Files are stored on a central server and can be synchronized with personal computers and mobile devices through apps.

Seafile's functionality is similar to other popular file hosting services such as Dropbox and Google Drive.

Additionally, organizations, whose data privacy policies bar them from using public cloud services can draw on Seafile to build a file sharing system of their own.

In 2009, Daniel Pan and other former students of Tsinghua University, Beijing embarked on a project aiming at building a peer-to-peer file sharing software.

The development team decided in 2010 to abandon this initial goal and refocussed on building a file syncing software with a more traditional client-server architecture – the architecture also used by Dropbox and other file hosting service providers.

The partnership was abruptly terminated in July 2016 due to disagreements between the two companies over, among other things, product development and intellectual property rights.

Seafile Ltd. maintains installation packages for Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

They then agreed to merge the main operations and license the cloud provision to a new company, but an agreement could not be reached on the number of shares to be allocated.

Seafile GmbH stated it would fork based upon the most recent professional version and continue developing the file sharing software independently under the brand name Seafile, for which the company claims it hold the intellectual property rights in Europe and North America.

Syncwerk GmbH will continue to provide software updates and support, as well as SaaS services to their existing customers, based on Seafile Professional Edition 5.1.8.