It also allowed for multiple files and folders to be grouped together ('zipped') and transferred as a single ZIP file. Using ZIP compression regularly saved minutes or even hours off of file transfers. In this era, file transfers occurred using MODEMs and transfer speeds were very limited. The ZIP file format dates to the late 1980s when it received heavy use in pre-internet-era Bulletin Board Systems, or BBSes. The ZIP file format is very popular for efficiently storing and transferring groups of files in a variety of business and personal applications.

ZIP files are compressed archives that group together one or more files into a single file, compressing the files (making them smaller) that are contained inside.