@jaden said:
Thanks for the recap. I tried looking at the incident from April that you linked but it now returns a 404. That's not a good look for transparency.
@hornet said:
I just signed up to get you +10GB (I hope).
Awww. Thanks - appreciate it.
Fair to note that even though "extra storage" from that link is maxed out, but if I understand correctly, the link should also have granted you an extra 10 GB of storage (please correct me if I'm wrong), so it should still be a net-win.
Still no proper Rclone support, just their own CLI (has anyone here tried that?).
Have also been trialling them very tentatively with a view to maybe grabbing a BF special.
I did try the CLI under Linux using the WebDAV server and that seemed to work OK. More recently have been using the beta rclone implementation under Windows purely for backup document storage and again that seems to work fine for me, though light use via the rclone VFS cache. Was hoping it might make it into upstream rclone by now, it is apparently under review for that and I note it's been updated very recently.
I have a very small lifetime plan with them. TBH the feeling I get from their subreddit and discord is very much one of "just wait, it's about to be great." Maybe I'm just paranoid, and I don't have a lot of real-world use of the service myself, being upfront, but it feels like it's always on the edge of something instead of being a viable service as-is.
@SocksAreComfortable said:
I have a very small lifetime plan with them. TBH the feeling I get from their subreddit and discord is very much one of "just wait, it's about to be great." Maybe I'm just paranoid, and I don't have a lot of real-world use of the service myself, being upfront, but it feels like it's always on the edge of something instead of being a viable service as-is.
I see it everywhere when I scratch the surface, it is how practically everything is run nowadays, it only differs by how much it's noticeable/visible with different companies.
So it's probably never going to get all good and polished, but my dilemma is whether it will be useful, or a take-money-and-run operation.
just a reminder, this BF will be the last time they offer the Pro series of plans as lifetime offers, after that it will only be the starter 100GB for 29.99euro
@dgc1980 said:
just a reminder, this BF will be the last time they offer the Pro series of plans as lifetime offers, after that it will only be the starter 100GB for 29.99euro
@dgc1980 said:
just a reminder, this BF will be the last time they offer the Pro series of plans as lifetime offers, after that it will only be the starter 100GB for 29.99euro
As far as I could see, they were saying they will reduce and probably completely cut lifetime sales.
Then, this summer, they posted about that this Black Friday may be the last lifetime sale, but that "starter" lifetime will probably stay available: https://filen.io/hub/lifetime-plans-an-update/
last time when i use them the down time is a lot averaging from few minutes to few hours.
its kinda annoying so i just move on.
I've been using the service since April (2025).
Within the first few days they had a long downtime (several hours if not more).
Apart from that, I haven't noticed any problems - but I have noticed that their incident reports got redacted (showing "no downtime" in April), and can't be found or saved in the web.archive ("Wayback machine").
Discord bug report apparently came unnoticed since Saturday (despite the mention by a member there), while a public Reddit post from this morning got a response after a few hours:
Another bug that will bother the privacy-concerned folks: full ticket contents (along with replies) are visible to anyone who has the URL (no password protection, only URL obscurity).
Filen CLI 0.0.0
> s3 <--s3-access-key-id <...>> <--s3-secret-access-key <...>> [--s3-hostname <...>] [--s3-port <...>] [--s3-https] [--s3-threads <...>]
Run an S3 server that mirrors your Filen drive.
Important: When connecting to the S3 server, you need to enable `s3ForcePathStyle` and set the region to `filen`.
For information on S3 compatibility, see https://github.com/FilenCloudDienste/filen-s3.
<--s3-access-key-id <...>> Access Key ID for S3
<--s3-secret-access-key <...>> Secret Access Key for S3
[--s3-hostname <...>] which hostname the server should be started on (default: 0.0.0.0)
[--s3-port <...>] which port the server should be started on (default: 80 or 443)
[--s3-https] use HTTPS instead of HTTP (using a self-signed certificate)
[--s3-threads <...>] enables clustering, number of threads to use for the server (default is no clustering; explicitly set to 0 to set by CPU core count). If you experience rate-limiting using this, an auth config might help (`filen help export-auth-config`)
Filen CLI 0.0.0
> s3 <--s3-access-key-id <...>> <--s3-secret-access-key <...>> [--s3-hostname <...>] [--s3-port <...>] [--s3-https] [--s3-threads <...>]
Run an S3 server that mirrors your Filen drive.
Important: When connecting to the S3 server, you need to enable `s3ForcePathStyle` and set the region to `filen`.
For information on S3 compatibility, see https://github.com/FilenCloudDienste/filen-s3.
<--s3-access-key-id <...>> Access Key ID for S3
<--s3-secret-access-key <...>> Secret Access Key for S3
[--s3-hostname <...>] which hostname the server should be started on (default: 0.0.0.0)
[--s3-port <...>] which port the server should be started on (default: 80 or 443)
[--s3-https] use HTTPS instead of HTTP (using a self-signed certificate)
[--s3-threads <...>] enables clustering, number of threads to use for the server (default is no clustering; explicitly set to 0 to set by CPU core count). If you experience rate-limiting using this, an auth config might help (`filen help export-auth-config`)
So if I understood correctly, there is no native S3 support, but a functioning workaround so to speak (because of the encryption - you must emulate an S3 gateway on your PC - which in turn "talks" to Filen, while your apps "talk" to your PC's S3 emulation)?
@bikegremlin said: So if I understood correctly, there is no native S3 support, but a functioning workaround so to speak (because of the encryption - you must emulate an S3 gateway on your PC - which in turn "talks" to Filen, while your apps "talk" to your PC's S3 emulation)?
correct, because of all the E2EE everything must be done on your own system then encrypted then uploaded to their servers
I do not think they are going to host their own S3 or WebDAV due to the zero-knowledge stand
From what I can gather, they offered lifetime in the past, during previous Black Friday. However, as per their announcement, this Black Friday will "most likely" be the final round with Pro Lifetime plans. This is interesting because there seems to be a lot of fear of missing out used (FOMO), and all of it makes sense from their perspective because "they will be sold at their regular price". This means there will be no discount like in previous Black Friday offers.
All of this triggers a lot of alarm bells in my mind, because Filen does not seem to be that great in popularity, and it comes with a lot of promises. On top of that, they make this lifetime as if it's something big, even though there will be no discounts (just another full price). One can simply buy Koofr or pCloud to get a better deal (discounted price) on Black Friday from established providers, and also get more features which are already there (no promises for this and that).
As a reference, I attach the prices from a previous Black Friday event of theirs, which included both the discount at the time along the full price (which should be expected during the following Black Friday). My honest guess is that they're in crisis due to storage price increase worldwide, so they need a lot of funding which forces them to enter Black Friday with: full price, more promises, and more FOMO.
@root said:
From what I can gather, they offered lifetime in the past, during previous Black Friday. However, as per their announcement, this Black Friday will "most likely" be the final round with Pro Lifetime plans. This is interesting because there seems to be a lot of fear of missing out used (FOMO), and all of it makes sense from their perspective because "they will be sold at their regular price". This means there will be no discount like in previous Black Friday offers.
All of this triggers a lot of alarm bells in my mind, because Filen does not seem to be that great in popularity, and it comes with a lot of promises. On top of that, they make this lifetime as if it's something big, even though there will be no discounts (just another full price). One can simply buy Koofr or pCloud to get a better deal (discounted price) on Black Friday from established providers, and also get more features which are already there (no promises for this and that).
As a reference, I attach the prices from a previous Black Friday event of theirs, which included both the discount at the time along the full price (which should be expected during the following Black Friday). My honest guess is that they're in crisis due to storage price increase worldwide, so they need a lot of funding which forces them to enter Black Friday with: full price, more promises, and more FOMO.
#LowEndDetectives
Similar doubts. Strong FOMO vibes - 100% yes.
However, they are not pushing discounts to make more sales (and more total revenue), so they might be at least trying to keep the service profitable (not just take money and deadpool).
Still, that begs the question: do discount sales make more money in total compared to selling fewer plans at regular price.
Another thing I've noticed is that they have been announcing this since their previous black friday sale - along the lines that they might make another sale for this black Friday, but that would probably be it.
Regarding alternatives:
Upload speed and application's sync option are way ahead of what I've experienced with Pcloud's encrypted option (though yes, Pcloud supports rclone so that is a good fix - but less beginner drag&drop friendly).
Also, Pcloud is selling lifetime deals at a discount every few months - that does not sound sustainable unless there is a catch - unless I'm missing something.
Comments
Thanks for the recap. I tried looking at the incident from April that you linked but it now returns a 404. That's not a good look for transparency.
https://status.filen.io/incident/544157
Yup - put that right at the start of the article - and notified Filen.io as a bug report, in case it is an honest mistake.
Red flag IMO.
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I just signed up to get you +10GB (I hope).
Awww. Thanks - appreciate it.
Fair to note that even though "extra storage" from that link is maxed out, but if I understand correctly, the link should also have granted you an extra 10 GB of storage (please correct me if I'm wrong), so it should still be a net-win.
🔧 BikeGremlin guides & resources
Have also been trialling them very tentatively with a view to maybe grabbing a BF special.
I did try the CLI under Linux using the WebDAV server and that seemed to work OK. More recently have been using the beta rclone implementation under Windows purely for backup document storage and again that seems to work fine for me, though light use via the rclone VFS cache. Was hoping it might make it into upstream rclone by now, it is apparently under review for that and I note it's been updated very recently.
I have a very small lifetime plan with them. TBH the feeling I get from their subreddit and discord is very much one of "just wait, it's about to be great." Maybe I'm just paranoid, and I don't have a lot of real-world use of the service myself, being upfront, but it feels like it's always on the edge of something instead of being a viable service as-is.
I wrote in greath length about that state of mind (and running business) on my blog.
https://blog.bikegremlin.com/1122/zeitgeist/
I see it everywhere when I scratch the surface, it is how practically everything is run nowadays, it only differs by how much it's noticeable/visible with different companies.
So it's probably never going to get all good and polished, but my dilemma is whether it will be useful, or a take-money-and-run operation.
Relja TooThoroughForHisOwnGood Novović
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@bikegremlin bro just have to say your obsession with the Germans is getting weird even for me
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I use this myself to backup my backups using rclone and the webdav option in the cli, works fantastic.
Oktoberfest hangover...
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I had a lifetime plan with them from a long time ago. When I switched to self hosted and proton drive visionary, I just sold that off.
Team push-ups!
just a reminder, this BF will be the last time they offer the Pro series of plans as lifetime offers, after that it will only be the starter 100GB for 29.99euro
https://filen.io/hub/black-friday-2025-the-final-return-of-pro-lifetime-plans/
They've been saying this for years.
Team push-ups!
As far as I could see, they were saying they will reduce and probably completely cut lifetime sales.
Then, this summer, they posted about that this Black Friday may be the last lifetime sale, but that "starter" lifetime will probably stay available:
https://filen.io/hub/lifetime-plans-an-update/
In the latest announcement, they have confirmed that this will probably be the last lifetime sale of the Pro plans (and that the Starter plan will remain still available "for now"):
https://filen.io/hub/black-friday-2025-the-final-return-of-pro-lifetime-plans/
Could just be FOMO marketing.
But it seems genuine.
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they have too many downtime for me
So, they do redact their status pages?
https://status.filen.io/
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I tried looking at their history on the internet archive to find clear evidence, and it's excluded. Seems suspicious.
yes, probably.
last time when i use them the down time is a lot averaging from few minutes to few hours.
its kinda annoying so i just move on.
I've been using the service since April (2025).
Within the first few days they had a long downtime (several hours if not more).
Apart from that, I haven't noticed any problems - but I have noticed that their incident reports got redacted (showing "no downtime" in April), and can't be found or saved in the web.archive ("Wayback machine").
🔧 BikeGremlin guides & resources
Discord bug report apparently came unnoticed since Saturday (despite the mention by a member there), while a public Reddit post from this morning got a response after a few hours:
https://www.reddit.com/r/filen_io/comments/1oosbs5/why_are_filenio_incident_reports_being_redacted/
🔧 BikeGremlin guides & resources
Another bug that will bother the privacy-concerned folks: full ticket contents (along with replies) are visible to anyone who has the URL (no password protection, only URL obscurity).
From what I could gather, Filen is aware of the problem, and that is one reason why wayback machine is blocked - see here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/filen_io/comments/1nq1r5f/comment/ngp3x1c/
Security audit is "on the roadmap, once API 4.0 is finished."
https://filen.io/hub/roadmap/
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Anyone know if S3 is supported?
netcup vouchers
So if I understood correctly, there is no native S3 support, but a functioning workaround so to speak (because of the encryption - you must emulate an S3 gateway on your PC - which in turn "talks" to Filen, while your apps "talk" to your PC's S3 emulation)?
Filen's info:
https://docs.filen.io/docs/cli/webdav-and-s3-server/
🔧 BikeGremlin guides & resources
correct, because of all the E2EE everything must be done on your own system then encrypted then uploaded to their servers
I do not think they are going to host their own S3 or WebDAV due to the zero-knowledge stand
From what I can gather, they offered lifetime in the past, during previous Black Friday. However, as per their announcement, this Black Friday will "most likely" be the final round with Pro Lifetime plans. This is interesting because there seems to be a lot of fear of missing out used (FOMO), and all of it makes sense from their perspective because "they will be sold at their regular price". This means there will be no discount like in previous Black Friday offers.
All of this triggers a lot of alarm bells in my mind, because Filen does not seem to be that great in popularity, and it comes with a lot of promises. On top of that, they make this lifetime as if it's something big, even though there will be no discounts (just another full price). One can simply buy Koofr or pCloud to get a better deal (discounted price) on Black Friday from established providers, and also get more features which are already there (no promises for this and that).
As a reference, I attach the prices from a previous Black Friday event of theirs, which included both the discount at the time along the full price (which should be expected during the following Black Friday). My honest guess is that they're in crisis due to storage price increase worldwide, so they need a lot of funding which forces them to enter Black Friday with: full price, more promises, and more FOMO.
#LowEndDetectivesI reserve the right to license all of my content under: CC BY-NC-ND. Whatever happens on this forum should stay on this forum.
Similar doubts. Strong FOMO vibes - 100% yes.
However, they are not pushing discounts to make more sales (and more total revenue), so they might be at least trying to keep the service profitable (not just take money and deadpool).
Still, that begs the question: do discount sales make more money in total compared to selling fewer plans at regular price.
Another thing I've noticed is that they have been announcing this since their previous black friday sale - along the lines that they might make another sale for this black Friday, but that would probably be it.
Regarding alternatives:
Upload speed and application's sync option are way ahead of what I've experienced with Pcloud's encrypted option (though yes, Pcloud supports rclone so that is a good fix - but less beginner drag&drop friendly).
Also, Pcloud is selling lifetime deals at a discount every few months - that does not sound sustainable unless there is a catch - unless I'm missing something.
Risky either way.
🔧 BikeGremlin guides & resources