I just got an interesting business-to-business market analysis by e-mail that I wanted to share with my friend Jim who specializes in online marketing. I forwarded the document and one minute later, I got a bounce - the document at just over 13.5MB was bigger than whatever limit his ISP had set on its e-mail accounts.

I dropped Jim a note asking whether he had a Gmail account or did he want to pick it up from my FTP server? His response was "http://www.yousendit.com/."

YouSendIt is a clever service that allows you to upload a file as big as 100MB to YouSendIt's server via a Web form (with optional SLL protection) along with the recipient's e-mail address and an optional text message. Once the upload is complete, the recipient receives an e-mail message with your text and a URL for downloading the file and you get a notification with the same details.

You can use YouSendIt for free without registering which allows the files to be stored for up to 7 days. Up to 25 downloads are allowed in any 7-day period.

Once you do sign up (also free) you additionally get an Inbox folder and a Sent Items folder as well as a Contact List. Free accounts are funded by on-site advertising, although the current beta version appears to forgo advertising at present.

YouSendIt also offers subscriptions (from $4.99 to $29.99 per month) that allow users to increase the size of file transfers (as large as 2GB), increase the number of days files are held for (a maximum of 14 days for all subscriptions), track file downloads, remove advertising, and allow your branding to be used on all of your content Web download pages and notification e-mail generated by YouSendIt.

For more information see the FAQ.

Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, columnist and blogger.