We’ve all done it. The contract is ready, the client’s waiting, and the path of least resistance is to attach the PDF and hit send. Or drop it into WeTransfer, paste the link into an email, and tell yourself the seven-day expiry counts as security.
Email and WeTransfer are excellent at what they were built for. Email is the universal messaging layer. WeTransfer is the gold standard for getting a 4GB file to someone without asking them to install anything. But neither was designed to be a client portal, and the seams show quickly once you try to use them like one.
Send-and-forget isn’t a relationship
Both email and WeTransfer are transfer mechanisms. You hand a file over and that’s the end of the transaction. The recipient has it (or doesn’t), they can do what they like with it (or can’t find it), and you have no further visibility.
A client relationship doesn’t work like that. Documents get added over time, old versions need to be retired, and the client needs somewhere they can come back to next month to find what you sent them. You can approximate this with a long email thread, but you’re effectively asking your client to use their inbox as a filing system. Most won’t.
What you can’t do once you’ve hit send
Once an email leaves your Sent folder or a WeTransfer link is generated, you’ve given up control. You can’t:
- See whether the document was opened
- Revoke access if you sent it to the wrong person
- Replace it with a corrected version everyone will see
- Stop it being forwarded
- Tell whether it’s now sitting in someone’s Downloads folder forever
WeTransfer’s seven-day expiry is the closest thing on offer to revocation, and it’s blunt: the link works for everyone for seven days, then it works for nobody.
WeTransfer’s specific problems
WeTransfer is brilliant for sending a single large file to one person once. Try to use it as a portal and three issues surface quickly.
The expiry is too short for documents people might need months later, and too long for anything genuinely sensitive. Every new document means a new transfer, a new email, a new link — there’s no library your client can return to. And the experience is WeTransfer’s, not yours: their background, their branding, their layout. Fine for a designer sending mockups; not fine for a solicitor sending a settlement agreement.
Email’s specific problems
Email amplifies the worst-case scenarios. Attachment size limits push you into “have a look at this WeTransfer link” workarounds. Reply All goes to the whole chain. The same document gets re-sent four times across a project until nobody knows which version is current. And every copy of that attachment now lives on every device, every server, and every backup that the message touched.
For a meeting agenda, that’s fine. For anything containing personal data — tax returns, contracts, HR documents, financial statements — it’s a quiet compliance problem most people prefer not to think about.
What a purpose-built portal does differently
Sharedocs is built for the scenario where the same client needs different documents from you over time, and you want to know what’s happening with them.
One place, not many emails. Your client’s library has every document you’ve ever shared with them. No more “could you resend that contract from August?” — it’s still there.
You see who opened what. Every view and download is logged with a timestamp and IP address. The audit trail exists whether you ever need it or not.
Access is revocable. Wrong client, wrong document, contractor’s engagement ended? Revoke their invitation and the link stops working immediately. No recalling an email and hoping for the best.
It looks like yours, not WeTransfer’s. Your logo, your colours, your domain on the Business tier. The client experience is your brand, not someone else’s.
When email and WeTransfer are still the right tools
This isn’t a campaign to replace email. Use it for:
- Conversation, not document storage
- Low-stakes attachments — agendas, programmes, public PDFs
- The notification that there’s a new document waiting in the portal
WeTransfer is still the right call for sending a single very large file to a one-off recipient who isn’t going to become an ongoing client. Different tools, different jobs.
If you’re currently using Dropbox or Google Drive as your client-facing layer, that’s a different set of tradeoffs worth reading about.
The cost picture
WeTransfer Pro is around £10/month per user. A business email account is whatever you’re already paying. Neither of those costs disappears when you add Sharedocs — but Sharedocs Personal is £2.99/month, Professional is £6.99/month, and only the library owner pays. Your clients access for free, regardless of how many of them you have.
If you currently send anything sensitive by email or paid WeTransfer link to clients, the maths usually works out in favour of moving the document-delivery part to a portal and leaving the conversation in email where it belongs. See the full pricing breakdown — only the library owner pays, so your clients are always free.
For a full walkthrough of access modes and audit logging, see how to share documents securely with clients.