Case Study: ByteTransfer.io, a file-sharing platform

Project Overview

Our boutique software company was tasked with creating a secure file-sharing, white-labelled SaaS product for Small to Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The goal of the project was to develop a robust and user-friendly platform that enables secure file sharing within organizations and externally, both branded and unbranded (depending on the subscription tier), while also providing advanced features such as AI-powered chatbot support as well as a custom affiliate program.

Challenges

Initially, we did not have very much to go on - essentially one or two ideas sketched out on the back of an envelope. We would also need to think about the actual business model - that is, how is it going to make money? In terms of technical challenges: Scaling the infrastructure up and down based on demand while keeping an eye on the budget. How were we going to chunk and de-chunk big files? How were we going to upload the data? What about security?

Solutions

We brainstormed ideas with the stakeholder over the next 24 hours, exploring the most important product features as well as exploring various business models until we settled on something that worked but gave us flexibility moving forward. We came up with a name for the product, a logo, purchased the domain name and agreed on the overall concept for the branding. We knew we could not go too far wrong by opting for AWS and after reviewing their current product offering, we settled on the following: Amazon RDS would give us a scalable database. Amazon S3 would give us more than enough storage at low cost. Amazon EKS would help us scale up and down our compute requirements by spinning up and down our Dockerized API. Amazon CloudFront combined with Amazon S3 for hosting the React App. Amazon Bedrock would give us cheap, scalable AI inference. Amazon Kendra would give us a scalable vector-based storage for RAG capability. It would then just be a matter of plumbing it all together and ensuring it did not blow up the budget. It is worth noting that our Dockerized API is not actually shackled to AWS. We could very quickly swap out every AWS service with another cloud provider or Open Source equivalent. In fact, while developing it locally, we would spin up our own MySQL database and use Ollama's RESTful API for LLM inference.

Technical Details

Results

We have a working end-to-end alternative to the likes of Google Drive, OneDrive, WeTransfer and DropBox. And it can be either branded or unbranded depending on your budget, and there is a generous (but sustainable) affiliate programe so that other businesses can earn a living promoting it.

Benefits

ByteTransfer is an alternative to the existing Big Tech companies. ByteTransfer does not use your data for commercial purposes, trade your data or share your data with any third parties. ByteTransfer provides SMEs with an affordable (branded or unbranded) secure file-sharing capability within teams and with external partners while ensuring the SME is complying with EU's GDPR regulations. And our custom advanced AI-powered chatbot provides intuitive support for both users and affiliates, reducing the need for any human intervention.

Testimonials

ByteTransfer.io has been a fantastic addition to my affiliate program! The secure file-sharing service is perfect for my audience of entrepreneurs, and the referral commissions are great. Easy to recommend, easy to track, and a genuinely valuable service. Highly recommend checking them out! – Astrid Nielsen