Hightail in 2026: what is left of the free plan, and what to use instead

Hightail has not been discontinued. At the time of writing (October 2026), hightail.com is live under the name "Hightail by OpenText", it still offers a free plan called Lite, and it still sells Pro, Teams and Business subscriptions. But the free plan is small, at 100 MB per file, and the product has shifted from simple file sending toward creative review and approval. If you came here because Hightail's free tier no longer covers what you send, the short answer is that most free alternatives, including a live browser-to-browser transfer, handle far larger files without an account.

A short history, because it explains the product

Hightail started life as YouSendIt, one of the first services that let you email a link instead of an attachment. It renamed itself Hightail and broadened into collaboration: shared spaces, comments pinned to exact points in an image or video, version history and approval workflows. OpenText, the Canadian enterprise software company, announced its acquisition in February 2018 and said at the time that existing Pro, Teams and Business accounts would continue unchanged. Hightail's homepage today still carries OpenText branding throughout and pitches integrations with other OpenText products such as Documentum and Core alongside Adobe Creative Cloud, Dropbox and OneDrive.

That history matters because it tells you who Hightail is now built for: agencies and in-house creative teams who send work to clients and need feedback on it. Sending a large file to a friend is something it still does, but no longer what it is optimised for.

What Hightail costs and includes today

These figures come from Hightail's pricing page at the time of writing. Annual prices are per month, billed yearly; the page's FAQ lists monthly billing at about 20% more.

Two details are easy to miss. First, password protection and delivery notifications are Pro features, not Lite ones. Second, the Lite plan's "file retention: 180 days" means files in a free account do not stay forever. If you have an old Hightail or YouSendIt account with files you care about, sign in and download them.

What 100 MB actually holds

A 100 MB per-file limit sounds reasonable until you look at what people typically send. Some rough reference points:

The limit is per file, so you cannot get around it by zipping several files together; that only makes the single file bigger. In practice, Lite works for documents and individual images, and almost nothing involving video. That is a deliberate nudge toward Pro, whose 25 GB per-file limit covers most professional work short of raw footage.

Who Hightail is still a good fit for

It would be wrong to dismiss Hightail because the free tier is small. Its paid plans do things that pure transfer tools do not:

• Precise feedback on creative work. Reviewers can comment on a specific spot in an image, PDF or video frame. For a designer collecting client changes, this replaces long email threads of "the logo on page 3, a bit to the left".
• Version control and approvals. Teams plans track versions so everyone comments on the latest file.
• Adobe plugins. Hightail lists Photoshop and Illustrator plugins, even on the free plan, so designers can share from inside the app.
• Enterprise context. Organisations already using OpenText products may value the integrations and a single vendor.

If those features are what you use, and especially if your clients are already used to reviewing work inside Hightail, the honest recommendation is to stay, or to compare Hightail against other review-and-approval tools rather than against free transfer services.

Replacing Hightail: match the tool to the job

Most people who search for a Hightail alternative are using it for one of four jobs. Each has a different best replacement.

Job 1: sending a file over 100 MB, occasionally, for free

This is where Lite falls shortest. A 4K phone video of a few minutes or a batch of RAW photos will exceed 100 MB. Your free options:

• A no-account cloud transfer link such as WeTransfer, TransferNow or pCloud Transfer, if the recipient will download later. Limits differ, so check our comparisons of TransferNow and pCloud Transfer.
• A live peer-to-peer transfer, if the recipient can receive it now. TransferFiles.net sets no size cap, needs no account on either side, and does not upload the file to a server: it streams directly between the two browsers, encrypted with DTLS. On restrictive networks the encrypted stream may be relayed through a TURN server that cannot read it. The catch is that both tabs must stay open until it finishes, and there is no resume if the connection drops.

Job 2: sending to clients who download on their own schedule

You need a link that works while you are offline, ideally with a password and a notification when it is downloaded. A paid transfer plan from any of the established services, Hightail Pro included, covers this. Free tiers cover it too, minus some tracking features. A peer-to-peer tool does not fit this job, because there is no link that works after you close the tab. Our guide on sending large files to clients goes through the options.

Job 3: collecting feedback and approvals

Transfer services do not replace this. Look at dedicated creative review tools, or keep Hightail Teams. Moving to a pure transfer service here will simply push the feedback back into email.

Job 4: storage you can share from

If you used your Hightail account as a place to keep files and share links, a general cloud drive such as Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive is the natural replacement, and most offer more free storage than Lite's 2 GB. See our Google Drive comparison for the trade-offs.

Checklist if you are leaving Hightail

1. Sign in and download anything you want to keep. Free-account file retention is 180 days according to the pricing page.
2. Note which features you actually used: plain sending, password links, delivery receipts, comments, or storage.
3. If you are on a paid plan, cancel before the next renewal date (annual plans renew for a full year), and keep the confirmation.
4. Update any saved links in proposals, websites or email signatures that point to Hightail spaces.
5. Tell regular clients how you will send files from now on, so a new sender address or link format is not mistaken for spam.

How TransferFiles.net compares, briefly

The two overlap only on the simplest task: getting a file from one person to another. For that task, when both people are online, a direct transfer removes the size problem entirely. For everything else Hightail does, it is a different kind of tool. Our comparison hub lists the other services we have reviewed.

Sources

• Hightail by OpenText: homepage
• Hightail: pricing and plan FAQ
• Hightail blog: Hightail is now OpenText (2018)