In this post, I will write my experience using Rethink software (previously known as Publist) for cloud storage and file sharing. I came to know about Publist through one of the Facebook groups. This group focuses on deals for SAAS or Software As A Service subscriptions. Around October last year 2019: Publist was available as a lifetime deal on a site called Pitchground. Pitchground a deal aggregator similar to AppSumo or Dealify or Stacksocial or Saasmantra. Incidentally, Rethink is now available on Stack Social as a lifetime deal, but we will talk about that later.Update February 2022: As on 31 January 2022, the Rethink (formerly Publist) service has shut down. This post is retained here for archival purposes.
October 2019:The Original
deal from Pitchground
I purchased a 500 gigabyte subscription for US $69. My original plan was to get connect different cloud storage devices to Publist account. Rethink maintain an exhaustive list of current and planned apps that can connect to their service. Majority of them are also Cloud Storage and File Sharing services. While some of the major ones (such as Google Drive, Dropbox, PCloud) can already be connected, many are shown as work in progress. I will post screenshots below of the currently available connections and or integrations.
Note that at present there is an option using SFTP or Secure File Transfer Protocol. This is helpful to connect to Linux machines or Virtual Private Servers, in addition to web hosting which allow SFTP access. Very few cloud storage and file sharing services allow such integrations. I had joined their Facebook Group. As of the time of writing this post, I am no longer a member of that group. I left it because of my disappointment with interactions in the group. In the meantime, they were able to raise some funds. This means they would stick around for a while longer. I also received coupons for add on storage from them.
After the Rethink deal on Pitchground ended, they offered a separate Lifetime deal on Stacksocial. This new deal a higher storage plan at a cheaper price, and caused some hue and cry. I believe the additional 500 odd GB storage I received was a result of this. Right now, I’m at 1.2 terabytes of storage for that the original price I had paid back in October.
Video streaming through Rethink
January 2020: Locking Myself Out
Here comes the twist in the story: around December or January, Publist re-branded themselves as Rethink.software. Ironically, around that time, I also changed the email address associated with this particular account. And in the process, I ended up locking myself out. Ridiculous as it may sound, I was not even able to reset my password. The issue was that the email associated with my account is not compatible with their account management system (as I learned yesterday). To cut a long story short, I had created an email address, say [email protected]. I had experienced this issue with 10web and WP Bubble before, so this is not an issue limited to Rethink. This method of setting up emails, also known as ‘aliases’ is not supported by rethink software’s account management system. For over 3 month I was literally locked out. Since first week of March, I tried reaching out to Rethink several times. First I sent them a message through the Contact Form on their website. Next, wrote to them through the customer chat option. The third time around, who is no longer associated with Rethink wrote back when I reached out to them through Facebook Messenger. This person asked me to connect with Jaime from their customer service team. She was indeed helpful. So, six weeks nearly and five emails later, I was able to get gained access to my account. Hurray! (My above thoughts might seem negative or it may appear that I am sharing my frustration, but my attempt is to share my experience as it happened, not necessarily criticize or reflect my thoughts).
Connecting pCloud folder to Rethink. Blog of Amar Vyas
April 2020: Putting Rethink to Use
I added a variety of images to it to use on a couple of blog posts. Thus, Rethink works as a CDN and file sharing service. I can embed, share links to files, can create password protected links for folders or files. They use Amazon s3 for their storage, and speeds are comparable to some of the major services.Quick Summary: Rethink Cloud Storage and File Sharing service
In the limited period where I have used Publist, the following are my observations: the audio player is pretty decent. I have not tried embedding a video so far. Serving of images and files works well. But the creation of the shared/ embedded version of a file is slow. One has to manually create the embedding links for each file. Maybe I will create a PDF version of this post, which will be added on this post later. This will also show how files can be linked and downloaded.Update June 2021
Rethink cloud storage and file sharing service is no longer working effectively. Rethink have released a beta version of their file hosting, which makes this post sort of redundant. It is one of the few SAAS subscriptions (Thunderdrive is another example) that has turned out to be a dud for me.
Pricing Plans
If you are not a believer in LifeTime Deals, then you may look up their website for current pricing . The basic or free plan has 10 gigabytes of storage. You can connect other cloud drives or files. The next plan is at $4 which 50 GB storage. Annual plans get a discount over monthly plans, which go all the way up to $13 per month for a terabyte of storage. In prior posts on this blog, I have included links for files where I have used Rethink as a CDN. You can find them here.This post was updated on 8 June 2023 and published under the category Content Delivery Network.