With Netflix and other streaming platforms increasing price, I finally decided to get a seedbox for my family members’ needs with Plex/jellyfin.
My budget is 10-15 USD per month. I’m currently on the 11$ hostingby.design plan with 4TB storage and 9TB traffic, 10gbit connection. I’ve been mostly happy but,
- Their app selection feels small though I’ve found most of the mainstream stuff.
- I’m missing things like cross-seed, jellystat, jellyfin-vue, transmission and audiobookshelf.
- Not happy with how apps installed by the GitHub scripts are not available on HTTPS.
- Can’t disable ssh password login for public key, which is making me really uncomfortable.
- Their wiki seems quite sparse.
The other options I’m thinking of are:
- 13$ HDD plan at seedhost.eu - 4TB/9TB but only 1gbps, downgrade in specs but seems to have more apps.
- 14$ plan at ultra.cc with 3TB/8TB but 20gps (which feels like an overkill honestly). Also a downgrade but their wiki/app support looks top notch.
I really wish there was a way I could manage docker containers on my own on a similar shared setup without paying for a dedicated vps but haven’t found something like that so far.
Any advice regarding the other providers, experience or otherwise would be greatly appreciated :)
Don’t think about the speeds advertised by providers, you’ll never come close to them. You seem to require a media server, so give more importance to storage.
From my research comparing HostingBy, SeedHost and Ultra.cc - HostingBy has the highest €/TB rate except for the 1TB box which is ironically the highest €/TB rate
Here’s the Google Sheet if you’re interested Ignore the remarks and INR part, I’m Indian so wanted to see what I would end up paying
I will add on more providers at some point, but these 3 are the big names with decent prices and support.
As for your other problem of app selection, I don’t think you’ll find any of those in most providers natively (except for Transmission). You can request them, but its not a quick process. Instead of that, try installing them yourself. Even without root, it shouldn’t be impossible, the only thing that may be annoying is you may not be able to setup reverse proxy so you’ll need to access those services with http://ip:port
I selfhost my own seedbox at home. I have a vm on my server which is always connected to a vpn that runs qbittorrent-nox.
I have my own local set up with qbitorrent, transmission, deluge, cross seed, all the arrs and the whole lot :) I use it to watch things at home.
This seedbox is for sharing with my family who lives in different parts of the world. With my internet, it isn’t feasible to share stuff from my home.
It’s not a real proper seedbox but I would suggest a subscription to Alldebrid.
You will get the ability to download directly from many hosters, and also this ability to use the Alldebrid seedbox to “convert” torrents to DDL links.
It’s a cheap subscription and it does everything I need to get movies, series and so on.
I have been using that for years and found it to be reliable.
You probably can get a free trial for a month if you want to see what the service does.
I have a RD subscription. The problem is it’s hard to use on an iOS device which is most of the stuff my fiancee uses unfortunately. The second problem is that it’s one IP per user, so each person who travels and uses their internet will need an account which quickly adds up.
I have RD setup on Android TV for my parents which has been stellar so far.
Started using https://swizzin.ltd/ recently, very happy with it.
Looks like their offering is pretty similar. I think the hbd people are collaborating with swizzin devs because they share same scripts etc.
Could be, I wouldn’t blame them. It works great.
Off topic question, I’m trying to learn about seedboxes: Do you have to configure your own VPN with your current seed box or is it not necessary?
Some managed are already finished and ready to use.
My seedbox on hostingby.design has OpenVPN configured and I can just download the config file.Hey, I’m currently on hbd too, curious to know how to find the openvpn config. So far I’ve only found wireguard.
I was grandfathered in from seedbox.io days.
In your case I’d recommend asking support if they could configure it for you. But tbh wireguard is fine as well.
That’s really cool :) Thank you. I will probably stick with wireguard.
I’ve been using whatbox.ca for 5 or 6 years now and I recommend them. I haven’t set up plex or jellyfin but my understanding is that it is possible.
Thank you :) I’ve heard generally good things about them. The reason I didn’t pick them initially was because the 15$ plan is 2/5TB which is a bit less than the options I mentioned.
How is the app selection? Are you able to use SSH keys?
Their faq says they have one click installation for the following: rTorrent Deluge Transmission Plex Sonarr Radarr Prowlarr Jackett Syncthing Jellyfin qBittorrent
I’m not actually sure what an SSH key is but you can find just about anything you could want to know here:
The reason I recommend them is because their customer support has been top tier in all of my interactions with them.
The list is pretty similar to hbd. Hbd doesn’t have transmission and syncthing, and prowlarr is semi-official but instead they have Medusa, autobrr, filebrowser and resiliosync.
Will check out the wiki :) If you have ssh enabled in your box, I would suggest looking up SSH keys. I have some public stuff I run for my work and I get at least a hundred brute force attacks on port 22 when I use a password.
How is there customer support infrastructure? With hbd I can raise tickets or talk on discord where they answer pretty fast.
I will do some research on SSH keys as you suggest, thanks for the heads up.
I just went to look at the support tab and I didn’t see any discord info but they have a ticket system that still has all 5 tickets I’ve ever submitted all being 4-8 years old. Didn’t even realize I had had it that long lol. Its obviously been a while but I remember a pretty quick response each time I needed them.
That’s amazing :) I am definitely going to try them if I am sticking around.
The prompt for me to switch was the fact that Netflix, Hulu and prime increasing their prices which made many members of my family stop using them. If they can adapt to Plex/jellyfin, then I’ll probably keep it around and maybe even upgrade.
