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Pulsed Media vs Feral Hosting

From Pulsed Media Wiki


Pulsed Media and Feral Hosting are two of the few seedbox providers that own their hardware. Most of the industry rents from OVH, Leaseweb, or Hetzner. These two build on metal they control. The two companies differ in management approach, jurisdiction, storage architecture, and what "bandwidth" means.

Quick Comparison

Feature Pulsed Media Feral Hosting
Legal entity Magna Capax Finland Oy, Helsinki Feral.io Ltd, London, UK
Founded 2010 Feral.io Ltd incorporated 2018; operating since approximately 2008
Infrastructure Owns hardware + two datacenters Owns hardware at Interxion NL
Server locations Helsinki and Kerava, Finland Amsterdam, Netherlands (Interxion/Digital Realty)
Jurisdiction Finland (EU/GDPR, no SIGINT alliances) United Kingdom (Five Eyes core member)
RAID options RAID0 (V-series) and RAID5 (M-series) RAID0 on SSD plans, single drives on HDD (no RAID)
Torrent clients rTorrent, Deluge, qBittorrent rTorrent, Deluge, Transmission, qBittorrent
Transcoding Jellyfin (per-user installer) Jellyfin (self-install via wiki)
Max shared uplink Own ASN, own datacenter uplinks AS200052, 300-500 Gbps aggregate AS capacity
Post-quota speed 100 Mbps N/A (HDD plans unlimited)
VPN included WireGuard + OpenVPN OpenVPN (1 connection)
Management panel Web panel + SSH + CLI tools SSH primary, no GUI panel
Docker Yes (rootless, per-user) Not stated
Entry price €3.49/mo (SSD), €6.99/mo (HDD RAID5) ~€12/mo (Helium, 1 TB HDD)
Refund policy 14-day money-back guarantee Not published
Payment PayPal (incl. cards), BTC, ETH, LTC, XMR Stripe (cards), Bitcoin only
Free tier Yes No
Support Tickets, knowledgebase Tickets, IRC

Infrastructure

Both companies own their servers. That puts them in a small club. Most competitors rent from OVH, Leaseweb, or Hetzner. Owning the hardware means the provider controls firmware, drive replacement timelines, and network topology without filing a ticket with an upstream vendor.

Pulsed Media takes this further by owning the datacenters themselves. Two facilities in Finland (Helsinki and Kerava) with their own power infrastructure. When a drive fails at 2am, the replacement comes from the shelf down the hall.

Feral owns its servers and colocates at Interxion (now Digital Realty) in Amsterdam, one of Europe's densest carrier-neutral hubs. Feral runs an undisclosed number of servers there. But Interxion owns the building, the power, and the cooling.

Both own their server hardware. PM also owns its datacenters.

Features

Feral: SSH is the interface

Feral does not ship a traditional web panel. You get SSH access and a wiki full of installation guides. Want rTorrent? Follow the wiki. Want Jellyfin? Follow the wiki. Want a Debian package that is not in Feral's guides? Open a ticket and staff will install it.

This works well for users comfortable with a terminal. Feral's wiki covers rTorrent, Deluge, Transmission, qBittorrent, Plex, Emby, Jellyfin, Sonarr, Radarr, Jackett, Prowlarr, ZNC, and rclone. The documentation lives on BitBucket as a public git repository.

If you are not comfortable with SSH, Feral is not for you. No click-to-install, no graphical file manager, no web UI to restart a crashed service.

Pulsed Media: panel + CLI + Docker

PM ships a web panel with ruTorrent (41 plugins), a file manager, and service controls. You can manage everything through a browser. SSH is also available, along with 100+ pre-installed CLI tools and rootless Docker for custom containers. See the features page for the full list.

For the media automation stack (Jellyfin, Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr, SABnzbd, Cloudplow), PM provides a one-command installer that deploys everything per-user.

VPN

PM includes both WireGuard and OpenVPN. Feral includes OpenVPN with a single concurrent connection. WireGuard is faster and lighter on modern hardware; having both options gives PM users more flexibility depending on client support.

Storage and RAID

PM offers two storage architectures:

  • V-series (RAID0) pools drives for maximum speed and capacity. No redundancy. A drive failure means data loss.
  • M-series (RAID5) stripes data with parity. One drive can fail without data loss. You trade some capacity for resilience.

On a shared seedbox storing terabytes, a drive failure without RAID protection means re-downloading everything. RAID5 turns that into a background rebuild instead of a disaster.

Feral's SSD plans run RAID0. HDD plans use single drives with no RAID. If data resilience matters, PM's M-series is the clear choice.

Network and Post-Quota Behavior

Feral: truly unlimited bandwidth on HDD plans

On HDD plans, Feral offers genuinely unlimited bandwidth. No quota, no throttle, no fair-use asterisk. You can push traffic 24/7 at whatever speed the shared 20 Gbps per-server link allows, and your bill stays the same.

Feral has the network to back it. AS200052 declares 300-500 Gbps aggregate AS capacity on PeeringDB. 13 IX ports including AMS-IX, NL-ix, and ERA-IX at 100G each. Five transit providers (Arelion/AS1299, Cogent/AS174, GTT/AS3257, NTT/AS2914, Level 3/Lumen/AS3356). Users can select their preferred upstream path through a public reroute tool at network.feral.io.

SSD plans carry an off-peak caveat per Feral's published documentation.

Pulsed Media: quota-based with soft landing

PM uses bandwidth quotas that vary by plan. Hit your quota and speed drops to 100 Mbps rather than cutting off. Plans include a 25% burst allowance above the stated quota before the throttle applies.

If unlimited bandwidth is what you need, Feral wins this category. Among the providers in this comparison series, Feral is the only one with truly unmetered HDD plans. If you rarely hit your quota, PM's 100 Mbps floor is one of the higher post-quota speeds in the shared seedbox market.

Privacy and Jurisdiction

Your seedbox provider operates under the laws of its home jurisdiction. Those laws determine what data must be retained, what intelligence agencies can access, and what legal mechanisms exist to compel disclosure. For a provider-by-provider breakdown, see the privacy comparison.

Finland (Pulsed Media)

Finland ranks in the strongest tier for digital privacy. Not a member of Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, or Fourteen Eyes. Constitutional privacy protection (Section 10: secrecy of communications is inviolable). Full GDPR enforcement with an active DPA (EUR 2.4 million in fines in 2024). No mandatory data retention for hosting providers. Court-ordered surveillance only. Freedom House internet freedom score: 89/100 (2023), among the highest globally. Finland voted against Article 17 upload filters in the EU Copyright Directive.

Finland is the only EU seedbox hosting jurisdiction that sits outside all formal SIGINT alliances. For a detailed breakdown, see Finland.

United Kingdom (Feral Hosting)

The UK is a Five Eyes core member and home to the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (IPA), the most expansive surveillance legislation among Western democracies. The IPA authorizes bulk data collection, mandatory Internet Connection Records retention, and "technical capability notices" that can secretly compel a provider to build surveillance capability into its systems. The provider cannot disclose the notice's existence. Freedom House Internet Freedom score: 78/100, declining post-Brexit.

Feral's servers sit in the Netherlands (Nine Eyes member, home to BREIN's aggressive rights enforcement). UK jurisdiction applies to the company; Dutch law applies to the facility. Two jurisdictions, neither in the strongest privacy tier.

Pricing

GBP fluctuates against EUR, but the broad picture is clear.

Storage Pulsed Media Feral Hosting (approx EUR)
Entry level €3.49/mo (V1000, RAID0, 1 Gbps) ~€12/mo (Helium, 1 TB HDD, 20 Gbps)
~1.5 TB HDD €6.99/mo (M1000, RAID5, 1 Gbps) ~€18/mo (Neon, 1.5 TB, 20 Gbps)
~2 TB HDD €13.99/mo (M1000 range) ~€24/mo (Argon, 2 TB, 20 Gbps)
~8 TB HDD Plans available in M10G range ~€71/mo (Radon, 8 TB, 20 Gbps)
Dedicated server Available (MD MiniDedi series) Not available
Free tier Yes (limited) No

PM is less expensive at every comparable storage tier, often by 40-60% (see the feature comparison matrix for a multi-provider view). PM also offers a free tier, a 14-day refund policy, and dedicated server options.

The catch: Feral includes truly unlimited bandwidth and a 20 Gbps shared link on every plan. PM's budget tiers (V1000, M1000) share a 1 Gbps link with bandwidth quotas. The 10 Gbps tiers (V10G, M10G) narrow that gap.

Payment methods differ significantly. PM accepts PayPal (which includes card payments) and crypto (BTC, ETH, LTC, XMR). Feral accepts Stripe and Bitcoin only. No PayPal, which locks out a significant number of potential customers.

Where Feral Wins

  • Truly unlimited bandwidth on HDD plans. No quota, no throttle, no asterisk. This is rare in the industry and it is real.
  • 20 Gbps shared link on all plans. Even the cheapest Feral plan shares a 20 Gbps port. PM's budget tiers start at 1 Gbps shared.
  • Network transparency. AS200052 with 13 IX ports including AMS-IX, NL-ix, and ERA-IX at 100G each. Five transit providers. Public BGP looking glass and customer-facing reroute tool at network.feral.io.
  • SSH-first design for power users. If you live in a terminal and want to install your own stack without a panel getting in the way, Feral's blank-canvas approach has appeal.

Where Pulsed Media Wins

  • Owns the datacenter, not just the servers. Both own hardware; PM also owns its facilities. Vertical integration from rack to roof.
  • RAID5 option (M-series). Feral does not advertise redundant storage. PM's M-series protects against single-drive failure.
  • Finnish jurisdiction. No SIGINT alliances, constitutional privacy, full GDPR, no mandatory hosting data retention.
  • Lower pricing. 40-60% less at comparable storage tiers. Free tier available.
  • Web panel + CLI + Docker. Accessible to beginners through the browser, with SSH and Docker for power users.
  • WireGuard + OpenVPN. Feral offers OpenVPN only (one connection).
  • More payment options. PayPal (incl. cards) plus four cryptocurrencies (BTC, ETH, LTC, XMR) versus Stripe and Bitcoin only.
  • 14-day refund guarantee and dedicated servers. Published refund policy and the MD MiniDedi line. Feral offers neither.
  • Larger operation. ~187 servers across two owned datacenters versus an undisclosed number of servers at a single colo with a small team.
  • 100 Mbps post-quota floor. Higher than most shared seedbox providers.

Bottom Line

Choose Feral if unlimited bandwidth is your top priority and you are comfortable managing everything through SSH.

Choose Pulsed Media if you want lower pricing, RAID5 data protection, Finnish privacy jurisdiction, a web panel, and a provider that owns its entire infrastructure stack from server to building.


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