PlainTray started as a side project during university. The idea was stupidly simple: a place to drop a file or a note and share it with someone, instantly, without either person needing an account.
That first version was bare-bones — no encryption, no fancy design, just a text box and a file upload. But it struck a nerve. Other students started using it to swap lecture notes, code snippets, and project files. Someone would open a tray, share the code, and a few others would join to edit the text together in real time. A small community grew around it, and people kept coming back because it just worked.
The Problem With File Sharing Today
Every time we needed to share something quickly, the options were frustrating. Email attachments have size limits and clutter your inbox. Cloud drives require accounts on both ends. Messaging apps compress your files. "Secure" transfer tools ask you to create a password, verify your email, and click through three consent screens before you can send a single document.
We wanted something that felt like handing a USB stick to someone — except over the internet. No accounts, no setup, no friction. Just a link.
Real-Time Collaboration Without Accounts
One of the features we loved most from the early days was collaborative editing. Multiple people can open the same tray and edit text together, in real time — no sign-up required. During university, this turned PlainTray into an impromptu workspace: someone shared a tray code, everyone typed into the same document, and changes appeared instantly.
We kept this feature when we rebuilt PlainTray from scratch. Today, collaborative editing is fully end-to-end encrypted. Every keystroke is encrypted in your browser before it reaches the server. The server relays the encrypted changes to other connected clients without ever seeing the content. It is real-time collaboration with zero trust in the server.
Zero-Knowledge Encryption by Default
When we rebuilt PlainTray from the ground up, we made a deliberate choice: encryption should be the default, not an afterthought. Most file-sharing tools can read everything you upload. They might promise not to, but the technical reality is that your files sit on their servers in plain text. If they get hacked, your data is exposed. If an employee is curious, they can look.
PlainTray uses zero-knowledge encryption. Your tray code is hashed on your device to derive both a lookup ID and an AES-GCM encryption key. The key never leaves your browser. Our servers store only ciphertext — scrambled data that is meaningless without your code. We cannot read your content, even if we wanted to. For the full technical details, see how PlainTray works.
This is not a marketing claim. It is how the system is built. There is no backdoor, no master key, no "admin mode" that lets us peek at your files. If you lose your code, your data is gone — and that is the point.
What's in a Name?
"PlainTray" is two ideas in one word. Plain because we believe simplicity is a feature, not a limitation. No clutter, no upsells, no dark patterns. Tray because it is a place to put things — a data tray where you drop text and files for someone to pick up. And yes, the domain was available, which helped.
What We Are Building Toward
The free tier is live today: 5 GB of storage, 7-day retention, and end-to-end encryption for everyone. No account required, no credit card, no catch.
We are working on a Pro plan for people who need more: longer retention, larger storage, password-protected trays, view-only sharing, and a dashboard to manage everything. But the core promise will not change. The free version will always be free, private, and useful.
PlainTray exists because we believe sharing should just work. No sign-up walls, no privacy trade-offs, no "please upgrade to continue." Just open, drop, share.
That is why we built PlainTray.