The Best Cheap Minecraft Server Hosting Providers of 2023
The demand for Minecraft server hosting has skyrocketed recently as the game has grown in popularity. Hosting games can be complex because they require more resources than standard web apps. Fortunately, Minecraft isn’t a giant resource hog, so you can run it on web servers with relatively low requirements.
Most server hosting plans are expensive, costing as much as $300 – $500, and not many people can afford to spend that much on their server. Fortunately, you can get a good web hosting service at affordable prices.
Before you choose a hosting provider, evaluate your needs and decide which server works best to meet them. Also, check out important aspects like speed, pricing, features, security, and authenticity.
We know that making the wrong decision will cost you dearly, which is why we have analyzed many hosting services. Based on our findings, we recommend these 10 best cheap Minecraft server hosting providers.
Key Points To Consider When Choosing a Hosting Provider
Our reviews are independently conducted with the data obtained from dozens of user reviews and surveys. We tested thousands of Minecraft server hosting brands and came up with the following 5-star rating system:
Pricing: Various hosting providers have different prices for their hosting plans. A high price does not necessarily mean the hosting provider can deliver. This article will guide you on how to get a decent hosting service on a budget. We evaluated the fees in the contract of each service provider, including for add-ons.
Support: Our experts examined these brands for the kind of customer service they render and how fast their representatives respond, including their uptime guarantee percentage and compensation packages.
Performance: One key factor to consider is how fast your server can load. A slow server will affect the smooth running of your game and mar the user experience.
User-friendliness: We used the free trial plans to check whether their services are user-friendly. If you get into any hiccups, can you call customer support fast? Will they offer full support to you when you need it, and if you run a dedicated server, will you get control panel support, or should you handle it yourself?
Features: Details about their storage plan, automatic backup, storage capacity, CPU performance, server uptime, and access to the control panel will help to determine a hosting provider’s fit for you.
The Best Cheap Minecraft Server Hosting Providers of 2023 (Bought and Tested)
- Overall score – 5
- Features – 5
- Support – 5
- User Friendly – 5
- Pricing – 5
- Reliability – 5
Overall score – 5: Hostinger is the overall best cheap Minecraft server hosting based on its server coverage, support, features, and pricing. Their game servers are located across the globe, allowing you to choose the one closest to you to ensure low latency for your players. The closer the distance, the smoother the gaming experience. All their plans come with everything you need, ranging from full support and automatic backup to a 99.9% uptime rate.
Features – 5: Some key features of Hostinger are fast SSD and high-speed CPU, multiple server types, automated backup, customizable mod packs and plugins, dedicated IPv4 and IPv6 addresses to protect your server against attacks, the ability to switch server location, advanced control panel, access to a virtual server.
Support – 5: This cheap Minecraft hosting offers customers 24/7 support via its automated system and a knowledge-based FAQ containing almost every question you might want to ask the support team. They also provide a step-by-step tutorial to guide you through the installation process.
User Friendly – 5: It takes only a few minutes to set up your server with Hostinger. Simply pick the plan of your choice and follow the easy prompts, and if you run into any issues with your process, the support team is always available 24/7.
Pricing – 5: If you are new to Minecraft server hosting and have a low budget, you can start with the Alex Plan. It already comes with everything you need. With only $6.99/mo, you’ll enjoy a 30% discount if you go for a 1-year term. The accepted payment methods are PayPal, Google Pay, Alipay, and Coingate. In addition, they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee after checkout.
Reliability – 5: With an impressive 99.99% SLA uptime, Hostinger is one of the most reliable cheap Minecraft server hosting providers. Furthermore, with their data centers in America, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, India, Lithuania, and Singapore, you can rest assured of continuously running services throughout the year, irrespective of location.
Additional parameter – Data Saver: The ability to help customers retrieve lost data without a manual backup distinguishes Hostinger. Their automated backup system will ensure that your data is safe and secure.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Easy to navigate and install
- Guaranteed 99.99% SLA uptime
- Superfast
- Affordable and reliable
- Easy-to-use interface with helpful tutorials
Cons
- Phone support not available
- Support page is not easy to locate
With its 20-year hosting experience, Kamatera easily stands out from its competitors. More precisely, it has numerous advanced features suitable for gaming websites. It’s also easily scalable and supports its users at all times. Besides this, it allows you to customize the settings of your chosen plan according to your needs in order to have a top-notch experience. Are you ready to learn more about this amazing web host?
- Overall Score: 4.5
- Pricing: 4.3
- Features: 4.7
- Performance: 4.7
- Support: 4.5
- User Friendly: 4.1
Pricing: Kamatera comes with unique pricing plans that enable you to pick the features and the capacities of the plan. However, the cheapest option starts at $4.00/month, allowing you to take advantage of 20GB SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, 1 CPU core, and an easy-to-use cPanel.
Features: Kamatera usually provides cloud-native features. Therefore, you can benefit from cloud-native services, configuring security groups, scheduling your sites’ backups, CPU and email monitoring, and image customizing.
Performance: Kamatera employs a robust Intel Xeon Platinum/Cascade Lake processor, 2.7GHz+, and it even allows you to select the type of CPU you want to include in your hosting plan. This contributes to fulfilling all of your needs and gaining faster speeds. On average, Kamatera has a response time of 340+ ms and even comes with a 99.95% uptime guarantee.
Support: Kamatera has 24/7 customer support, but some of its representatives aren’t very knowledgeable. Although you can reach the expert team via live chat, email, phone, and knowledge base and receive an immediate response, it may not be sufficient for your problem.
User-friendly: Kamatera comes with a neat and easy-to-use dashboard that comes along with an intuitive UI. Besides this, you can get full control over the crucial elements of the platform and enhance your business in no time. However, this makes it a bit challenging for beginners.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
- Response times of 340+ ms
- Fully customizable hosting plans
- Neat dashboard and intuitive UI
- Highly scalable
- Various support options
Cons:
- The cheapest plan is $4.00/month
Hostens stands out as a superb option for both novices and seasoned users. But what makes it so? Hostens offers a range of hosting solutions suited for diverse business needs and scales, coupled with a user-friendly dashboard perfect for beginners. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Let’s delve deeper into the key features and offerings of Hostens to uncover more!
- Overall Score: 4.6
- Pricing: 4.9
- Features: 4.8
- Performance: 4.4
- Support: 4.5
- User Friendly: 4.5
Pricing: Hostens comes with regular hosting options, so you can choose the best one for hosting your Minecraft website. However, the cheapest plan it offers costs only $2.00/month and includes 10GB disk space, cPanel, daily or weekly backups, and hosting a maximum of 10 websites.
Features: Hostens offers both basic and more advanced features in its plans, which is one of the main reasons why it’s so well-ranked. You get the chance to benefit from free SSL certificates, SSD storage, daily backups, one-click app installs, free domains, and a few control panel choices, such as cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin, and OpenVZ/KVM.
Performance: Hostens provides top-notch speeds and overall performance because it relies on a Cloud infrastructure. More precisely, its infrastructure comes with enterprise-grade hardware with Intel Xeon Gold, Intel Xeon E5, SSD RAID, and DDR4 ECC REG RAM processors. You can even rest assured because of its 99.95% uptime guarantee.
Support: Hostens cares for you and all of its users, which is why it comes with 24/7 customer support. You can reach the expert team by using the live chat, email, and ticketing system, or get help by exploring its knowledge base, watching video tutorials, and reading the how-to guides.
User Friendly: Hostens works with a user-friendly cPanel. But that’s not all! It employs an intuitive UI and helpful one-click installs. Because the dashboard isn’t cluttered, you will be able to navigate through it much easier and enjoy its neat appearance.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
- Pretty affordable prices
- Robust hardware
- Neat dashboard and UI
- Extensive customer support options
Cons:
- No WordPress hosting
StableHost is one of the best game-changers in the industry. This is because it will help you enhance your Minecraft experience by utilizing its phenomenal features. The best part? Its plans are available at very affordable prices. Besides this, you’ll enjoy top-notch performance and incredibly easy scalability. So let’s see what it offers!
- Overall Score: 4.6
- Pricing: 4.8
- Features: 4.7
- Performance: 4.5
- Support: 4.5
- User Friendly: 4.7
Pricing: StableHost comes with various hosting solutions – shared, reseller, VPS, and dedicated hosting. Luckily, you can start your journey for an amazing $1.75/month. By purchasing this starting plan, you will benefit from 1 CPU core, unlimited bandwidth, 25 MySQL connections, and unlimited disk space.
Features: StableHost has a broad range of features that will transform your hosting experience. The provider gives you a chance to benefit from unlimited email addresses, 24/7 server monitoring, free SSL certificates, a Cloudflare CDN, many layouts, LiteSpeed cache, and one-click Softaculous installations.
Performance: StableHost employs many MySQL databases, a strong CPU core, unlimited bandwidth, and industry-leading SSD drives. Due to this, you’ll benefit from extraordinary speeds and amazing overall performance. On top of that, the company guarantees you will face minimal downtime rates because of the 99.99% uptime guarantee.
Support: StableHost has an extensive customer support section that includes live chat, email, phone, a ticketing system, and a knowledge base where you can find an answer manually. However, the support responses are a bit slow. Still, you’ll get the requested help.
User-friendly: StableHost is one of the most beginner-friendly platforms. It has a cPanel, a drag-and-drop mechanism, and an intuitive UI. However, this also makes it easier for tech-savvy users who want to have control over their servers.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
- Robust technical features and elements
- Cost-efficient hosting plans
- Helpful customer support team
- Lightning-fast speeds and superb performance
Cons:
- Configuring the servers is a bit tricky
Contabo is one of the best solutions for a lag-free gaming experience. The main reason for this is that its servers are flexible, meaning you can tailor them according to your needs and preferences. As a result, you will have the best possible Minecraft experience and fast speeds without high ping rates. So, let’s see what else you can get!
- Overall Score: 4.3
- Pricing: 4.4
- Features: 4.6
- Performance: 4.7
- Support: 4.2
- User Friendly: 4.2
Pricing: Contabo puts its focus on VPS and dedicated hosting. Due to this, it’s one of the best choices for gaming lovers. But another great perk is that Contabo’s plans are very affordable. You can get the cheapest plan for $2.99/month. This plan includes 2 vCPU cores, 16TB of traffic, 35GB NVMe, and 4GB RAM.
Features: Contabo is a provider that relies on Cloud technology, which means it comes with pretty robust features. In other words, it comes with cPanel and Softaculous control panels, a drag-and-drop mechanism, DDoS performance, PHP support, MySQL databases, and free SSL certificates.
Performance: Contabo’s strong features and core elements contribute to blazing speeds and excellent performance. More precisely, it employs MySQL databases and SSD drives that reduce lags and ping rates. What’s more, the provider has a 99.996% uptime guarantee.
Support: Contabo has all the necessary support options. This means that you can benefit from email and phone support, a vast knowledge base, and a ticketing system. Unfortunately, you won’t get the live chat option.
User-friendly: Contabo has two control panels (cPanel and Softaculous), a drag-and-drop mechanism, and an intuitive UI. However, you may still be confused, especially if you are a newbie, as the provider has an outdated appearance and procedures.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
- Robust technical elements
- High-end security
- Affordable VPS and dedicated hosting plans
- MySQL databases
- Incredible speeds
Cons:
- An outdated platform look
Ranking comparison between the Top Providers
Best Cheap Minecraft Server Hosting Providers: Final Recommendations
In this article, we have outlined the basic guidelines that you must follow to choose the best cheap Minecraft hosting server provider. Most of these providers offer dedicated hosting, while others offer shared hosting plans. They guarantee impressive speeds, large storage, full backups, technical support, high uptime, and a cheap hosting fee.
Our top pick is Hostinger. We recommend this hosting provider because it is swift, secure, and has great features. One of the remarkable things about Hostinger is their excellent customer service; no other company beats them to it. Also, their TCAdmin is reliable and works awesomely.
How Do We Rank, and How Should You Choose Your Web Hosting Services?
Scanning the market to find a reliable hosting brand can be a lot of work because you have a lot of brands to check out; it requires time and energy, so we have decided to take the stress off you by doing the research,
We did our research based on various parameters such as performance, customer support, pricing, and reliability, and other factors we will be looking at below:
- Bandwidth and storage: You should use a Minecraft hosting provider with enough storage for your site needs, and the bandwidth should be broad enough to allow unlimited data exchange.
- Customer support: Any company that is ready for business takes customer services seriously, it shows they have their customers at heart, and you should, too, read other people’s reviews online to see if the company is always ready to take client’s complaints and questions
- Ease of use: Make sure the Server provider you want to use is easy to navigate; their user interface should be simple for users, whether a newbie or tech expert.
- Features: Amazing features mean you’ll get lots of value; what should you look for? RAM, Secure hosting, and ads- on charge; you might also be interested if they offer a free domain name as one of their packages.
- Money-back guarantees: Check the overview of the company to see their money-back guarantee plan. Some have 30 days, and others offer a 3-day money-back guarantee.
- Performance and reliability: We strongly advise users to find a reliable company to handle their Minecraft hosting. If a company is proven unreliable, don’t patronize them; you would want to avoid unnecessary downtime on your server.
- Scaling potential: You need an excellent Minecraft hosting provider that would help your server perform at an optimum level over time, so opt for a company that is constantly upgrading and updating its server with the latest technology.
- Speed: Speed is essential. To reduce the rate at which users leave your server, you need a super-fast working server that loads in seconds.
- Starting price: At HostAdvice, we don’t put price first, but the quality of the service being rendered. After all other conditions are met, you can check the starting price and make sure you are satisfied with it.
- Types of hosting offered: Minecraft Server hosting can be dedicated or shared hosting, Unmanaged and semi-managed. Your choice depends on your skill level, available time, and willingness to manage some or all aspects of your server.
- User reviews: We review users’ experiences worldwide to get a complete perspective on hosting providers before we add them to our list of recommendations.
- Other factors: We rate providers based on brand reputation, awards, and establishment date.
What is cheap Minecraft server hosting, and who is it for?
The idea behind cheap Minecraft server hosting is to help individuals or organizations choose the best and most affordable service provider to host their games.
Significant features need to be added to the standard Minecraft server. For example, online games require more resources, especially multiplayer games. A Minecraft server provider must be able to provide all these, including a consistent set of DDoS protection, which is vital for an enjoyable and trouble-free gaming experience.
In addition to setup simplicity, the control panel allowed mods and server location should be considered when choosing a provider.
Things to Remember When Selecting Cheap Minecraft Server Hosting
Managed vs. Unmanaged Minecraft Server Hosting Plan
- Managed Hosting Plan: A managed hosting plan means your server provider will do most of the work for you. All you have to do is inquire from them about the services they render. They must handle your site’s management and maintenance aspects, such as routine security checks, automated backups, and site updates.
- Unmanaged Hosting Plan: If you are willing to take charge of your server yourself, you should go for an unmanaged hosting plan. Although this plan is cheaper, it means you will be in control of all the managerial aspects of the job; you will handle the plugins, security, updates, and general maintenance of the site. The only job of your host website is to manage the server.
Pricing
Almost all service providers provide discounts for longer subscription terms. Savings begin with a yearly contract and progress to a two- or three-year contract.
A one-year subscription is a long-term commitment that binds you to the provider. You’ll likely require Minecraft server hosting for several years, so an extended contract will be good.
Are you dissatisfied with the service? Request a refund. Review the refund policy of the service provider. Most providers do not offer refunds after 30 days.
Resources
Consider the vital features you need on your server and determine if your Minecraft server hosting provider can provide them. You should pay an extra fee to your host for additional features. Here are a few server resources to look out for:
- CPU Cores: The number of cores in your server determines its power. You need as many cores as possible if you want your server to handle heavier tasks and run faster. You’ll need 4-8 cores to run serious and demanding games. However, the more cores you have, the higher your monthly fees.
- RAM: RAM allocation determines the server’s efficiency and affects the loading speed of your website. Most providers provide 4 GB – 8 GB RAM on their entry-level plans, which is sufficient for most users. However, if your server hosts many users, you will require more RAM and slots.
- Storage: A solid-state drive (SSD) is recommended over traditional HDD storage for a better loading experience.The greater your storage capacity, the better. For storage, we generally recommend 1 TB or more. However, most Minecraft servers provide unlimited storage, which should be sufficient for you.
- Uptime: Any good hosting service will promise an uptime of 99.9 percent. Most of the best-shared hosts boast 99.9 percent uptime rates, so anything less could be unimpressive. You need a hosting provider that can guarantee a service with a 99.9% uptime because of the increased competition at this level of hosting.