How can you choose a good, reliable seedbox provider?

Man, can it be so hard, right, it should be easy to choose an reliable seedbox?

Yet we see very high failure rate, as of late RapidSpeeds, Evoboxes, Knowinservers and Boxslots is having some major issues.

YEA, it can be at times. Seedbox market is full of flybys, scams and frauds. There are several tell-tale characteristics to find a reliable, good provider.

To make matters worse, sometimes even the unreliable provider doesn't realize itself it's promising vapor, because of their upstream provider or not to realize the overheads running a business. There is also the providers who are very comfortable lying, and they will run with your money. Consider yourself lucky if a upstream provider does bail them out and save the users day.

You need to be able to distinguish every type of failure so that you can be assured your torrents are up and seeding even tomorrow!

Is the promise too good to be true? It often is, but there is a huge pressure to deliver more for less especially in seedbox market, because customers themselves have outrageously diluted expectations, partially due to overpromising hosts and partially due to a reality distortion field. In most cases the seedbox provider is paying exactly the same for servers as you would get as an average joe - yes, as unbelievable as that is, it is true. There are no magic bullets, or insanely low cost servers providers can tap into.

It simply is not possible to offer a true, dedicated, SLA'd, high quality 1Gbps connection for 10€. Even big companies often paythousands of euros per month for such a connection.

So just to be able to offer a seedbox service for you, stars got to align just right for so many factors.

Torrenting is not lightweight. Most users believe torrents are very lightweight, this couldn't be further from the truth. Seedboxes are primarily used by power users, and there is a lot of users per node, that's when even the fastest HDDs start to crumble.

So what does all that mean? When you see a 1Gbps unmetered, 500Gb Disk space, unlimited torrents seedbox offer for 2€, it probably isn't what you'd expect.

RAID10 yet same amount of storage for money as the average provider? That is very likely not true, tho exceptions do exist such as the Pulsed Media 1Gbps running RAID10 on some nodes.

Do not go with a provider full of spelling mistakes, or if you can spot, technically factual errors. If suspicious, ask around from your friends if that is possible.

What support do they provide? Do they tell you upfront? If they are not upfront about support services and actively market their support, in all likelyhood it's going to suck - at best. At worst, there is no support services in place at all, which is true for sadly many long standing seedbox providers.

Are they real registered company? Did you ask them, and they said yes? Well, did they back that up with Business ID #, and/or Brick And Mortar address + phone number? The latter is not necessary, but former is. If they are not willing to discuss those details, especially if european company, they probably are not a registered, lawful firm. Sometimes they are, even if they don't tell you their Business ID # or VAT ID, but that's the exception not the rule.

Is there "buzz" about them? If not, chances are they are either a really small provider or new. Both entail a big risk. Most of the cases you can find some reviews with simple "company namereview" google search. Take the reviews with a grain of salt tho, as the competition is fierce and often the competition might try to smear campaign their competitors, or at times a bad review is done without even trying to reach support to fix it. If you see negative review, check up on the following commentary about the review.

Do they provide guarantees? Check up on them, upfront. look into footer or ask their pre-sales for those guarantees. Those can be moneyback guarantee, service level agreement or other. Service Level Agreement (SLA) is very rare on seedboxes, but there is providers who give this as well. It means you will be compensated shall there be fatal problems with your service and they can validate the problem.

Don't buy into the Hype, immediately at least. Many up & coming providers are being hyped, more hyped it is, the more likely it is a scam or fraud. Longstanding, stable companies do not produce this kind of hype, but a steady stream of buzz and activity around them. There really is no exception to this rule.

Expect lies. Most Seedbox providers lie, and they lie big. Many will claim to be best, but those who claim to be best, usually are on the worse scale of things. There is some providers who claim this, and their marketing is full of lies. They sell metered, capped service as unmetered, do not even give all the basic services (ie. SSH or SFTP access, or web filemanager), and at times security is less than lax. Those who truly are The Best, do not need to advertise the fact.

Cheapest, is not the best choice. Best value is the best choice. Given high enough value, the offer might also seem insanely cheap, maybe even below cost but in such case there probably is a good, healthy profit margin involved - which is required to provide high value. Every cent higher price, every single cent more per server earned, is directly to profit for the company. Sometimes high enough value offer might seem too good to be true, but if you ask the company or look at the details you might notice how that is possible - and the company offering this earns every single cent of the extra margin.

When in doubt, ask your friends or see if the company offers a 14-day moneyback guarantee. If there is a moneyback guarantee you can quite safely try them out. Sometimes the guarantee is not marketed, and not in so obvious places in order to reserve that right to those who truly need it and not the flock of abusers waiting in line to take advantage. Ask the company about it.