Portable 7-Zip

For a long time, storage space had been not only limited in terms of capacity and file transfer performance, but also rather costly for average consumers, making it difficult to maintain large databases.

In this sense, dedicated programs the likes of ARC emerged to make file organization easier and less space-consuming, which led to the development of faster, more flexible and open standards such as ZIP, which can be effortlessly and conveniently handled by Portable 7-Zip.

Given the age gap of about 4 years, WinRAR has had a head-start in terms of being able to cement itself as the go-to archiving utility for most users, compared to 7-Zip. However, despite the former’s more familiar interface and extra virus-scanning capabilities, the latter’s lack of licensing fees may be a more attractive option.

On top of that, the app lets you insert context menu entries and nest them in their separate category, depending on how many functions you wish to have on display. Apart from its compatibility that includes non-open archive standards, multiple file extensions can also be associated with the client.

The portable package not only retains the benefits of the setup version, but also grants users the ability to carry out operations from their flexible on-the-go loadout powered by USB flash drives. This approach prioritizes efficiency for IT specialists that have a fleet of enterprise-level devices to debug.

Instead of having to go through the installation process on each computer and manually configuring the context menu and file associations every single time, the settings are carried over regardless of the package’s location.

Taking into consideration the customization potential and open-source third-party add-ons that let you change UI elements such as the overall color scheme, Portable 7-Zip is still a solid choice for most archive-related operations that need to be carried out on multiple PCs.