Transloadit wants to fix broken file uploads

Indeed, resumable uploads are not a thing we invented. Nevertheless, we think it's handy to have a document describing the approach and client and server implementations.

We also considered the use of the Content-Range headers for resuming uploads but dropped this idea in favour of custom headers since the purpose written down in the HTTP specification was not compatible with the way we wanted to use it.

Great to hear, you enjoy it. I am Marius, the current project lead of the tus project and I guess I can provide some answers for you.

The biggest benefit and the main reason of its origin is the ability to resume an interrupted upload at any time resulting in more efficient resource usage and user experience. In addition the fact that it's developed openly and by a community is also noticeable. You do not have to reinvent the wheel since others have already spend time, efforts and thoughts building a working system you can use for free. The tus project already offers a growing list of client and server-side implementations. Last but not least, optional features such as parallel uploading and checksums are available.

On the other hand, you have the overhead of adapting an external system. Whenever you want to build software, you can choose between doing it yourself or using an existing solution, where latter can be tough to achieve depending on your architecture. Furthermore, tus introduces a small overhead in terms of numbers of requests needed for an upload. Usually, you need one to create the upload and another one to transfer the actual data (excluding eventual CORS requests in a browser), in contrast to the traditional model of uploading where a single request is used. Normally, this overhead is negligible, especially when the files are getting bigger.