Top 5 sites to download free software

Posted on October 5, 2009 at 5:57 am

In the course of the last few years, there have been a few great web sites that have stood out as trusted resources for downloading free software legally. Let me list the top 5 sites that offer this service, so you can use them as resource:

1. Tucows.com – tucows earned its reputation as one of the original free download sites. Now with over 40,000 software titles, it is a very dependable resource for free software with software reviews and ratings. It has minimal ads on the banner, but they are not distracting. Tucows, like MTV, might sound outdated by the savvy downloaders of today but still packs a powerful punch when it comes to providing free software.

2. Download.com – Featuring editor and user-rated reviews, Download.com is the trusted, safe, and secure resource for software, mobile applications, and game downloads.

With everything from PC starter kits to games, security patches, screensavers, and mobile apps, you can download more than 80,000 free programs.

Download.com has a good reputation for unbiased software reviews and ratings system.

My only gripe with download.com is that it doesn’t review software that falls under these categories: corporate security, drivers, and networking software. If you are interested in those categories, you will need to go to other places to get reviews.

3. Sourceforge.net – unlike the sites mentioned above, Sourceforge.net offers services that help people build cool applications. The best thing about Sourceforge is that you get the source code of the application and not just the installer.

Programmers could easily tweak the source code to fit their needs and distribute in accordance with the softwares’ license agreement. This is a good place to look for script based apps like PHP/MYSQL projects, Python scripts, home brewed software and also community developed applications.

4. Filehippo.com – this web site is perhaps the most Spartan of all. The main page contains tabular lists per category of software so anyone who feels like downloading an app will see what’s hottest instantly. Filehippo focuses on hosting quality freeware – there are no reviews or rating system – just the link to the file with descriptions about the software and some technical details.

5. Snapfiles.com – this one you may have not heard of or seen yet, but it offers good selection of software and reviews for both shareware and freeware categories. Visitors could post their own reviews of their favorite software so don’t be surprised if you find over-the-top un-objective reviews like the one below:

Those are my Top 5 freeware resources. Do you know better sites to get free software? Post their URL in the comments section. Also, check out my list of 5 free programs for geeks.

Ben Carigtan shows you how it’s done.

» Filed Under Free Software Downloads

Comments

7 Responses to “Top 5 sites to download free software”

MedveX said on : October 5th, 2009 at 9:04 am

softpedia.com

doe said on : October 5th, 2009 at 11:37 am

http://www.majorgeeks.com/

High quality and ratings. Have used if for at least 10 years.

AppleMadman said on : October 6th, 2009 at 3:21 am

Download3000.com ain’t that bad, either (the only one I know of that uses VirusTotal to scan files and displays results on site), and let’s not forget about Softonic!

Bob Gibson said on : October 6th, 2009 at 8:46 am

http://www.softonic.com

Great download site in 8 different languages with unbiased software reviews.

ScoreInTheBox said on : October 6th, 2009 at 1:37 pm

Out of the five, this is the first time I heard of Filehippo.com and Snapfiles.com. Thanks for sharing.

Johnny Boy said on : October 7th, 2009 at 2:16 am

Thanks for the list of sites that provide free softwares. Good post.

Dileep said on : October 17th, 2009 at 1:03 pm

I use FileHippo.com. Faster downloads and the best part is that they have old versions of all the software that are available for download. There are times that I still need to download old version such as iTunes