FileDroppr documentation

Share a PDF as a link

The starting point for everything in FileDroppr is turning a PDF into a shareable link. Drop a PDF onto the homepage and you immediately get a clean filedroppr.com/<id> link you can send by email, message, or anywhere a link goes. There's no account required just to try it, and the recipient opens the document straight in their browser - no app, no download, no sign-up on their end.

When you create a free account, every link you make is saved to your library with its view count and expiry at a glance, and one click opens the full readership report for that document. Uploads are PDF, streamed straight to encrypted storage.

Secure, encrypted links

Every file you upload is encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM, and every link is served over HTTPS. Your documents aren't sitting on a server as plain files - they're encrypted with a per-user key, and the decrypted bytes are only ever streamed to someone who has the link (and the password, if you set one).

Anonymous uploads - the ones you make before signing in - are private to you: only the session that uploaded them can preview them, and they become a shareable, tracked document once you claim them into an account. Nothing is public by accident.

Link expiry

A shared document shouldn't live forever. Every FileDroppr link can be set to expire - after an hour, 12 hours, a day, 7 days, 30 days, a year, or (on Pro) never. When a link expires, the document is refused immediately and the encrypted file is swept off disk shortly after, so there's nothing left to leak.

How far out you can set expiry depends on your plan: Free links last up to 7 days, Basic up to a year, and Pro adds never-expiring links. See the pricing page for the full breakdown.

Password protection

For sensitive documents - contracts, decks, anything you don't want forwarded freely - you can require a password before the file opens. The reader enters it once and the password never appears in the link itself, so sharing the link and sharing the password are two separate acts you control. Password protection is available on Basic and Pro plans.

Download control

Sometimes you want people to read a document, not keep a copy of it. Toggle downloads off and readers view the PDF in their browser without a download button - useful for proposals, pre-release material, or anything you'd rather not have floating around as a saved file. Leave it on when you do want recipients to grab a copy.

Viewer modes

FileDroppr renders your PDF in a polished in-browser viewer, and you choose how it reads:

• Standard - a clean vertical scroll, the familiar way to read a document.
• Flipbook - page-turning spreads, ideal for brochures and magazines.
• Swipe - one page at a time, built for phones and quick decks.
• Magazine - two-page spreads for a print-style layout.

The viewer is the same surface that powers the readership tracking, so the way your document looks and the way it's measured stay in sync.

QR codes

Every share link comes with a QR code you can view and download as a PNG. Drop it on a poster, a business card, a slide, or a printed handout, and anyone who scans it opens your tracked document - so even an offline touchpoint feeds back into your readership analytics.

Embedding documents

Need the document inside a page rather than behind a link? FileDroppr gives you an embed for each file, so you can drop the tracked viewer straight into a website, landing page, or knowledge base. The WordPress plugin adds a shortcode for the same thing. Embedded views are tracked just like direct link views.

Readership analytics

This is the heart of FileDroppr. A view count tells you almost nothing; readership tells you whether your document actually landed. Here's everything you can see about how a document is read. For a hands-on walkthrough, see the guide on how to see who read your PDF.

Who read it & returning readers

See each read as it happens and tell returning readers apart from new ones - so you know when the same person came back to a proposal three times before replying. Readers are identified by a stable pseudonymous ID, never by a stored address (more on that under privacy).

Per-page reading & time on page

Go beyond "they opened it" to "they read pages 1-4 and spent two minutes on the pricing page." Per-page analytics show exactly which pages held attention and which got skipped.

Read-through funnel

The read-through funnel shows how far readers get through a document, page by page - where attention drops off and how many made it to the end. It's the single most useful view for improving a deck. Read what a read-through funnel is and why it beats a view count.

Countries, sources & devices

See which countries reads came from, how readers arrived (referrer and source), which browsers and devices they used, and which viewer mode they read in - breakdowns that help you understand your audience without identifying individuals.

Peak times & live presence

Find the times of day your documents actually get read, and - on Pro - watch live presence to see who's reading a document right now, which is oddly satisfying the moment after you hit send.

Reader identities & the email gate

On Pro, drill into individual reader sessions, and optionally turn on an email gate that asks readers to enter an email before the document opens - so a pseudonymous reader becomes a name, but only because they chose to share it, not because you harvested it.

View notifications & CSV export

Get an email the moment a document is opened (Basic and up, throttled so you're not spammed), and export your readership data to CSV for your own analysis (Pro). A portfolio overview rolls every document's activity into one dashboard.

Privacy & security

FileDroppr is built so you get readership insight without taking on a pile of personal data. The defining choice: reader IP addresses are never stored. Each reader's address is run through a salted one-way hash to produce a stable pseudonymous ID (Reader #214), and the address itself is discarded - country is resolved in-flight and the IP is gone. You can recognise a returning reader without ever holding the data that turns them into a person on a map. The full reasoning is in how to share a PDF without storing reader IP addresses.

On top of that: files are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM, links expire and are swept from disk, and readership is measured first-party inside the FileDroppr viewer - there are no third-party tracking scripts riding along on your document. See the privacy policy for the specifics. This is also why people switching from DocSend land here - DocSend stores IPs; FileDroppr doesn't.

Plans & what's included

Capturing readership is never gated - every document records full reads on every plan, so upgrading reveals history you already have. What changes is how much of it you can see and the link controls you get:

• Free - share tracked links, summary readership, links up to 7 days.
• Basic - trends, the read-through funnel, breakdowns and per-page stats, password protection, view notifications, and links up to a year.
• Pro - reader identities and sessions, live presence, the email gate, CSV export, and never-expiring links.

Full feature-by-plan detail is on the pricing page.

Integrations & API

FileDroppr works where you already work. Share tracked PDF links from WordPress, automate them across thousands of apps with Zapier, create them from any page with the browser extension, publish a design straight from Canva, or export a deck from Google Slides and Docs.

Building something custom? The developer API lets you upload a PDF and get a tracked link in a single call. Browse all integrations.

FAQ