What's in Pro, and why we charge for it
tapeshelf.com has two plans, Free and Pro. Free is a full account: you can upload, share, request and trade without paying anything. Pro gives you more room and downloads without limits, keeps deleted videos longer, and adds the video editor, a page you can hide and passwords on temporary links. Here’s what differs, what it costs and why we charge at all.
Free and Pro side by side
| Free | Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| One video | up to 1 GB | up to 5 GB |
| Shelf | 20 GB | 200 GB |
| Downloads | 10 a month, up to 1 MB/s, one at a time | no limits, full speed |
| Deleted videos kept | 30 days | 90 days |
| Video editor | — | included |
| Hidden page | — | included |
| Password on temporary links | — | included |
| Price | free | €9.99 a month or €59.99 a year |
Downloads
Anyone signed in can download a video they hold (uploaded, received in a share or a trade, or bookmarked) and any public video. On Free:
- you get 10 downloads per calendar month, counted in UTC;
- your own uploads never count, videos from others do;
- the same video again within an hour doesn’t count twice, so a dropped connection costs nothing;
- the speed is up to 1 MB/s, one download at a time;
- each download starts on a short page that counts down five seconds and shows what’s left and when the count resets.
On Pro a download starts right away, at full speed, and nothing is counted.
Without an account you can download only from a temporary link someone sent you, or what you received as a guest in an exchange, for a week after it. Temporary links download at full speed and outside the monthly 10, whatever the plan.
Deleted videos
A video you uploaded and then deleted disappears from every shelf at once and moves to Deleted in your library. You can bring it back from there for 30 days on Free or 90 on Pro, if your shelf has room. You can also let it go sooner by deleting it from there or emptying Deleted, and then it can’t be brought back. Deleting a video you received only takes it off your shelf; it stays with its author and everyone else.
The extra tools
Video editor. Crop to any shape, cut pieces out, blur or cover part of the picture, add timers and captions, change the sound, all on the videos you uploaded. Open a video and press Edit video. The editor post has examples you can try.
Hidden page. In Settings → My page you can hide your page. Your shelf and your lists then open only for you, and everyone else gets “not found”. Videos you already gave people stay with them.
Passwords on temporary links. Temporary links are for everyone: a link to one or more videos that works for an hour, a day, 2 days, 3 days or a week, and on any plan it can be limited to one person by email. Pro adds a password, so only people who know it can watch and download.
What stays the same
Pro doesn’t change how tapeshelf works between people. Watching, requests, trades, exchange links, temporary links, friends and messages work the same on both plans, Free and Pro accounts trade with each other on equal terms, and the daily request limit is the same. On either plan, videos you receive take none of your storage. Pro accounts get a small Pro badge next to their name on the shelf.
Price and payment
Pro costs €9.99 a month or €59.99 a year; the yearly price is 50% (€59.89) less than twelve monthly payments. Prices include VAT. Orders go through Paddle.com, our reseller and merchant of record: Paddle takes the payment, handles the tax and sends the receipts.
To get Pro, use Upgrade to Pro in the account menu, or start from the pricing page. Worth knowing up front:
- There’s no trial. Pro turns on as soon as the first payment goes through. Free is how you try tapeshelf.
- You can cancel any time in Settings → Plan, which takes you to Paddle’s customer portal. Pro stays until the end of the period you paid for, then the account goes back to Free.
- If a renewal payment fails, Pro stays on for up to seven days while the payment is retried. After that the account is on Free until the payment goes through.
When Pro ends, nothing is deleted. Your videos stay on your shelf, playable and tradeable. If your shelf holds more than the Free 20 GB, new uploads wait until you’re back under it. Deleted videos follow the 30-day Free window, and a hidden page becomes visible to everyone again; the reminder before Pro ends tells you so.
Why we charge
Storage and bandwidth cost real money, and video eats both. Each video takes roughly twice its size on disk once its encrypted streaming copy, frames and previews are made. Free downloads stream through our own servers, and the editor renders every edit on them too.
The usual ways to cover that without charging users are ads or selling what you know about people. We do neither. tapeshelf shows no ads, doesn’t sell your data or build advertising profiles, and the analytics on this site set no cookies. So the bills are paid by people who want more room, faster downloads or the extra tools, and Free stays a real account for everyone else.
Self-hosting stays free
tapeshelf is open source under the AGPL-3.0, and the open-source version has everything in it. Once it’s published, your own server will have no plans, no payments and no limits unless you set them, and the editor, the hidden page and link passwords will be there for everyone. More in Running your own tapeshelf.
For questions about Pro or billing, see the FAQ, open a support ticket from the account menu, or write to contact@tapeshelf.com.