A free plan can be the lowest cost choice for occasional deliveries. Usage billing suits work that comes and goes, while a subscription can make regular delivery costs more predictable. Compare billable downloads, retention and required features, rather than counting links alone.
Before buying another subscription, write down what you actually send in a quiet month and a busy one. A photographer delivering one collection and an editor distributing daily footage have different needs. The useful comparison is the total cost of completing those jobs.
Are you paying per transfer or per downloaded gigabyte?
These are different models. A fixed fee for one transfer is not the same as a charge for each gigabyte delivered. With usage billing, several recipients or repeat downloads can make the billable volume larger than the original collection.
MASV provides a real usage based example. Its On Demand pricing lists 15 GB free each month, then $0.25 per GB. Its billing guidance says data leaving the platform counts towards usage. The examples below use its advertised GB units, one complete download per delivery and no extended storage. Figures are USD, before tax, checked on 1 November 2026.
What do occasional and regular deliveries cost?
Here are three calculated scenarios, not measured customer bills. HeftySend prices come from the current plan page. The services are not identical, so check your required workflow before choosing by price.
- One 10 GB delivery in a month. MASV On Demand: $0 within its 15 GB allowance. HeftySend Free: $0 if three days is enough.
- One 100 GB delivery in a month. MASV On Demand: 85 × $0.25 = $21.25. HeftySend Free: $0 if three days is enough.
- Ten 50 GB deliveries in a month. MASV On Demand: 485 × $0.25 = $121.25. HeftySend Premium: $9 for the month when longer expiry or custom pages are needed.
HeftySend Free supports up to 100 GB per transfer with three day expiry. Frequent sending alone does not mean you need Premium: if each delivery fits Free and recipients collect it in time, start there. Premium adds up to 1 TB per transfer and expiry up to 365 days with included storage. It costs $9 per month.
HeftySend does not charge for bandwidth usage. Supported media and PDF previews help recipients see what they are collecting. Those benefits are useful before you need a paid plan, too.
When does a monthly subscription make sense?
Choose a subscription when its features solve a recurring problem at a cost you can justify. A client who needs a month to collect files, or a studio that wants a consistent delivery page, has a clearer reason to pay than someone sending one small folder.
HeftySend Premium and Ultra are monthly subscriptions, not payments for individual transfers. Ultra costs $39 per month and supports up to 4 TB per transfer with unlimited expiry using included storage. Custom download pages are paid features. Check download page customisation if presentation is part of your client service.
Compare the commitment as well as the advertised monthly figure. MASV labels its subscription offer as annual, billed monthly with a 12 month commitment. A monthly payment does not always mean a contract you can end after one month. HeftySend Premium and Ultra can be cancelled at any time, with access continuing until the billing period ends.
How should you budget for a busy team?
Use the same workload for every quotation. Record the largest individual delivery, the number of deliveries, recipients per delivery, repeat collections, access period and any required integrations. Ask each provider which of those items affects its bill.
For a simple hypothetical service charging a fixed fee per transfer, multiply that fee by the number of paid transfers. For a service charging by delivered volume, subtract any applicable allowance from billable volume before applying the rate. Add storage, overages and other applicable fees separately. These are calculation methods, not claims that HeftySend offers either billing option.
Compare a quiet month, a normal month and a launch month. Then check the whole contract term. A lower rate is not a saving if you buy an allowance that expires unused. Equally, paying for a necessary integration can be worthwhile even when another service has a lower basic delivery price.
Does bringing your own storage remove all ongoing costs?
No. HeftySend Lifetime costs $99 once and requires your own S3 storage. Your provider can still charge for storage, requests or data delivery. Premium and Ultra also support your own storage, but connecting it does not make the provider free.
Keep this separate from the subscription comparison. Our own storage delivery cost guide covers that budget in detail. Our guide to unlimited file transfer explains why size, expiry and bandwidth are separate limits.
If you are considering a storage account, this AWS explanation gives background on data transfer charges. Start at the billing section around 10:02. It is an older technical explanation, not a current price quotation or a HeftySend demonstration.
Watch AWS explain data transfer billing from 10:02.
Frequently asked questions
Does paying monthly mean I can cancel after one month?
Not necessarily. Read the commitment and renewal terms. Monthly billing can be part of an annual contract.
Should I count uploaded size or downloaded size?
Use the quantity your provider bills. For download based billing, account for each recipient and repeat collection rather than only the source folder size.
Is a larger transfer limit a monthly allowance?
No. A limit per transfer describes an individual delivery. A monthly allowance describes usage over a billing period. Do not compare them as the same number.
Can I buy one HeftySend transfer?
The current choices are Free, Premium and Ultra subscriptions, or Lifetime access with your own storage. The pricing page does not list a separate purchase for one transfer.
Will cancelling preserve every existing link?
Do not assume that. Read what happens when your HeftySend plan expires before changing a plan that supports active deliveries. Keep your originals and agree collection deadlines.
Should I include tax and currency conversion?
Yes. Compare the amount payable in your billing currency, including applicable tax and payment charges. The examples above exclude those items.
Start with the smallest plan that handles your real delivery. HeftySend Free gives you media previews and up to 100 GB per transfer without HeftySend bandwidth charges; upgrade when you need the extra size, access period or custom page features.
Pricing and billing sources checked on 1 November 2026: HeftySend Pricing, MASV Pricing and MASV Help Centre, “How MASV charges for services”. Calculations are illustrative and exclude extended storage, taxes and other services.