Planhacker: Australian Minecraft Server Hosting


Hosting a Minecraft server is a great way to get your block on. But if you don’t want to run it on your own machine, what are your hosting options? We’ve rounded up every Australian Minecraft hosting offer we could find so you can compare.

Picture by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

If you’re running a home server it’s relatively straightforward to install Minecraft on it, but that option doesn’t work for everyone. Using a hosted provider means that you don’t have to keep a machine running 24/7, and saves you from having to maintain the system. The downside is that you’ll have to pay a monthly fee.

The cheapest Minecraft hosting plans tend to originate from the US, where entry-level prices are often around $5 a month. However, the lag from connecting to an offshore server can create major problems for Australian players. (If you do use a US host, then aim for one on the West Coast.) In this roundup, we’ve only looked at Minecraft hosting offered in Australia. While this is more expensive (reflecting the higher cost of bandwidth in the smaller Australian market), there’s not much value in paying for a cheaper service if it’s all but unusable.

For each provider, we’ve listed the per-month cost; how much RAM the plan provides (cheaper plans have less RAM, but sub-512MB amounts won’t support many players); the recommended number of player slots; whether the plan includes support for Bukkit and Tekkit; and any included slots for Mumble voice chat. Note that the calculation of how many player slots a given server can support is not an exact science; if you’re running Tekket, for instance, you’re likely to see much lower numbers. Some providers will strictly enforce the numbers; others will let you set your own limit (we’ve listed this as ‘User’ in the table). Some providers offer discounts if you sign up for longer-term contracts.

The full listing is in the embedded table below. You can click on the column headings to sort and filter, so you can look only at plans with a certain amount of RAM models or sort everything in order of price. You can also maximise the table with the control in the bottom right corner for easy access. We’ve included links to each provider below the table.

One local provider we didn’t include in the main table is Treepuncher because of the complexity of its pricing model. Treepuncher charges per user, with additional fees if you want to use Bukkit or Tekkit. If you want to run a very large server on dedicated hardware, Servers With Alan is also another local option.

Additions? Corrections? Recommendations? Tell us in the comments.

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