Putlockers is a movie and TV show download website that has an enormous selection of movies and TV shows available for purchase or free viewing. Its website interface is easy to navigate with a search engine, trailers, recommendations, top movies and TV shows list, buttons to buy episodes of the most popular shows on season passes, the ability of users to save their favourite streaming links and add them to their watchlist so they’re not lost if they happen to close the site or move it out of view.
Putlockers grants members access to some amazing content for free while others pay an annual fee for more than 30 countries (upgrades are offered at $19.99 annually). The site offers free content from well known television shows such as The 100, Arrow, Into the Badlands, and The Flash.
Putlocker's business model has been ruthlessly copied with many new sites popping up with similar if not identical names. Putlockers employees are aware of these obvious clones and have successfully taken action against them in court.
Pupuglers was founded by Ashish Thakkar in 2009 when he was living in Dubai and learning about Bitcoin for the first time. In October 2009, he published an article on how to use this new currency at the time (https://web.archive.org/web/20131121000117/http://bitsergentum.com/bitcoin-mining-guide/ ) and shortly after he created a website which hosted articles, videos and other bitcoin related content.
From there he went on to host a wide range of content on the site including movies, TV Shows and eBooks. The website became very popular in countries such as Nigeria, Pakistan & India due to the large amount of visitors from those areas of the world.
The website now claims to have over 9 million users as of 2017.
Putlockers is ranked as one of the top 100 most popular sites in Nigeria with around 75% of its users coming from Nigeria according to Alexa analytics (based on internet user data). Putlockers claims to have over 1 million daily viewers and millions of monthly visitors.
In 2013 the domain was confiscated by Dutch Police and not returned until November 2016. Putlocker was blocked in Egypt as a result of a complaint by the Egyptian Association for Combating Digital Rights Violations on grounds of copyright infringement.
The Indian Telecommunications Company, Airtel, blocked the website in July 2015 after receiving directions from the Mumbai High Court to do so.
In January 2016 Putlockers became an official file hosting partner of IMVU Inc., the leading 3D avatar-based social platform with more than 20 million registered users and an Alexa ranking of 21st in the world.
In January 2017 the site was reported to be blocked in Pakistan, after being accused of copyright infringement by Promo News, a Pakistani news website.
Sometime between 2016 and 2017 the domain putlockers.com was seized by Dutch Police and not returned until November 2016.
In July 2018, Putlockers started redirecting to its own pay-only version of the site after a rumored agreement with AMC Networks was threatened by Disney, who acquired Marvel (the owner of many popular superhero TV shows on which Putlocker's action movies are based). The deal for rights to Marvel's television programing had been made behind closed doors in May 2013 and there had been no official announcement at that time.
As of March 2018, Putlocker is ranked #1 in paid video websites in the world with $2.5M USD revenue per month.
In June 2018, Putlockers was reported to have been blocked by ISP's in India sometime between May and June.
In July 2018, reports claimed that Putlocker was blocked in Malaysia after it had been replaced by local file hosting website Fmovies.
Each episode has approximately 1 million views and they are tenured on the site for a week or two before being removed to make room for other content. One episode costs $1.99 for HD streaming while the entire season of that same show costs $9.99 for SD viewing.
Putlockers offers downloads of episodes of its popular TV shows, including the shows "The Walking Dead", "The Flash", "Arrow", and "Agents of SHIELD". The TV show downloads can be purchased by themselves or as a season pass for access to the rest of the season's episodes for $14.99 (approximately Rs. 900) per season of 5 or 6 episodes (depending on the show), beginning with the first episode in that season available immediately after purchase.
Putlockers also has a section dedicated to movie downloads that offer both HD and download-to-own versions, which are priced at $5 USD each.
Putlockers has a wide selection of movies and TV shows from all genres as well as some rare content that is not easily found on other download websites. This includes movies such as No Country for Old Men, The Shawshank Redemption, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Bourne Legacy and TV Shows like Vikings, Vikings: Season 2, Gotham and many more.
The site's free content can be found on the site's home page with no registration required to view them.
The free content can also be watched at Putlocker through an HTML5 web browser.
Putlocker is headquartered in the United Kingdom and serves users from all over the world.
Putlockers is a global company and has users from nearly every continent including North America, Africa, Europe, Asia & Australia.
The company offers free content to help promote its paid account features. Putlocker offers free movies & TV shows that can be viewed through a browser without downloading client software or registering for an account. These videos will play in any HTML5 compatible browser on both laptops and PCs as well as Android & iOS devices such as smartphones and tablets. These videos are normally found on the site's home page under its "free movie" section. Movies and shows that are available free on Putlocker can also be found in the site's playlists, such as videos of popular TV series.
Originally, the free content that was found was on a separate domain, putlockers.acast.com and only contained video streams of video content from the site. In September 2013, ACast became Putlocker 1 Free TV with all videos available for non-members on the main site so they could be watched by anyone who visits Putlocker via a web browser without any software or membership required. These videos are normally found on the site's home page under "free video" section.
As of March 2017, Putlockers offers 5 free movies (per day), ranging from Horror to Sci-Fi/Fantasy and is emailed out via email every 24 hours. Each movie can be viewed directly in the browser on computers and mobile platforms such as Android and iOS without downloading any software or membership. In addition, these movies can also be viewed on TVs through Chromecast, Samsung Smart capability and Apple TV that have a Chrome web browser installed. Putlockers also offers an option to view these movies via a streaming app for Chromecast / Samsung Smart TVs, in conjunction with a subscription to its premium service (Putlocker Premium).
Putlocker also offers a free TV section in which many popular TV shows can be viewed for free through the site's "free tv" section.
Putlockers offers a premium subscription service called Putlocker Premium. This subscription offers ad-free viewing and access to high definition video content through the site's web browser as well as streaming to Chromecast, Apple TV, Sonos, Amazon Fire TV and Android devices. The subscription costs $1.99 per month with a discount price of $1.49 per month if paid annually (with discounts ranging from 14% to 22%). Putlocker Premium is available only on putlocker.acast.com domain, which is accessible through any web browser. Putlocker Premium is a paid service that is intended for the viewing of Putlocker's HD content
Putlockers premium service also provides access to "premium movies" that are available to stream in full high definition with 5.1 surround sound. These premium movies and TV shows cost $1.99 USD per episode and a subscription to all premium shows costs $9.99 USD per month or $99.99 USD per year, with discounts offered for yearly subscriptions (ranging from 6% up to 10%). Putlocker also offers season pass purchases for popular TV shows such as The Walking Dead and The Flash where the entire season can be viewed for $14.99 USD and $19.99, respectively. Unlike the premium movies, these season passes are only available to view in HD (720p) and not in full HD (1080p).
Putlocker has been successful over the years as it attracted many viewers and content creators who were looking for a site that would allow them to upload their content without any restrictions or censorship. Putlocker employs a search engine optimized (SEO) SEO method for organizing content on its website; this has been done by creating folders with relevant names and keywords that are related to the niche of the content being uploaded on the site.
Due to this, Putlocker has become well known as the most popular website for downloading movies and TV shows. This has attracted copyright holders, content owners, movie studios and TV networks that are looking to protect their property from pirates.
Copyright holders such as movie studios have requested that sites such as Putlocker stop providing a service of downloading content. In response to these requests, the site's owner decided to cooperate with them by removing links linking site members to pirated content and link pages were removed from the site in early 2013.
In June 2013, the site's operator announced that due to DMCA infringements he would close the site for good, but later changed his mind and did not close the site.
The above-mentioned shutdown of links to pirated content resulted in many users moving their attention to other similar sites such as EZTV and Torrentz. Both sites shut down within a short time of one another; both released statements at the same time via Twitter in which they indicated that they would no longer be providing their services. The operator of EZTV announced on Twitter: "After 5 years I decided to quit, I had fun but it's time to move on. 'I wanted to quit while I'm ahead.'"
Putlocker was also one of the five websites named in a subpoena by the Department of Homeland Security in August 2016. The sites were accused of infringing copyright by distributing copyright-protected content without permission from the rights holders.
In response to these incidents, Putlockers introduced a new service called PutLocker Premium, which is intended to provide additional service for premium members. The service provides access to Putlocker's popular TV shows and movies at a discounted rate with premium movie passes and discounts for TV show season passes offered as well as access to all videos through PutLocker's web browser without downloading any client software or registering for an account. The new service was released in September 2016.
This new service replaces the old site's membership system, which was found to be incompatible with the updated browser technology. Putlocker also removed links directly to pirated content and link pages from its site on August 27, 2013.
Putlockers' free movie section is now used by many people instead of torrents because they don't have to download anything or even register an account for the free movies and TV shows they want to watch.
Putlockers operates a small wiki page called "unofficial putlocker", which seems to have been created either by users or by Putlockers themselves.