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Four ways to send a document. One you can take back.
Almost every file leaves a business as an attachment, a drive link, an invitation to a portal, or a transfer link anyone can use. Here is what each of them really does once the document is out of your hands.
Side by side.
Nothing in the first four columns is useless. They are just built to move a file, and none of them was ever built to bring one back.
| What you need | Email attachment | Shared drive link | Client portal | Transfer link | AnySign Vault |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who can open it | Anyone it is forwarded to | Anyone holding the link, usually | Accounts you invited | Anyone holding the link, usually | Only the addresses or domains you named, re-checked on every request. |
| When it stops working | Never | Never, unless someone sets an expiry — and remembers to | When you deactivate the account | After a set number of days, usually | On the date you picked, from 7 days to a year, or never if you say so. |
| Taking it back | Recall almost never works | Possible if you can find the file | One account at a time | Delete the transfer, on the paid tiers | One click ends the link and every session already open on it. |
| Knowing who opened it | Guesswork, or an optional read receipt | Owner-side history at best | Logged inside the tool | An email to the sender on download | An unnamed line per open, then every verification, view, download and refusal against an address. |
| What the recipient does | Nothing | Often asks for access and waits | Creates an account and signs in | Nothing, usually | Clicks the link and types a six-digit code emailed to their own address. |
| Where the share happens | In the email thread | Wherever you paste the link | Somewhere else they must visit | In the email thread | Pasted straight into the reply you were already writing in the thread. |
| What a stranger sees first | The whole document | The document, or a request screen | A sign-in screen | The file list, then the download | Your branding, and nothing about the file until they prove who they are. |
Where Vault is the wrong tool.
You will find this out in week one anyway, so here it is in week zero.
- A link carries up to 20 documents and the set is fixed when you create it. A document that turns up afterwards means a new link, not an edit to the one you already sent.
- Uploads stop at 20 MB, so a scanned bundle of a hundred pages or a video walkthrough belongs somewhere else.
- A year is the longest expiry there is. Beyond 365 days your only option is a link with no expiry, which you then have to remember to revoke.
- Once someone has proved who they are, the document is theirs to keep. What you get is a line in the log against their address, not a leash on the file.
- The log is there when you go and look at it. Vault does not email you when somebody opens the link, the way a transfer service does.
Keep the thread. Lose the attachment.
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