#huge money-making-scheme mc servers or public servers

[dirtcube]

Minecraft Server Hosts (Java)

So, you want to run a minecraft server for you and your pals, but you don't know where to go to get a good host worth your price that won't suck ass.

How do you know what server hosts are good? What do all the specs mean? Are they lying to you?

Now, I'm not the single voice on this stuff by any means, and I'm sure there's much more info better than what I've got... But I have been running private minecraft servers since 2012 and I feel like I have at least a little bit of knowledge and experience to share.

More below.

I am going to discuss all possible server hosting methods through the following categories: Pricing, Performance, Trustworthiness, Accessibility

I will also emphasise something important: It does not matter how many cores the CPU of your host has, minecraft runs only on a single thread even for servers. Anything of minecraft that runs on multiple threads is very much just light stuff, but the main game runs on a single thread. There ARE mods that attempt to multithread minecraft, but they are all experimental and buggy as fuck. Worth trying, but not worth depending on.

You need to figure out what CPU they use and if it works for single threads. Multi-threaded server hosts are just bragging about the hardware. You can find a list of CPU's good at single-thread processing HERE

In addition, more RAM =/= Better Performance. In fact, too much RAM can be detrimental because your CPU can't keep up with collecting the garbage data and disposing of it. In an ideal setting of your-average-friend-group you will need maybe 8-10gb of RAM dedicated. Never dedicate the full possible amount of RAM you can have for your server, always do 1GB less so the server has breathing room if necessary. So i.e if you have 12GB available, you put the max to 11GB.

Now that that's out of the way, we can begin with the review.

Let's first start with the most obvious one that I 100% suggest if you have some semblance of tech saviness or a tech savvy relative you can ask the assistance of.

SELF HOSTED SERVER

Your BEST option is always to self-host. But NOT on your own device. If you choose to run a dedicated server on the same device you intend to play on, you will have a bad time unless your PC is a beast. On top of that, your server will not be able to run 24/7. I do not recommend doing this unless you have a dedicated serverroom or a robust PC dedicated to only doing these things.

But, with self-hosted I mean specifically: Purchasing a cloud server from a decent host and installing everything yourself.

Price: The prices tend to come quite cheap for what you get. My private server is ~2TB of storage, Pretty good hardware, and 16gb of RAM available. You can get something small and cheap for only 12$ but if you want to use it for more than just minecraft you can get more.

Performance: Performance is tricky. You have to do your research on what you'll need for your server to run well. In my case, we're asking a contract change soon to upgrade the hardware of our server to an i7 because our current hardware does not handle single-thread servers very well.

However, once you've gone past the trickiness, the performance of a self-hosted server can be great and will outmatch most dedicated minecraft server providers.

Self hosting is great for Vanilla or Modded.

Trustworthiness: Its as trustworthy as you can make it. PLEASE look properly into server security so your entire service doesn't get hacked- not just your minecraft server. I can't say much on this topic as my father handles this side of things more than me.

For your minecraft server specifically, the best way to keep it safe is always keep on a whitelist, even if you wont be sharing the IP publically. Ensure you run your server not on the default 25565 port. Server scrapers will try to break in- we've had it happen with mine literal MINUTES after launching it! Server scrapers are bot accounts that will try to identify any open, unwhitelisted servers on the 25565 port. These scrapers can have the possibility of identifying multiple things about any server such as: Server version, if it's modded, its MOTD, playercount, and if the whitelist is off. (Do note that that whole rumor of Jeb_'s server being found and griefed that FITmc spread is likely entirely false, video explanation here, but this does not negate the fact that people can scrape this info rather easily.)

Accessibility: It's not accessible to people who know fuckall about tech. A decent amount of tech literacy is required to understand how to run a server like this. It is, however, incredibly worthwhile to learn. It's not convenient to self-host unless you already happen to be running your own private cloud or whatever.

MINECRAFT REALMS

Pricing: 8$/month, 30-day Realm for 10$, 90-day Realm for 27$ If you don't want to be stuck in a subscription, you pay more! How scummy. Good job microsoft.

Performance: 4GB world size max, No Modding, Render & Simulation distance is locked to a max of 8 and can not be altered in any way. This means regardless of how big YOUR personal render distance is, it won't go beyond 8 because the server locks it. One realm can have up to 3 world "slots", but only one can be active at a time. There is no static info about how much GB RAM they have dedicated, based on what I found their RAM is dynamic? It's unclear as they probably don't want to 100% disclose their specs.

Trustworthiness: It's microsoft. If you trust em, good for you.

Accessibility: Incredibly accessible as there is basically zero setup on the user's end.

Verdict: Not worth it unless you really dont want to deal with alternate hosts.

BISECT HOSTING

To be up front, I have not USED this one, so i'm speaking from what I'm seeing. and able to research

Pricing: Has Premium & Budget. a 6GB server (recommended modpack minimum) is 30$ for Premium, and 18$ for budget. The difference between Premium and budget is automatic modpack installation, Adjustable player slots, dedicated IP, automated backups, and a few others that dont matter to the average player. It is not really worth the markup.

Performance: They use Intel Xeon processors, SSD's, in general their specs are *really* good and I would not be surprised if their servers run entirely smoothly. However, the claim that a server can have up to 12 players online with only 1GB of ram (their cheapest option at 3$) is giving people false hope. Even the original minecraft realms offers gave a minimum of 2GB and did not expect more than two players to be able to play at a time.

Trustworthiness: I can't speak for this, but based on their support offers and their money-back guarantee, on top of general reviews stating they're very reliable, I would say they're trustworthy.

Accessibility: All server hosting comes with what is basically a multicraft control panel, which is very accessible. Automatic server installation is also very accessible and friendly. In general, I would say it seems to be good for anyone looking for a good server that's easy to set up and has everything you need.

Verdict: Ridiculously pricy, but if you have the money and don't want to deal with hassle its worthwhile. On top of that, a lot of modders are sponsored by them, so you can often use a promo code to get 25% off of your server and support a modder that way. (Though frankly if you want to support a modder I'd just throw a few bucks to their dono page or smth)

MC PRO HOSTING

Pricing: 6GB ram (minimum for modpacks) is 34$/month, Their customisable package looks convenient and cheap, but honestly would likely result in "set up your server with worse features for more money". It's very tricksy.

Performance: They claim you can have 100 possible players on only 6GB of ram. Even the best servers struggle with 100 players and I can tell you they certainly have more than 6GB dedicated- it's boasting numbers to sound good and it is absolutely not accurate. They also boast Intel Xeon processors which are at least good for minecraft, and they seem to have stopped boasting that they got multiple cores which was misleading.

Trustworthiness: They have a history of actively lying about their service and how well it can do things, on top of boasting in the past that having multi-threaded CPU's was good for the server. They changed this, which is good, but I personally don't like it. They provide DDoS protection and last I used them their support team was active and quick, which is good. Daily backups with no extra costs is also very kind of them.

Accessibility: Quick to set up and access, back in the day their control panel was a mess, they probably fixed it now.

Verdict: Overpriced and lying about the capabilities of their service, but if you know the limits yourself and can manage the server with those limits in mind you would have a decent server host.

SPARKEDHOST

Pricing: Offers Budget, Enterprise, and Extreme options. Assuming the 6GB modpack minimum... Budget: 6$, Enterprise 13$, Extreme 24$. Pricing is very reasonable, especially for what it offers in performance.

Performance: Offers Intel Xeon Processors *or* the equivalent. Take note of that. What is fascinating to me, is that their Extreme offers do boast MUCH better single-thread performance. Meaning they are aware how important the single-thread performance is for minecraft servers.

Trustworthiness: They don't boast how many players a server can host, which is great. However, it does boast that it has multiple cores (aka threads) available in its services. which, as you know, is basically useless for minecraft. On the other hand, as mentioned above the service does boast that single thread performance is increased for its extreme packages, meaning that they are open about the importance of that for a minecraft server. Having used this service before, I also must say that they are reliable and quite responsive on the support team.

Accessibility: Their control panel is pleasant to use and easy to understand. It's a pretty good server host and the fact they do explain the importance of single thread makes it more accessible to people trying to figure out how to find a good server. Other than that, it is basically like any other server host. It does not boast automatic modpack setup, though.

Verdict: Frankly one of my favourite server hosts and the one I would utilise if I didn't have a self-hosted one. Cheap, reliable, and doesn't lie about the capabilities of the server to you.

NITRADO

This is the server host i'm using right now while my self-hosted server is down for maintenance for a while.

Pricing: It's default preset packages all boast 2GB of ram for at the lowest like 2$. Otherwise, it offers a customisable package. The service i'm using is a customised package, where I selected 4 slots, a 30 day runtime, and its maximum 7GB of ram for modpacks. It costed me 13$ or so.

Performance: I can not find any information on either their website or online about exactly what their specs are which... Isn't great. Supposedly its Intel Xeon too? But the performance is weak to say the least. In addition, the website control panel is slow as all hell and the server frequently has strange issues that at this rate I have attributed to the server launching incorrectly when doing its restarts. Because I have only a 30-day package I'm not bothering to contact support over this but... Keep it in mind.

Trustworthiness: Since they're not up front about their specs I can't say they're very trustworthy. They also separate their preset packages based on player slots and not server performance.

Accessibility: They have automatic modpack setup for a large amount of mods but are not up to date with the most recent curseforge available modpacks. Other than that their control panel is confusing and awkward to use and its more convenient to utilise their FTP file access rather than just the ease of uploading things to their website THROUGH their website.

Verdict: Not worth the money. I was trying it out to familiarise myself with their services for a potential ARK server but if a minecraft server is like this Im not gonna trust it for an ARK server.

NITROUS NETWORKS

Pricing: 6GB it asks 24$/month. It boasts its pricing based on amount of players it can handle and you all know the drill on that. Boasts support for all mods and has automatic mod setup included in the pricing which is nice.

Performance: It's information about the specs is a little wonky to find with how they just prattle on a line of info about specs instead of a nice list, but they provide Xeon processors too that are not on the single thread CPU benchmark list. make of that what you will. They also claim to offer 9900k servers which are at the very bottom of single thread performance. I frankly would not use this for modded, but I know it performed decently on vanilla. It did begin chugging once more than 4 players were online at a time, unfortunately, and we did have one of the higher packages too.

Trustworthiness: Their tech support is quick and you can request them to put you on their 9900k servers manually without extra cost afaik. However, they recommend the modpack minimum being the 3GB RAM package which is frankly just lying to your customers about the capability of your services.

Accessibility: Probably one of the most pleasant control panels i've had the joy of using. The website is sleek, responsive, and uploading files is easy.

Verdict: It's a good service, but gets outshined by cheaper, better, and more robust alternatives.

There is a slew of other server hosts out there too that I may not be aware of, but I hope that this review of some of the known ones can aid in helping you find your most preferred server host- or at least be educational to you in some form.

#minecraft #mineblr #mc tag #dirtcube chat #this is super long but also i hope my experience and information can aid y'all in not getting scammed #if there's one awful thing its being a server manager and having to deal with a shitty server host #this is specifically aimed towards private friend groups btw not like #huge money-making-scheme mc servers or public servers #but it could be of assistance if u intend to have a public server of some sorts