Why your own Minecraft Servers?
Minecraft has become very popular due to its huge online communities and loads of mods that exist for it. Many people play this on public servers, but private servers are now more popular for players that want their own isolated world. This can have its own rules and just be used with your own gaming friends.
When a player decides to set up their own server, their first choice is to set up a server on a computer in their own house. I mean, why wouldn’t you, it’s cheap and relatively straight forward to do!
However, once the gaming becomes established, you can soon run into problems using your own equipment and your domestic internet connection. In this blog post we look at why remote hosting is usually better, than hosting from a server in your own home.
Better Performance
Remote VPS servers or dedicated hardware, just run Minecraft. There is no need to worry about other applications slowing the computer down. If your home computer suddenly decides that it wants to perform an update, or another household member decides to use it to edit photos, the performance will grind to a halt.
Even if you have your own computer dedicated to Minecraft, you will be sharing your internet connection with other members of the household.
If someone is watching Netflix, someone else uses Spotify, suddenly your available bandwidth is being consumed and this will lead to lag in your gameplay.
By choosing to host your Minecraft server in the cloud, it will have the resources and bandwidth to run perfectly. Even if someone is hogging your bandwidth, other players won’t suffer.
Always on Connectivity.
If you turn your computer off, your sever connection will go down. If your internet connection drops, your server will go down. And of course, you know what will happen, during a crucial gaming session, your computer will decide to do a software update and restart – thus, once again, taking your Minecraft server down. All the active players will be kicked off, and you will have to wait before you can invite them back again.
If you have a hosted server, you can expect 100% connectivity. Reliable providers will keep your Minecraft server access for 24/7. Even if you have a power failure in your home, other players will remain connected.
It’s Cheaper (yes, seriously!)
The average cost of electricity per KWh in the UK (as of July 2022) is 0.28p. If you are running a game server, your computer will be under load and could be drawing up to 500W of power. This would cost around 14p per hour to maintain, or £3.36 per day. This translates into an eye watering £1226 a year. And that’s before any additional price rises!
Cloud hosted servers can cost as little as £4.99 per month to run, which equals about £59.88 per year. And whilst more powerful offerings may cost up to £49.99 per month, that’s still only £599 a year! An that is for a beast of a machine!
Fast Connectivity, Low Latency.
Your residential internet connection is not designed for gaming, They are optimized for downstream connections (i.e., downloading stuff). Your gaming server requires a good upstream connection too. These connections are also typically high latency.
Cloud hosted Minecraft servers have dedicated routes onto the network, which makes sure that all your players experience low latency gaming all the time.
Support
If something goes wrong with your gaming server, it’s up to you to get it working again. Whilst Cloud hosting providers won’t typically support your Minecraft installation, they will support the hardware that is running it. So if it goes down, someone will be on hand to getting working as quickly as possible.
Hipposerve’s Minecraft Servers
At Hipposerve we offer a range of Minecraft servers with preinstalled software. These start from just £4.99p/mo and can have you set up and running in just a few minutes. You can even choose which server version you wish to install, from Minecraft Vanilla, Minecraft Bedrock, Minecraft PaperSpigot and Minecraft Forge. You have full access to the console and full control over the installation via a VNC console. It’s just like having your own gaming server at home, without all the disadvantages.
To find out more about our Minecraft Servers hosted in the cloud, visit this link. For everything Minecraft, including server documentation, visit the official Minecraft site, here.
