Public Hosting allows you to share files and directories via public URLs. By default, these public URLs are hosted under the hosted-by-files.com domain.

If you want to serve Publicly Hosted Folders from your own domain, there's a simple and effective solution. You can use an edge platform, such as Cloudflare workers, Netlify edge functions, Akamai EdgeWorkers, Vercel, Fastly Compute@Edge, or AWS Lambda@Edge, in front of your Files.com public links to seamlessly rewrite requests and responses.

By using one of these modern hosting platforms in conjunction with your Publicly Hosted Folders, you gain full control over the domain, branding, and delivery experience without requiring deep integration into the Files.com platform. This method is fast to implement, low maintenance, and is useful in many different situations.

By caching public files at the edge using platforms like Cloudflare, users download content directly from the edge platform’s servers instead of repeatedly accessing Files.com. This reduces repeat requests to your Files.com site, lowers outbound data usage, and can significantly reduce transfer usage costs.

For example, if you distribute large files in this way such as product manuals, videos, or software installers to customers or partners, only the first request reaches Files.com. All subsequent downloads are served from the edge platform. This avoids generating repeated outbound traffic from Files.com and limits file access activity, resulting in meaningful cost savings, especially at scale.

Cloudflare and other edge providers such as Fastly, Akamai, AWS, Vercel, and Netlify support URL rewriting directly at the edge. These platforms let you modify requests without redirecting users or exposing the underlying Files.com URLs. Each provider uses its own method, such as Workers, Edge Functions, or Middleware, to enable clean and branded delivery of your Public Hosting content. Refer to the Implementing URL Rewrites page for setup instructions.

Example Use Case: Re-Using a Portal With Multiple Brands

If you need to serve many of the same assets under multiple brands, you can use your chosen edge platform with any of your domains, all of which will interact with the same <subdomain>.hosted-by-files.com hosted folder on your Files.com site.

Follow the steps from your chosen hosting platform to rewrite the URLs in your requests and responses and assign it to all of your domains. Now you have one place to control the content of your assets, which are published across all of your domains for your customers.

Example Use Case: Hiding Structure or Versioning

A common use for public hosting is to provide an easy method for distributing software updates and patches. Often, these employ some form of semantic versioning, with separate sub-folders for each individual release version.

By using an edge compute provider to rewrite requests, you can intercept requests to folders that represent different versions, such as pointing requests for something like https://downloads.example.com/latest/ to https://example.hosted-by-files.com/downloads/v2.0.3.61 . Adding other facade folders is a matter of pushing updated code to your edge computer, such as when version 2.0.3.62 has passed internal QA and now becomes the latest stable version you wish to publish.

Example Use Case: Healthcare - Simplified Access to Patient Resources

Healthcare and telemedicine requires your patients to trust that their online interactions with you are safe, and serving your Public Hosting folders under your own domain supports that trust.

You can also use edge platforms to provide easy-to-remember URLs for accessing personal documents like patient education materials, intake forms, or appointment prep guides. Instead of publishing https://exampleclinic.hosted-by-files.com/patient-resources/forms/new-visit.pdf you could instead direct your patients to a URL such as https://my.exampleclinic.com/forms/new-visit.pdf

Example Use Case: Media & Entertainment - Custom Access to Promotional Assets

By rewriting the requests from your custom domain, you can route branded campaign links to specific media kits or assets without exposing backend file systems.

Instead of a URL such as https://examplemedia.hosted-by-files.com/assets/2025/hollywood-blockbuster/images/poster-hires.jpg , you could publish https://media.example.com/promo-blockbuster/poster.jpg

This promotes a clean, sharable URL in press releases and makes it easy to update your assets in the future without breaking URLs.

Example Use Case: Manufacturing & Distribution - Region-Based Technical Docs

Use edge providers to serve region-specific manuals or datasheets based on country codes or subdomains.

Rather than forcing your users to wade through a hierarchy of localized assets, eventually arriving at something like: https://globalexample.hosted-by-files.com/products/eu/gx3000/manual.pdf you could respond with https://eu.docs.globalexample.com/gx3000/manual.pdf

This provides convenient access to localized documentation while centralizing backend storage.