Status Update – February 2025
Introduction
Hello Filen Community!
It’s been a busy few months since our last announcements, and we’re excited to share what’s been happening behind the scenes and what’s coming up next. In this February 2025 status update, we’ll be covering our ongoing survey and giveaway, the mobile app overhaul, important changes to our invoicing system, progress on our infrastructure investments, a new hiring push, our most recent transfer speed survey, the upcoming beta testing program, insights from our YouTube poll, and news about our soon-to-be-launched newsletter. Let’s dive in!
Table of Contents
- Survey & Giveaway
- Mobile App Overhaul
- Upcoming Invoice System Changes
- Infrastructure Investments
- We Are Hiring Again
- Transfer Speed Survey Results
- New Beta Testing Program
- YouTube Content Feedback
- Newsletter Launch
- A Final Word
Survey & Giveaway
Our current survey, which began as a way to gather more detailed feedback about your experience using Filen, has now reached Day 27. A huge thank you to everyone who has already participated—your input is helping us shape Filen’s future. Alongside the survey, we launched an exciting giveaway to show our appreciation.
Just a heads-up: the giveaway will close in 3 days, so if you haven’t participated yet, this is your final call. We can’t wait to review all your feedback and announce the giveaway winners soon.
Some points from the feedback are already addressed in this status update. These are the current preliminary results.
Mobile App Overhaul
Ever since we unveiled plans for a major mobile app update back in our previous status posts, our team has been focused on developing a seamless and more intuitive experience. We have officially begun full-scale development on the new mobile update, addressing a lot of the feedback and bug reports from our community. Your bug submissions and suggestions have been invaluable, and we’re grateful for the patience and support you’ve shown as we work to enhance every aspect of the mobile experience. Stay tuned for sneak peeks and beta opportunities as we progress!
A special shoutout to everyone who sent us such detailed reports and helpful feedback!
Upcoming Invoice System Changes
A change that we’ve been hinting at in our recent posts:
We’re updating our invoice system so it will no longer be optional to provide your country of residence. This is necessary so that we can automatically add the correct country-specific tax in compliance with international regulations. While we know providing one more piece of information can be an extra step, this ensures we stay transparent, consistent, and compliant with global tax requirements.
Specifying a country will be the only mandatory information you have to provide. We appreciate your understanding and will provide a detailed FAQ in the coming weeks to answer any questions you might have.
The changes are likely to take effect at the end of the month.
Infrastructure Investments
As many of you may recall from our August and December updates, we’ve been heavily investing in new hardware and data center expansions. The main, time-consuming tasks have now been completed, from initial foundation work to crucial server configurations. We are still waiting on a few remaining parts and experiencing minor construction delays, but we’re thrilled to report that the bulk of the hard work is finished. Once the final pieces are in place, you’ll notice even better performance and more room for growth in the Filen ecosystem.
We Are Hiring Again
We’ve concluded that in order to keep pushing Filen forward at the pace our community deserves, we need to expand our IT department once more. This time, our first stop is right here with our Filen community—who better to join us than people who already know (and love!) our platform?
For this round of hiring, German language skills will be essential so that communication with the entire team remains smooth. We’ll soon be posting all the details, including a simplified hiring form, to encourage talented folks to apply without the usual pile of paperwork. Keep an eye on our blog for the official job listings.
Transfer Speed Survey Results
A few weeks ago, we had asked for your help in evaluating your real vs. perceived upload and download speeds by completing a short survey. We now share the results and see many useful insights that drive further optimizations in our infrastructure and data routing, ensuring you get the fastest possible transfers on the Filen platform.
The first thing we thought might be interesting is the demographics of our user base. In this list, you can find the percentages of where our users are accessing the service from—or rather, where they have stated they are from.
This list was not generated through electronic tracking but solely based on the responses of users who participated in the short transfer speed survey.
| Country | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Germany | 15,5% |
| United States | 10,6% |
| United Kingdom | 5,8% |
| Canada | 4,7% |
| India | 4,6% |
| Italy | 4,4% |
| France | 3,3% |
| The Netherlands | 3,1% |
| Japan | 2,7% |
| Brazil | 2,7% |
| Spain | 2,6% |
| Poland | 2,4% |
| Czechia | 2,3% |
| Switzerland | 1,9% |
| Australia | 1,7% |
| Portugal | 1,7% |
| Hungary | 1,6% |
| Singapore | 1,6% |
| Sweden | 1,5% |
| Austria | 1,4% |
| Philippines | 1,4% |
| Hong Kong | 1,3% |
| Finland | 1,2% |
| Serbia | 1,1% |
| Taiwan | 1,1% |
| Mexico | 1,0% |
| Norway | 0,9% |
| South Korea | 0,9% |
| Slovakia | 0,9% |
| Denmark | 0,9% |
| Belgium | 0,8% |
| Bangladesh | 0,8% |
| Colombia | 0,7% |
| Greece | 0,7% |
| Bulgaria | 0,7% |
| Ukraine | 0,6% |
| Peru | 0,6% |
| Indonesia | 0,6% |
| New Zealand | 0,6% |
| Croatia | 0,5% |
| Estonia | 0,5% |
| Thailand | 0,5% |
| Vietnam | 0,5% |
| Georgia | 0,4% |
| Romania | 0,4% |
| Lithuania | 0,4% |
| Malaysia | 0,4% |
| Israel | 0,4% |
| Türkiye | 0,4% |
| South Africa | 0,3% |
| Slovenia | 0,3% |
| Luxembourg | 0,3% |
| Chile | 0,3% |
| Nepal | 0,2% |
| Sri Lanka | 0,2% |
| Russia | 0,2% |
| Bahrain | 0,2% |
| Puerto Rico | 0,2% |
| Egypt | 0,2% |
| Iraq | 0,1% |
| Tajikistan | 0,1% |
| Saint Pierre and Miquelon | 0,1% |
| Panama | 0,1% |
| Saudi Arabia | 0,1% |
| Bolivia | 0,1% |
| Belize | 0,1% |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 0,1% |
| Morocco | 0,1% |
| Cyprus | 0,1% |
| Kenya | 0,1% |
But aside from that, here are our results. They are arranged in a space-saving manner, which is why the question is included in the diagram.
Disclaimer: We measure transfer speeds in MB/s (Megabytes per second), not Mbps (Megabits per second) like most internet providers use. Since 1 MB/s = 8 Mbps, the numbers here may look lower than what your ISP advertises—but they show actual file transfer performance, not inflated figures.
We can interpret quite a bit from these results. Of course, the overlap of users who participated in the short survey about our transfer speeds (especially due to the lack of a giveaway) is significantly smaller than in our regular surveys, not to mention our actual user base. Additionally, it is more likely that users who have particularly negative or positive opinions are more inclined to take part in such a survey. Therefore, please take these results with a grain of caution.
Also, a quick reminder: we do not throttle bandwidth per user, and free users receive the same bandwidth as premium users as long as our servers are operating under normal load. This is usually the case, except during events like Black Friday, maintenance periods, or major marketing campaigns.
If you're considering purchasing a Pro plan, it’s always worth testing with a free account first to see if you're satisfied with the transfer speeds. Since all our servers are located exclusively in Germany to ensure maximum data protection and quality, transfer speeds are naturally influenced by your connection and distance to Germany. Additionally, VPN services and other third-party platforms can also have a significant impact on performance.
New Beta Testing Program
Some of you may have spotted our beta testing program application form that went live not too long ago. We are incredibly thankful for the overwhelming response! We’ve let the application window stay open for a while, and now it’s time to start the sorting process.
If you haven’t heard from us yet, don’t worry—we’re just getting started on reviewing all applications. We’ll be in touch soon with the next steps for those who applied, so keep an eye on your inbox if you’re eager to be part of the beta squad.
YouTube Content Feedback
At Filen, we always aim to improve how we communicate our features and products. That’s why, in our latest survey, we asked you:
“We will create short videos on YouTube to visually explain our products and features. Which formats would you personally prefer?”
The results are in, and here’s what you had to say!
Let's call this a "close result." For now, we've decided to start with the simplest approach and then adjust based on the type of video. Short, basic tutorials for individual features will be text-based. This way, we can save time and produce more content, ensuring that, ideally, every feature will eventually have a video tutorial explaining how it works.
For videos that are not tutorials, we will venture into narrated videos. If the content is informational or important, we will provide native English voiceovers. However, for behind-the-scenes insights where we, as employees, appear on camera, we will conveniently "narrate" them ourselves.
Newsletter Launch
We’re pleased to announce that our long-awaited newsletter system is finally in the works. This new Newsletter will be integrated directly into the blog, allowing our marketing team to manage everything without draining developer resources or outsourcing to an external provider. Everything will run through our own secure database. Very soon, you’ll be able to sign up for two different newsletter categories:
- Sales, product updates, and important news
- All blog posts and general info
We’re excited to connect with you more directly and keep you up to date on all things Filen through this new channel.
We will share more details in a separate announcement once the project is complete.
A Final Word
As we continue refining and expanding Filen, we remain immensely grateful for your support, patience, and active participation in making the platform better. Your surveys, bug reports, and community spirit keep us pushing boundaries and striving for excellence. Keep those eyes on the blog for more announcements, and don’t forget—if you haven’t entered our survey giveaway yet, it closes in just a few days!
Thank you for reading, and here’s to a fantastic February!
– The Filen Team