> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.zas.red/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Coming from Drive, Dropbox or WhatsApp

> How Zas differs from Google Drive, Dropbox and a WhatsApp self-chat, and what you should keep using each of them for.

Most people already move files between their own devices. They just use a tool built for something else.

Zas is built for that one job.

## The short version

Drive and Dropbox are warehouses. You put things in, they stay, and you pay rent for the space. WhatsApp is a conversation that also carries files, so your files sit inside a chat with thousands of messages.

Zas is a corridor. Things pass through it and leave on their own.

## Coming from Google Drive or Dropbox

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="What changes" icon="arrow-right">
    Nothing accumulates. Every item has a five-day countdown, so there is no folder to tidy and no quota creeping upward.
  </Card>

  <Card title="What stays the same" icon="equals">
    You still get a link you can send to anyone. See [Share links](/en/using-zas/share-links).
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

Keep Drive or Dropbox for anything you need next month: contracts, project folders, the family photo archive. Zas is not a backup, and it will not hold your files for you.

Use Zas for the trip between devices. Send the file, use it on the other machine, and let it go.

## Coming from a WhatsApp self-chat

A self-chat works until it does not. Three things break it:

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="It compresses your photos and video">
    WhatsApp re-encodes media to make it small. Zas does not compress and does not re-encode. The file that arrives is the file you sent, byte for byte.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="It never forgets">
    Every screenshot you ever sent yourself is still in that thread. In Zas an item is gone after five days unless you pin it.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="WhatsApp Web hands over the whole account">
    Scanning the WhatsApp QR code on a print-shop computer gives that machine your entire message history. A Zas anonymous session gives it one session with a 30 MB ceiling that expires in two days, and it deletes itself in 30 minutes if you send nothing.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

Keep WhatsApp for talking to people. Use Zas for moving your own things.

## Coming from email to yourself

Email caps attachments at a few megabytes and buries them in a thread. Zas sends a 50 MB file on the free plan, or up to 10 GB device to device with [Direct transfer](/en/concepts/direct).

## Coming from a USB stick

A USB stick has no size limit and no network. It also has no copy on your other devices, and you can leave it in a meeting room.

Zas needs a network. In exchange, the thing you sent is already on every device you signed in on.

## What Zas is honestly worse at

We would rather say this here than have you find out later.

* **Long-term storage.** Zas deletes on purpose. There is no archive and no undelete.
* **Shared team folders.** Channels carry items with the same expiry rules. They are not a folder tree.
* **Offline.** Direct transfer needs both devices online at the same time, and stored items need a network to reach.
* **Recovering something that left.** When an item expires, it is gone. Nobody at Zas can bring it back.

## Where to go next

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Quickstart" icon="play" href="/en/getting-started/quickstart">
    Send your first thing in under a minute.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Limits" icon="ruler" href="/en/reference/limits">
    Every number Zas enforces today.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>