Your Mega link works for you, and for most buyers — just not all of them

A handful of buyers tell you the Mega link in your delivery just sits there, or stops partway through, or refuses to start. Most buyers are fine. You test it yourself and it works. That combination — intermittent, not universal — is the tell that this isn't the usual "you're signed in and they're not" problem at all.

It's rationed by IP address, not by buyer

MEGA's own help page is specific about how the limit on a free account, or on anyone who isn't signed in to a MEGA account, actually works: "The limit is based on the amount of data downloaded from your IP address over the past six hours." Not your account. Not your file. The IP address the download request arrives from.

Your own first downloads don't count against it

There's a second, less obvious mechanic in the same article: "Transfer quota only begins to apply to a given file once that file has been transferred in full more than 10 times. Partial transfers count proportionally towards this threshold rather than as full transfers." That's why testing the link yourself, and the first run of buyers after you post it, can look completely fine — the quota for that specific file hasn't started counting yet. It's buyer eleven onward, on whatever IP happens to be running low, where it starts to bite. From where you're sitting, a link that worked all week suddenly "breaking" for one person looks like bad luck. It's the threshold being crossed.

A standard paid Mega plan doesn't remove this for your buyers by itself

A paid MEGA plan isn't checked against an IP address — MEGA says it's checked against "their logged-in account". But that only protects you, signed in, testing your own link. Your buyers aren't signed in to your MEGA account; they're "non-MEGA users" downloading from a link, and on a standard paid plan MEGA's page on sharing quota says you choose how much of your own allowance those people can use: "The default setting is that 25% of your transfer quota is available for this." You can turn it up, but the same page warns that doing so "risks using up your transfer quota faster than you intend." MEGA's Business and Pro Flexi plans work differently: there's no slider, people downloading from your links get through "without delay", and if their downloads take you over your base transfer quota, "you'll be charged for the excess." Either way, paying moves the problem from "buyers get rationed" to a setting you have to tune or a bill that grows with your downloads. It doesn't vanish on its own.

What our own access check can and can't tell you

AccessDrop's weekly check works by requesting the link and reading what comes back. For Mega links specifically, status codes alone don't settle it: a request to a Mega file page returns an ordinary HTTP 200 whether the file is live and downloadable, over quota for that visitor, or doesn't exist at all — we tested this today against a well-formed but entirely made-up Mega URL and got the same plain 200 a real file's page returns. MEGA decides whether a visitor can actually pull the file inside the page's own script, against its servers, not in the response status.

As of 4 October 2026 the check knows this about Mega and shows it honestly: a neutral "Can't be verified from outside" pill, not the green one, and not a false "broken" either. It's an improvement on showing a quota-rationed link as fine, but it's still not a verdict — the check can tell you it couldn't confirm the link, not whether a given buyer will actually get through.

What to actually do

1. 1

   Move the product file off Mega if you can

   The failures sellers usually hit with Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive and Canva are permission settings you can see and fix yourself. None of them ration a buyer by what a stranger on their network downloaded three hours earlier. See Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive for whichever you'd rather use.

2. 2

   If you keep using Mega, open the quota-sharing setting

   In a web browser: your profile image, Settings, Transfers, and move the slider for how much of your paid quota non-MEGA downloaders can use. The default is 25%. Moving it up spends your own transfer quota faster, so it's a trade-off, not a free fix. (On Business and Pro Flexi plans the slider isn't there; link downloads come out of your account and anything over your base quota is billed.)

3. 3

   Tell an affected buyer the honest reason

   "MEGA does not have a fixed download limit" — MEGA's own wording — "transfers resume automatically when the over-quota situation resolves." A buyer who's hit it now just needs to wait a few hours and try again, ideally off whatever shared or public network they were on; it isn't something you broke and it isn't something they need to fix either.

4. 4

   Don't assume a retry link fixes it

   A fresh Mega link doesn't change the buyer's IP address, and the six-hour limit is counted against that address, not against the link. The buyer still has to wait it out or download from a different connection.

The structural fix is the one every guide on this site reaches for: put a link you control in front of the actual file host, so what's printed on your product never has to change even when the destination does. How to deliver digital downloads on Etsy covers the general shape of this; for a link that's already timing out rather than quota-limited, the WeTransfer page covers that specific variant.

AccessDrop takes a Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or Canva link and turns it into a branded delivery PDF with a QR code and a short link you can repoint later, checking weekly that the destination still answers. £19 for a year, one payment, up to 5 deliverables — it doesn't host your files, and for Mega links specifically, as explained above, the weekly check can tell you it couldn't verify the page, but not whether a given buyer will actually get through. Use it to point at a permission-based host, not a rationed one.