As the year winds down its time to reflect on the growth and development of one of my favorite distributed systems, the Interplanetary File System. The IPFS community has accomplished so much for the ecosystem including increase in community meet ups across several countries, the first IPFS Camp and the focus of our write-up - creation of alot of new applications.

Uploading files onto the IPFS is one of the simplest steps to getting users to start using IPFS. The types of files that can be uploaded on the network range from simple photos, videos and even websites. In this post I will focus my review on some of my favorite web and mobile based IPFS file uploaders, provide a simple guide to setting them up and highlighting how integrating other IPFS features could contribute to your improving your business and general internet experience.

The file uploaders that I will feature in this post include:

• Axel Network IPFS Uploader
• Pinata Cloud
• IPFS Gateway - Cloudflare
• Sweet IPFS

Axel Network IPFS Uploader

The Axel Network has one of the fastest and easiest IPFS Pinning service that allows you to manage your content on the distributed web. In place of setting and up and running multiple nodes, the Axel Network provides users a system that simplifies the pinning process to a drag-and-drop process without heavy coding.

This system also provides all the benefits of IPFS features including a global search and public indexing. This carefully designed solutions means as a user you are not only able to add files to IPFS quickly and easily, but the access to a distributed and decentralized network more security to your pinned files.

To get started with the Axel Network pinning facility simply Sign Up and once completed you can access your dashboard and start uploading files. Your wallet comes preloaded with a 2.0 fuel balance to cover your initial transcation fees.

Although this service is still in beta, I highly recommend it as a file uploader. Some of the benefits you can anticipate while using Axel IPFS include: saving on bandwidth and storage, ovecoming latency especially if you experience limited internet connectivity and last but not least you can store and archive files on the IPFS network without duplications.

The Axel Network has several tutorials to help you get started with pinning facility, here's the first three you can check out today - Getting Started, Using IPFS Search, Copy a Hash or Link.

Pinata Cloud

Pinata Cloud offers an easy-to-use IPFS Pinning API and toolkit that simplifies distributed and decentralized application production. The Pinata team is keen on transforming the web one node at a time by designing tools and infrastructure developers can rely on to create and manage content on IPFS.

Some of the tools and infrastructure Pinata uses to provide a fast and stable service include:

• Easy API: Developer-friendly, documented API endpoints allow you to pin anything you want to IPFS.
• Deep Visibility: Full visibility into what you are pinning with our pin explorer and metadata indexing.
• Data Resiliency: Ensures content stays pinned on IPFS so you don't have to.
• Blockchain: Easily combine blockchains like Ethereum with IPFS for immutable off-chain data storage.

Applications built on Pinata enjoy even more benefitial solutions including scaling through dedicated IPFS networks, easily host a website on IPFS, increased privacy and even entreprise IPFS solutions. These are just some of the reasons I enjoy using Pinata Cloud.

IPFS Gateway - Cloudflare

In late 2018, Cloudflare introduced its IPFS Gateway as a service designed to provide an easy way to access content from the IPFS without installing and running any special software on your computer. In the year since its introduction the Cloudflare IPFS Gateway has been used to create countless distributed web sites including the IPFS Website which can be found at https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipns/ipfs.io/

The cloudflare IPFS Gateway is ideal for large scale development services, example developing a service application that is commercially available and needs to run multiple nodes or private networks.

Cloudflare has made available a series of guides and tutorials largely available in detail in their product documentation.

Sweet IPFS

Sweet IPFS is an Android & ChromeOS application that aims to fully run and manage an IPFS node from your phone. Although the app is still in `beta-phase` users can download it from the Google Play store and start test its main feature, uploading files from your phone to the IPFS Network.

While this application is a great step in the decentralization campaign, Sweet IPFS has a major challenge attached to it, specifically the battery and network consumption linked to hosting a node on a mobile device. Until we find a solution for this issues, using sweet-ipfs will stay resricted to a certain type of device.

Conclusion

While we can not outline all the milestones that have been achieved this year, this was a focus on the applications that I believe will increase IPFS adoption by leaps and bounds as we get into the new year. For IPFS to achieve one of its core missions of making the internet more accessible, empowering, and useful for many years to come, we as a community need to continue building solutions that are not just functional but easy to use as well.