High-Way.me – Review 12/2020

High-Way.me should be familiar to German-speaking users, as the website is only available in German. High-Way.me emerged from the Freeway project, which was taken over by Premiumize.me, after Freeway users were not particularly satisfied with Premiumize.me’s new offering. However, it is not the old Freeway team that is behind High-Way.me, but Yannik E. from Oldenburg (Germany), who also runs Simply-Premium.com.

High-Way.me is not a typical multihoster, but like Freeway, it is highly connected to a board, which means that you can also generate credits with activities in the board. I am all the more curious to see how High-Way.me compares. Since the site is only available in German, foreign users would have to use a translation tool.

The first problem is already the registration. According to the website, the registration is not always open and even if it is open, you have to apply and be accepted. This currently takes about 10 days. Unfortunately, I can’t share my experience with the registration. High-Way.me unfortunately denied us a test account, but I was able to borrow an account from a user instead.

The banner refers to the application requirement and duration of processing

What is offered:

High-Way.me offers access to 14 filehosters (including Youtube), torrent, Usenet and a TV recording service (similar to OTR). The exact offer is unfortunately not visible without an account, so you have to apply first.

It should be briefly noted that High-Way.me only offers traffic packages, which are, however, limited in time. Furthermore, sharing the account is allowed under certain conditions.

Limits:

High-Way.me has limits at half of its filehosters, e.g. at Filer.net 40 GB traffic in 24 hours is “tolerated”, which means it is a maximum limit, but you have no claim to it. The limit at Uploaded.net is a fair-use limit. High-Way.me writes about this as an explanation:

“Wird der Richtwert mehrfach überschritten (das Überschreiten muss auch gar nicht nacheinander folgen oder regelmäßig sein) gehen wir von einer missbräuchlichen Nutzung aus, welche vertragsgemäß zum Entzug des Hosters führt, in der Regel bis zum Ende der Paketlaufzeit.”

If the limit is exceeded several times (the exceeding does not have to be successive or regular), we assume that the use is abusive, which leads to the cancellation of the hoster according to the contract, usually until the end of the package term.

Website:

The website, or rather the board, is an absolute nightmare. Due to the structure of the board, the information you need is spread over many different pages, which means you often have to read through several threads when looking for a specific piece of information. Fortunately, you can find the most important download information in the “Center”, but some information is unfortunately searched in vain (e.g. what the “Beta Hosters” are or which channels are included in the TV service).

The Service:

Filehoster

The filehosters are interesting, so Icerbox or Nitroflare are unfortunately rarely found with other providers. DDownload, Rapidgator, Oboom and Turbobit are also there, of course. Unfortunately, I had some problems during my test, as you can see in the overview above. It should also be noted that the status page is constantly changing, so DDownload worked at some point halfway again, but then Turbobit no longer worked.

Torrent

There is actually not much to say about the torrent downloader. An unlimited number of torrents with a maximum file size of 75 GB each can be downloaded. There are 50 download slots available. Manget links or .torrent files (unfortunately only as upload and not as link) can be used. Unfortunately, the entire torrent is packaged as a ZIP file, the download of individual files is not possible. This is a bit badly solved, since it is also charged by traffic.

Usenet

The Usenet downloader works very similarly to the torrent downloader, but the Usenet archives can be 100 GB in size and there are only 25 download slots available.

Alternatively, the download is also possible with your own Usenet client. Both non-SSL and SSL are available. The retention is at least 4524 days, which is already a very good value.

TV Recorder

The TV recorder automatically records programs from the TV. The only stupid thing is that there is no indication of what is being recorded at all. There is neither an explanation of this function, nor an overview of the channels. After a few days, a bunch of programs were actually displayed, but unfortunately the whole thing is very confusing. There are no options to filter by a specific station (you can only do that by group), nor by date. At least you can search by name. As it looks to me, however, the usual German public and private channels (except RTL) are recorded. Pay-TV is definitely not included. For users who do not understand German, it should be noted that apparently only German channels are offered. The offer is therefore only interesting for German-speaking users.

The feature is a great idea in itself, but unfortunately it’s pretty poorly implemented. Browsing is almost impossible, as there is not even a way to sort all the shows (the shows are completely jumbled and neither sorted by title, channel or date), not to mention the lack of filtering options.

Supported tools and programs

As far as I have seen, only jDownloader and Kodi are supported, whereby the last only applies to the TV recorder. Possibly other tools and programs are also supported, but you would have to search the board. Of course, for Usenet, as already mentioned, Usenet clients are also supported.

Support

For support, the board is of course great. If you don’t want to post your request publicly on the board, you can also communicate with support via private message.

For disruption, reference is also made to a Twitter channel, but this has not reported any disruptions since 2018, so is presumably no longer active.

Logging:

Unfortunately, there is hardly any information about logging.The privacy policy only vaguely states that, among other things, “the type of web browser, the operating system used, the domain name of your Internet service provider” are logged. However, since High-Way explicitly reserves the right to “prevent parallel downloads from different devices/IPs”, the devices and IP addresses used must also be logged (possibly in hash form, however).

Other/Special:

After the activation in the board, statistics about the download behavior at High-Way.me can be viewed, which is absolutely unusual, since most providers never publish any traffic data. To be honest, this traffic surprised me, as I had estimated High-Way.me to be significantly larger, after all, other multihosters manage such traffic values in 6-12 hours. On the other hand, the traffic is also comparatively expensive, so you probably think twice before downloading something. By the way, High-Way.me currently has more than 6,600 registered users.

Access restrictions:

Unfortunately, access with an activated VPN server or proxy server is often not possible. Registrations with server IPs seem to be rejected on principle.

Terms of service:

The terms of service usually never find their way into our reviews, but High-Way.me has some very interesting passages that are worth mentioning:

  • §1 3.4 The usability of packages without term limitation is not guaranteed. At the latest from the time HIGHWAY can show a loss business by the package, HIGHWAY is entitled to perform no more services. This is the case at the earliest after 360 days, at the latest after 700 days.
  • §1 3.5 For packages without term limits HIGHWAY is entitled to withdraw the premium status as soon as only 1% of the booked traffic is available.
  • §6 6.4 Users […] accept that HIGHWAY is entitled to withdraw the user’s access to individual hosters should the user have used this hoster excessively. […]
  • §6 6.5 […] I am aware that the (editor’s note: TV) recording is a voluntary service of HIGHWAY and not a contractually promised service, which is why HIGHWAY is entitled to withdraw the possibility of recording or access to the archive from me at any time. […]
  • §7 7.3 We reserve the right not to accept payments or new customers and to terminate the contract early and immediately with a refund of the package price via PayPal (regardless of the payment method used when entering into the contract). The customer is obliged to provide us with his PayPal e-mail address in order to claim the refund. Therefore the customer always needs a PayPal account, even if he does not want to pay with PayPal.

Editor’s note: The translation from German into English was done by the editor.

The Pricing:

The packages are comparatively confusing. High-Way.me offers both runtime and traffic-based packages, but the runtime packages are only traffic packages with an expiration date.

The Free tariff is available, which only includes 7 filehosters, as well as Usenet (only with Usenet client) and TV recorder, and where traffic (max. 5 GB per day) can be earned through activity on the board, which is difficult for users who do not speak German. Furthermore, there is the Premium tariff with 17 filehosters (although there are only 14 in total) and full Usenet and torrent functions, and the Unlimited tariff, which includes unlimited Usenet and the TV recorder. From the Premium tariff onwards, some filehosters are only charged at 33% (see picture above).

Once you have decided on a plan, you have to decide on the traffic available per month. The Premium and Unlimited rates offer a choice of 100, 200 and 300 GB per month. In the Premium rate, for example, the costs for 100 GB per month are EUR 47.99 per year. A 300 GB package without expiration costs EUR 26.00.

Price overview in the Unlimited tariff

Payment is available via Litecoin, Bitcoin, credit card, Sofort, Giropay, Amazon voucher and PaySafeCard. However, the latter costs additional fees and requires a locally purchased PaySafeCard.

Conclusion:

I must honestly say that I am very disappointed and had expected much more. I always had High-Way.me in the back of my mind as a kind of insider tip, but unfortunately the offer does not convince me at all. Due to the complicated registration, I had expected that many exotic filehosters would be available, which nobody else can offer. In fact, this is limited to a few filehosters like Icerbox or Nitroflare. In addition, it unfortunately turns out that High-Way.me has the same difficulties with Rapidgator, DDownload & Co. as everyone else.

Even the other features like the torrent and Usenet manager don’t pull that out again, because the competition definitely does it better. I also expected much more from the TV recorder, which should be much cheaper and more convenient for anyone with an OTR account.

I can therefore not really recommend this multihoster. The only exception would be to use High-Way.me as a second multihoster, exclusively for Icerbox, Nitroflare & Co. or if you are really an absolute occasional user and hardly cause any traffic. For the other filehosters, Usenet, Torrent and the TV Recorder there are in my opinion but much cheaper and also better alternatives. I also find the tone towards the customer particularly frightening. Apart from the above-mentioned excerpts of the terms of use, I find, for example, the statement about the “fair use limit” (see above) quite impudent. Likewise, talking about “tolerating” the limits seems a bit arrogant, because after all, you pay for a service and not just a little.

HIGHWAY

3.99€
6.1

Filehosts

6.0/10

Torrent

7.0/10

Usenet

7.0/10

Limits

5.0/10

Speed

9.0/10

Support

9.0/10

Pricing

3.0/10

Registration

1.0/10

Download restrictions

3.0/10

Pros

  • Popular filehosts supported
  • TV recorder service
  • Board

Cons

  • Dedicated Servers/Proxies/Company Networks not allowed
  • Registration only with application
  • Complicated limits
  • TV recorder is very poorly implemented
  • Unfair TOS/Conditions
  • Expensive
  • Information hard to find

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