WinZip

Description

Over 20 million downloads through CNet alone by the year 2000 — for a program that cost $29 and nagged you at every launch to pay for it. WinZip’s numbers in the 1990s were extraordinary for shareware, and they reflected something simple: For most Windows users, WinZip was the only way to handle ZIP files without dropping to a command prompt.

The ZIP format had been around since 1989, invented by Phil Katz and distributed by his DOS-based PKZIP utility. PKZIP ran in a terminal — you typed commands, it compressed files, it produced no interface beyond text output. That suited the DOS era. It didn’t sit well with Windows 3.0, where people were used to clicking, dragging and seeing results visually. Katz’s company, PKWARE, was slow to close that gap. Katz himself showed little interest in Windows development, pulled more and more by personal problems with alcoholism that would eventually cost him his life.

Nico Mak, a programmer at Mansfield Software Group in Storrs-Mansfield, Connecticut, filled the gap. He had already written PMZip, a graphical front-end for ZIP for IBM’s OS/2 operating system, as a side project in 1990. When OS/2 lost the platform war to Windows, he ported the idea. In April 1991, through his company Nico Mak Computing, he released WinZip 1.0 — a point-and-click Windows 3.0 interface that called PKZIP in the background while showing every operation graphically. Users could create, view and extract archives without having to type a command.

By the time PKWARE finally developed its own Windows tool, WinZip had the market. Katz died in a Milwaukee hotel room on April 14, 2000 at age 37. His death left WinZip with an unchallenged position as the dominant ZIP utility for Windows.

SHAREWARE ERA AND Early Development

WinZip was run on the old shareware model: Free for 21 days, $29 to register. Users who never paid were able to keep using most features indefinitely, with a reminder to register at launch. The arrangement made WinZip ubiquitous — it was distributed throughout bulletin board systems, floppy disk shareware collections and the early internet — while generating some revenue from those who registered.

Version 2.0 in 1991 added support for self-extracting archives, allowing users to create executables that decompressed themselves on any Windows machine without WinZip installed. Version 5.0 in 1993 eliminated the use of PKZIP altogether, and used compression code from the Info-ZIP open source project. From then on, WinZip performed ZIP operations natively and also provided drag-and-drop file handling. By version 8.0 in 2000, WinZip became part of Windows Explorer via shell extensions featuring a right-click context menu for compress and extract operations, without opening the main application.

Nico Mak Computing changed its name to WinZip Computing in 2000, about the time that Mak left the company.

WINDOWS BUILT-In Support and the question of relevance

Microsoft included built-in ZIP support in Windows ME and more fully in Windows XP, which handles zip files natively as “compressed folders” available through Windows Explorer. The feature removed the basic case for installing a third-party tool: Casual users, who only needed to open or create simple ZIP files, no longer needed WinZip at all.

WinZip responded by expanding into territory that Windows could not cover natively. AES-256 encryption was introduced in WinZip version 9.0 in 2003, and the implementation was certified to the FIPS-197 standard on March 27 of that year. This allowed users to protect the contents of archives with strong encryption that required a password to extract the contents, which was not possible with the Windows compressed folders feature. The ZIPX format, introduced in later versions, extended the ZIP standard with alternative compression algorithms including LZMA and BZip2, providing better compression ratios than standard ZIP on compatible content.

The product line also expanded to include WinZip Self-Extractor and WinZip Courier, a tool for sending compressed, encrypted files by email.

COREL ACQ. and PLAT. EXP.

On May 2, 2006, Corel Corporation acquired WinZip Computing with funds from the initial public offering. WinZip remained a separate product line under Corel’s ownership.

Through the 2010s WinZip moved beyond Windows. A version for macOS was released in November 2010. iOS and Android apps were released in 2012. Cloud storage integration came around version 17, when WinZip integrated with Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box and other services so users could compress and extract files in the cloud without downloading them first.

Version 16 in 2011 added ZipSend and ZipShare to allow users to send compressed files directly through the application. Version 25 in 2020 included duplicate file detection, integration with Microsoft Teams, and photo organization tools. Corel’s parent company renamed itself to Alludo in 2022.

CURRENT FEATURES

WinZip creates ZIP and ZIPX archives and extracts from a wide variety of formats such as 7Z, BZ2, CAB, GZ, ISO, LHA, LZH, RAR, TAR, VHD, VMDK, XZ and others. The interface is integrated with Windows Explorer (right-click menus) and supports drag-and-drop throughout.

Compression options vary from the standard ZIP (using the Deflate algorithm) to the ZIPX format, which uses LZMA, BZip2, or other algorithms to compress files even further. An improved version of Deflate called Deflate processes larger data blocks to improve ratios on text-heavy content. The application has an MP3 compression mode that compresses audio files by 15 to 20 percent without affecting the quality of playback.

Encryption supports AES-256 for both ZIP and ZIPX archives. Users can encrypt the contents of files, and, in 7z and ZIPX archives, the list of filenames can also be encrypted so that no information about the contents of the archive is visible without the password. The enterprise edition is the version that adds policy-based encryption controls for organizations that are managing file security across departments.

Additional tools include image resizing prior to archiving, PDF creation and watermarking, document scanning and sharing, duplicate file detection, and scheduled automated zip jobs using WinZip Express. Version 29.0, released in September 2024, introduced simplified update mechanisms, performance improvements and the ability to share crash reports.

Cloud integration covers Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, and a number of other services. Users can browse, compress, encrypt and share files from within cloud storage without leaving the application.

PRICING AND EDITIONS

WinZip is available as trialware with full functionality for 21 days after which users need to buy a paid license to continue. Standard and Pro editions are for individual use; enterprise editions include centralized management, deployment tools, and compliance features. Both perpetual license and annual subscription models are available, with subscriptions including ongoing updates. Enterprise licensing is per-seat.

SECURITY

WinZip version 29.0 fixed CVE-2025-1240, a critical out-of-bounds write vulnerability discovered by the Zero Day Initiative and published in February 2025. The vulnerability was present in WinZip’s parser for 7Z files. When processing a malformed 7Z archive, insufficient input validation permitted a write operation to overflow an allocated memory buffer. An attacker who managed to trick a user into opening a specially crafted archive could use this to run arbitrary code in the context of the running WinZip process. The vulnerability had a CVSS score of 7.8. Users on versions before 29.0 are still exposed.

Earlier notable vulnerabilities include multiple buffer overflow vulnerabilities in version 9.0 and earlier, ActiveX control vulnerabilities in version 10, and a RAR parsing vulnerability in version 18.

POSITION IN THE MARKET

WinZip’s story is one of the cleanest examples of a utility that solved a critical problem, dominated its category, then watched the operating system gobble up that problem completely. Windows XP’s compressed folders feature in 2001 made WinZip unnecessary for basic use. The program survived by moving upmarket — encryption, ZIPX, cloud integration, enterprise policy controls — into territory Microsoft’s built-in tools never attempted to cover.

Whether or not that strategy justifies a paid license depends on what a user actually needs. For someone who only opens the occasional ZIP attachment, Windows does it natively and WinZip doesn’t add anything. For organizations that handle encrypted file transfers, enforce compression standards across departments, or integrate archiving into cloud workflows, the added capability has a more obvious case. The 21-day trial makes assessing that question easy.