Private Video Archive Hosting

A private video archive is the set of finished videos you want to keep, control, and hand out on your own terms — not publish to a public feed. Course lessons behind a paywall, members-only replays, internal training and all-hands recordings, client deliverables, past broadcasts you keep for subscribers: private video archive hosting is where those live after the recording is done. files.link is built for exactly this.

You bring the finished file, it stores the original untouched, and it gives you a permanent URL for the ones you share openly plus short-lived signed URLs for the ones that must stay members-only. It is not a public streaming platform or a social video host; it is durable video archive hosting for recordings you own.

Every file you upload can be public or private. A public file gets a permanent, CDN-backed link you can embed or post anywhere. A private file lives in a private bucket and is reachable only through a signed URL your backend mints per viewer — the link expires after about ten minutes, so a members-only replay stops resolving once the access window closes and cannot be re-shared indefinitely.

That split is the whole point of a private video archive: keep the trailer public, keep the full course private, and serve both from the same permanent storage.

The upload path is a scriptable three-call REST flow: POST /v1/files/{folderId} returns a presigned url and an id, you PUT the video bytes straight to storage, then POST /v1/files/confirm-upload with {ids:[...]}. Auth is your raw API key, so a post-render hook can push every new recording into the archive the moment encoding finishes — no manual upload step.

This is who it is for: creators with a members-only library, course and cohort platforms, webinar and event teams, and anyone migrating off a temporary host or an expiring video link who needs a permanent home instead. You export the file from wherever it lives today and upload it here; files.link does not pull, scrape, or import from any platform on your behalf.

The reason to move a video archive off the streaming platform is cost and permanence. Twitch and most live platforms expire VODs within weeks; a copy here stays until you delete it. Per-minute video products (Mux-style) meter every minute stored and every minute delivered, which punishes a deep long-tail library — the exact thing a video archive becomes over time. files.link bills prepaid credits against storage and bandwidth with no per-minute meter, and replays stream from a nearby CDN edge.

Keep this month's busy replays on the standard tier for instant playback, then move rarely-watched back catalog to the cold storage tier (note its minimum retention) to shrink the bill on archives nobody is actively watching. For the general at-rest framing, VOD archive storage covers the same job; for the broadcast-retention angle see live stream archive, stream archive hosting, and live stream replay storage; and if you are leaving a quick social host, the Streamable alternative page compares that move directly.

On billing, the reassuring part: your files do not vanish if a payment hiccups. files.link uses prepaid credits deducted daily as you use storage and bandwidth, and when your balance runs low it auto-recharges from your saved card (stepping up to a $100 cap). If an auto-recharge does not go through, your files and links stay put — you simply update your payment method or top up manually to keep going.

A failed top-up is a billing event to fix, not a data-loss event, so a private archive your members rely on does not disappear the moment a card expires.

A word on scope and honesty. files.link is neutral storage infrastructure for recordings you own or are authorized to keep — your own videos, your team's events, courses and talks you hold the rights to. It is not the old StreamArchive-style scraper that grabbed other broadcasters' deleted VODs without consent, it has no connection to any third-party streamarchive or CastCache service, and it never pulls, records, or transcodes streams on your behalf.

It is a storage-and-delivery layer, not a player or an encoder: for adaptive quality switching, transcode to HLS/DASH with ffmpeg first and upload the segments as ordinary files; for a single progressive MP4, upload it once and embed the URL. You export the finished file yourself; files.link gives that authorized private video archive a permanent, CDN-backed home with signed access for the parts that stay private.