A download manager is a computer program dedicated to the task of downloading possibly unrelated stand-alone files from the Internet for storage. Some download managers can also be used to accelerate download speeds by downloading from multiple sources at once.

Although web browsers may have download managers incorporated as a feature, they are differentiated by the fact that they do not prioritize accurate, complete and unbroken downloads of information.

One does not need download managers just for the sake of downloading music or image files as almost every browser is capable enough to handle such situations but it is recommended to use a download manager especially when you are trying to download files with a larger size.

For quite a long time now, Internet Download Manager or IDM has been a favorite choice for many users who are trying to download files. IDM supports a wide range of proxy servers such as firewall, FTP, and HTTP protocols, redirected cookies, MP3 audio and MPEG video processing.

It efficiently collaborates with Chrome, Opera, Avant Browser, AOL, Netscape, MyIE2, and other popular browsers to manage the downloads. But all this comes at a cost, it is not available for free and the cracked versions of IDM do not work successfully for everyone. It costs 1600 INR or 25 USD approximately.

If you are someone who is troubled by the same, here is a list of best Internet Download Manager alternatives that you can try out in 2018 and later.

Free Download Manager

The development of Free Download Manager dates back 18 years in 2004. Hence, it is not a new player in this game and its developers know what its users expect from it and get new sets of features from time to time via updates.

It’s easy to use interface combined with a huge set of embedded features that too at no cost makes it an apt alternative for Internet Download Manager. Even though it is free, there are no ads and in addition to managing the downloads of ordinary files, it is capable of managing torrent downloads as well.

Unlike many download managers available, it won’t limit the number of files you can download or throttle speeds. It is compatible with many popular browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Edge and many more. There is even a lite version of FDM available for those who are using low-end PCs and it is also available on MacOS.

Download Accelerator Plus

Download Accelerator Plus is a download manager for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It uses the multipart download to increase speeds, creating multiple connections of different file segments to speed up downloads.

Download Accelerator Plus works by splitting files into smaller pieces and automatically seeking faster mirrors. One of the notable features of DAP is that you can download files from YouTube and convert them into audio files.

It was initially made available to the public in 2013 and since then, with regular updates, it has become one of my favourite download managers. It works flawlessly with Chrome, Firefox and other popular browsers available.

It is available in three versions: DAP free, DAP Premium and DAP Mac. The premium version costs 1300 INR or 20 USD approximately and offers the feature of privacy protection which the free version lacks.

Though the free version lacks some features of the premium version but is still a worthy competitor to IDM.

JDownloader

JDownloader is a download manager, written in Java, which allows automatic download of groups of files from one-click hosting sites. JDownloader supports the use of premium accounts. 

Some parts, but not all, of JDownloader are open source. In December 2009 the program’s website was in the top 1000 visited websites of Spain. 

The German online magazine, Chip.de designated it “newcomer of the year” in 2009, after it ranked among the top 50 most downloaded applications, with over half a million downloads in a year. It is available on Windows, Linux and MacOS as well.

One of its notable features is that whenever you come across a site that requires you to solve a CAPTCHA before presenting you with the download link, it would automatically solve it with its own OCR module and start the download straight away.

Moreover, you can switch between different themes once you are bored of the UI and it even supports multiple languages. It is available free of cost but it comes at the costs of ads and there are no ways to disable those.

FlashGet

FlashGet is yet another downloader manager on our list. Its developers claim that its download speeds range up to 5 times to that of IDM. It is also compatible with a wide range of browsers available out there and it is even small in size.

One may not get download speeds as claimed by its developers but it is fast enough and has all the features to be an ideal IDM alternative. It is available only for Windows users. Most importantly, it is available for free.

Internet Download Accelerator

Internet Download Accelerator, often called IDA, is a shareware download manager for Microsoft Windows, created by a Ukrainian software company, WestByte Software. 

IDA integrates flawlessly with Yandex Browser, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Google Chrome. It is quite a new player in this game with its stable version released in May 2017.

It’s available for free but there is a paid version available as well which gets rid of unnecessary ads and has the option to control your download speeds and it costs around 650 INR or 10 USD approximately.

The only thing that bothered me about Internet Download Accelerator is that its UI looks like the applications of the early 2000s and is quite boring to look at. Saying so, it is in its initial stages with its release around 1 year back and has the potential to become the leader of stable if its developers roll out new and interesting features in upcoming years.

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The list is not in any particular order. But if I had to pick anyone among these, I would have gone for Free Download Manager who happens to be the download manager that I use to manage my daily downloads.

These are the best Internet Download Manager alternatives that one can try out today. I hope this article works the way it is intended to be. Let us know about your experience trying out the methods mentioned in this article in the comments section below. 

In case I missed mentioning anything or if there is some topic which you want me to cover, please let me know in the comments section down below.