It’s even more wholesome to know that they care for the community too. CatBox.moe, a freemium file host that came out of nowhere, is now taking Japanophiles by storm through its fabled identity and sassy-yet-appealing experience. Surprisingly, nobody knows who owns this website yet, nor do they care about it. Personally, I felt quite suspicious about storing my files on a notorious server at first, but based on what I observed, my perspective seems to change for good. Here’s what you should also know about it: Also, Read: Top 5 Best Cloud Storage Services Available Right Now The Host for All Your Nitty-Gritty Data As soon as you land on the website, the first thing you’ll likely notice is the 200-Mb upload capping. This means you can only upload files up to the aforementioned size, but there’s no limit on the number of uploads you can make though. You can either ‘drag and drop’ the file on the platform or set up a content delivery network and upload the file through a simple URL. It entirely depends on your preferences, as the website offers a lot more than you think, that’ll be uncovered soon. There’s also a user account mechanism that helps you keep track of all the files you’ve uploaded on the platform. You can also sort the files based on the date, type of file, and a lot more. This is all optional, though, and the services can be used without any registration too. Also, Read: 7 Best File Hosting Providers with Direct Download Link/Hotlink Free Because Everything’s Crowdfunded People absolutely love Catbox.moe for its connecting experience with a youthfully innocent fictional female character. While the primary offerings of the website are absolutely free of cost, someone needs to pay the server bills, right? Here’s a breakdown of the charges that Catbox.moe typically incurs to keep the host up and running:
$750/month – Primary Servers$239~/month – AWS Offloading (Project Lain)$90/month – Cloud Servers$211/year – Administrative Costs$8/month – Donuts (He deserves it!)
Fortunately, the platform is crowdfunded through ‘Patreon’ and manages to gain sufficient donations from the community to cover most, if not all, of the server bills it incurs. There are several tiers for donations namely Kitty Kibble, Kouhai, Senpai, and Kami-Sama. The website also has a shop section where you can purchase customized stickers and t-shirts to show your support. Moreover, the prices listed are inclusive of all the taxes, which means you pay only the price you see on the listings. Based on an update shared by the website moderator on its blog section, it appears that the host’s datacenter is located inside a half-cabinet colocation, which offers 10 Gbit/s fiber of transfer speed. The server is capable of bearing the load and they’ve got an additional post a disk space issue too. What All Does the Platform Offers I like how the developer has provided a handy ShareX configuration for personal productivity. If you’re into programming or development, it can be very helpful to capture screens, share files, and upload everything right away on the cloud with Catbox’s API. The platform features flexible extensions for all major browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, and Vivaldi. With the extension installed in your browser, you can see a menu button on media files and save or host them to the platform quickly. To make most of your personal hosting tasks automated, you can use the Catbox.moe API. Here’s a handy list of implementations of this API in Bash, Node.js, and Go:
Bash – https://gist.github.com/MineBartekSA/1d42d6973ddafb82793fd49b4fb06591Node.js – https://www.npmjs.com/package/catbox.moeGo – https://github.com/wabarc/go-catbox
You can call the API at ‘https://catbox.moe/user/api.php’ and make eight different types of requests for varying purposes, including uploading and deleting files, creating and editing albums, downloading files to your system, and a lot more. A Litterbox for Your Brain dump Too! An initiative of Catbox.moe, litterbox is a section on the website that allows you to upload temporary files of up to 1 Gb in size. You can also choose when these files expire that can go as high as three days, after which the files will be deleted permanently from the server. Also, Read: AnonFiles: Underrated and Anonymous Cloud Storage Read This Before You Start Using Catbox.moe While Catbox.moe is quite a straightforward platform with a determined purpose, certain things are intolerable and retaliated by the website. To maintain a fair usage ground and prevent mishappenings through the platform, the website expects you to follow various rules such as:
Not to upload files with extensions like .exe, .scr, .cpl, .doc*, and .jarPrevent uploading viruses, pirated anime episodes, heavy gore, and other forms of unethical contentDon’t use the platform for commercial intent, unless you have prior approval from the authority in charge
Apart from this, Catbox.moe also serves files with .html and .php as plain text. This has been done to prevent the website’s offerings from being used as a host for phishing pages. Additionally, you may not be able to access the website on specific ISPs and filtered DNS servers as it’s banned on them. By uploading your files on Catbox.moe, you also allow the platform to store your IP address within your account. It may also appear on access logs, but that data is dumped every month and isn’t stored anywhere else. Bottom Line When most of us are working from home nowadays, having a reliable personal host is more important than ever. Catbox.moe isn’t just a free host that allows you to keep your files on the cloud, but a platform for those who love a bit of personalization to their experience. So, consider checking out the website now and save yourself some precious disk space. Also, Read: TeraBox, the Secret Behind 1TB Lifetime Free Cloud Storage
