WeTransfer is popular enough that "WeTransfer not working" is a search people type often enough for WeTransfer itself to maintain dedicated help-center articles for it "My upload fails, stalls, or shows an error" and "My download fails, gets stuck, or does not start" are both official troubleshooting pages, not something a user made up. If you're stuck watching a progress bar that won't move, here's what's actually causing it most of the time, and what to try before you give up and send the file some other way.
The usual suspects
Per WeTransfer's own troubleshooting documentation, these are the most common reasons an upload or download fails, stalls, or throws an error:
- A firewall, antivirus, VPN, or browser extension ad blockers especially silently blocking the transfer.
- A corporate or work network restricting or blocking the service outright.
- The file living on an external drive, USB stick, or a cloud-synced folder (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive) instead of local disk these disconnect mid-upload.
- The file still open in another application while you're trying to upload it.
- Low battery triggering power-saving mode, which throttles background activity mid-transfer.
- Weak or shared bandwidth WeTransfer recommends at least 5 Mbps for a reliable upload.
- The device or connection going to sleep partway through a long upload.
Quick fixes to try first
- Copy the file to your local disk before uploading don't upload directly from a USB drive or a cloud-synced folder.
- Close the file in any other program (a PDF reader, a video player, Photoshop) before you start the upload.
- Temporarily disable your VPN and any ad-blocker or privacy extension for the upload.
- If you're on a work or school network, try a different connection home wifi or a phone hotspot rules out network-level blocking fast.
- Plug your device in and disable sleep mode for long uploads.
- If the connection seems flaky, restart your router before trying again.
Sometimes it's not you
If none of the above explains it, the issue might be on WeTransfer's end rather than yours the service has logged several short outages on its own status page in recent months, affecting uploads, downloads, or both for a window of minutes to a couple of hours. There's no way to fix that from your side; the only real option is to wait it out or send the file another way if it's time-sensitive.
If it keeps happening
An occasional failed upload is normal for any service. If it's happening repeatedly, on different networks, with different files, that's less "bad luck" and more a sign to have a backup option for anything with a deadline attached a client waiting on a deliverable isn't a good moment to be debugging firewall settings.
On Letshareit, there's no account required on either end you upload, you get a link, the other person clicks it, same as WeTransfer's flow. The free tier covers files up to 6 GB with no sign-up, password protection is available on every plan including guest uploads, and paid plans go up to 500 GB per file on Pro if a size limit was part of what you were running into. See the full Letshareit vs WeTransfer comparison if you're deciding whether to switch for good or just need somewhere reliable for this one file.
