[Adriano Blanaru]

Hi Bryan,

I’m a product manager at Hightail, working directly on Hightail Spaces since it started, and I wanted to address your comments / concerns (sorry it took us so long to see this thread!)

About the infrastructure, there are actually two pieces of good news on this front: First, the server infrastructure for Spaces is completely different than the one for “classic” Hightail. It currently runs on Amazon Web Services, which is pretty much the standard in the industry these days. Second, as for the speed issues around “classic” Hightail, we are actually in the process of revamping most of the storage and delivery infrastructure. The work done over the past few months has significantly improved speeds in some regions and, in the next few weeks, we should be seeing major improvements across the board.

About the need to create a free account to view files, that’s partially true. Files can be viewed without creating an account or logging in – you only need an account to comment or download. There are two points that I’d like to make about this:
– First, since this is a product focused on collaboration/feedback vs. simple file delivery (even though you can use it to deliver the files as well), the decision to require signup was to make sure that the people were properly identified so that the interactions had all the context needed to be valuable.
– That said, we’ve been hearing the same concern around forcing clients to create accounts from other creative professionals as well, and it is becoming clear that we will have to try to find another solution that reduces the barrier for clients while maintaining value of the interactions.

I hope this addresses some of your concerns. Feel free to reach out if you have any other comments or questions, and please stop by to check the features released last week – Hightail Spaces is looking better and better, and we’re moving fast 🙂

Cheers,
Adriano