — and, for anyone doing media work, in how much you store.

The part that is actually yours

Whichever service you pick, the biggest lever is not the vendor.

Cull before uploading. Do not send 800 frames when 300 are worth having. It costs the client time too.

Do not archive every version. Working files, alternate exports and intermediate renders are where the bulk sits and they are almost never opened again.

Set a shorter retention for working files than for deliverables. The two categories deserve different rules.

Delete on a schedule. Twice a year is enough, and it is the difference between a policy and an intention.

The pleasant thing about this is that the low-carbon answer, the low-cost answer and the low-risk answer are the same answer. Data you deleted cannot leak, does not need securing, and costs nothing to keep.

Where to go next

If you also have privacy or jurisdiction requirements, the European services page overlaps heavily with this one — EU hosting and honest energy disclosure tend to come from the same kind of provider.

If you want the underlying arithmetic rather than the shopping advice, the carbon footprint of sending a file shows the numbers and states how uncertain they are.