Vault Storage: Upload Once, Share as Many Times as You Need

Most file sharing workflows have a quiet inefficiency baked into them. You finish a project, upload the deliverable, send the link. Next week, a second client asks for the same file. You upload it again. Someone else on your team needs it — another upload. Six months later, the same asset has been uploaded four times, three of those copies are floating on different servers, and nobody knows which link still works.

Vault fixes that. One upload. As many share links as you need, whenever you need them.

What Vault Actually Is

Vault is a permanent file storage layer that sits alongside your regular file sharing. When you upload a file to your Vault, it stays there until you explicitly delete it — unlike a standard share, which disappears once its expiry date passes.

The core idea: the file and the share link are decoupled. A Vault file is just the raw asset. From that asset, you can create any number of share links. Each link is independent — its own expiry window, its own optional passcode, its own download cap. Expire one link and the file is still in your Vault. Create a fresh link tomorrow for a new recipient.

This is fundamentally different from how most people share files, where the upload and the share are the same thing. If you've found yourself re-uploading a 2GB video or a design package just to send the same asset to someone new, Vault is the thing that stops that.

Using Vault as an Individual

The clearest personal use case is recurring deliverables — anything you send to more than one person over time.

A freelance photographer who delivers client galleries keeps their master export in Vault. For each new client, they create a fresh share link: 14-day expiry, download limit of 3. Once it expires, the gallery isn't gone — just that particular link. If the client needs access again, issuing a new link takes about 30 seconds and involves zero re-uploading.

A contracts consultant keeps their standard client onboarding document set in Vault. Every new engagement gets a fresh link, password-protected, valid for 5 days. They open Vault, click "New Share" on the right file, set the options, copy the link. Done. No digging through email to find the last version they sent someone else.

A brand designer stores their portfolio PDF in Vault and creates a new link for each job application. Download analytics show whether the link was actually opened — useful for knowing whether a hiring manager looked at the work or if it just sat unopened. Each application gets its own link, so the tracking stays clean.

The pattern is consistent across all of these: a file that doesn't change often, but needs to reach different people with different access rules. Sharing files with clients professionally gets much cleaner when you stop treating every send as a fresh upload.

Neatly organized archive shelves representing permanent file storage

Using Vault Across a Team Workspace

Workspace Vault is where the "upload once" logic really compounds.

Say you run a small agency with three people. You have a set of production assets that go out regularly — brand guidelines, source files, client-ready exports. Before Vault, whoever needed to send those would dig through emails or a shared drive, find the right version, and re-upload it to generate a proper share link. With a team producing dozens of client handoffs a month, that's real wasted time, and version drift is a constant risk.

With Workspace Vault, one person uploads the canonical file. Anyone in the workspace can then create a share from it. The file is central. The shares fan out from there.

Each team member generates their own link for their own recipient. One client gets a link with a 7-day window and no password. Another gets a passcode-protected link that auto-expires in 24 hours. Both are working from the same underlying file. If the asset needs updating, it's updated once — not separately across three team members' individual uploads.

This is also useful for anything that gets versioned externally. You keep the current version in Workspace Vault. When a new version is ready, old links expire on their existing schedule. You upload the fresh file and future shares go out from it. Clean handoff, no orphaned links to old versions.

For teams who send the same package to multiple clients regularly — proposal decks, product demos, technical documentation — Workspace Vault removes the coordination overhead. The freelancer's guide to handing over deliverables covers per-person handoffs well; Workspace Vault extends that workflow to teams sharing from a single source of truth.

How Each Share Works

Every share created from a Vault file has its own settings, configured at the time you create it.

Expiry — Set how long the link stays active, from a few hours up to 30 days on Pro plans
Download cap — Restrict total downloads; once the limit is hit, the link locks automatically
Passcode — Add an optional password the recipient must enter before downloading

None of these settings bleed between links. The access rules you set for Client A have no effect on the link you create for Client B. One link can be active for two weeks while another expires in an hour — same underlying file, completely independent lifecycles.

That independence is the actual value of this model. Temporary sharing and permanent storage are typically framed as opposing approaches, but Vault blends them deliberately: the file is permanent, the sharing is still as controlled and time-limited as you want.

How Storage Quota Works

Vault occupies storage, but there's a nuance worth understanding. Your quota reflects files that have at least one active share. Once all shares linked to a file have expired, that file stops counting toward your quota — even though the file itself is still sitting in your Vault.

Practically: if you have a file with three active shares and two expire, the quota contribution doesn't change until the last active share also lapses. At that point, the storage it occupied is freed from your quota. The file stays in your Vault — parked, quota-free, ready to generate new shares whenever you need it.

This means Vault isn't "storage you're always paying for." It's storage you're paying for while files are actively being shared. Files with no live shares sit in your Vault without counting against your quota.

Why You Can't Delete a File With Active Shares

This surprises people the first time they try it: a Vault file can't be deleted while it still has active share links attached to it.

The reason is practical. If you delete the underlying file while shares are still active, every one of those links breaks immediately. Anyone mid-download or who hasn't yet clicked the link gets nothing. The file and its active shares are one system — deleting the file without first expiring the shares silently breaks links that recipients may be actively relying on.

The intended flow is deliberate: let shares expire naturally, or explicitly let them lapse, then delete the file. It forces a moment of consideration before wiping something that might still be in use.

If you need to cut access quickly — say a link went to the wrong person — the right move is to delete or expire that individual share, not the file. Everything else running from that file keeps working.

Where to Start

For individuals: think about files you've uploaded more than twice in the last few months. Those are your Vault candidates. Upload them once, keep them there, and generate fresh links as needed rather than starting from scratch each time.

For teams: identify the shared assets your team sends to clients on a regular cadence — proposal templates, brand packages, delivery archives. One team member uploads each to Workspace Vault. From that point on, anyone can generate a time-limited share link from the canonical file without digging for the latest version or re-uploading anything.

The overhead drops. The consistency improves. And you stop paying the invisible tax of uploading the same thing over and over.

How Comfyfile Can Help

Vault is available on Pro and Enterprise plans. Upload files up to 10GB (Pro) or 50GB (Enterprise), store them permanently, and spin up share links with independent passwords, expiry windows, and download caps. For teams, Workspace Vault gives every member access to the same canonical files without sharing credentials or a cloud drive folder. Head to /vault to see your existing files, or /upload/vault to add your first permanent file.