GGServers Review – A Decent Hosting Option for Beginners

GGservers is a well-known hosting provider that was established back in 2013. A Canadian-based company, GGServers specializes exclusively on Minecraft servers for the time being. However, that is expected to change in the near future as the provider is currently building the infrastructure and systems needed to support Ark: Survival Evolved, Rust, Garry’s Mod, and a wide variety of other popular games. According to the company’s mission statement, the end goal of GGServers is to provide high-quality game servers at an affordable price and make the process of setting up a server as easy as possible for all users.

So how close is the company to reaching this goal? That’s just one of the many questions we’re going to attempt to answer in this article. Opinions regarding GGServers can be pretty mixed depending on where you look, which makes it hard for interested users to decide whether or not to purchase a hosting package from this company. We want to make that choice a bit easier by providing you with an in-depth review that covers everything from specs and price to performance and customer support.

Before We Begin: A Better Alternative

Now, before we jump straight into the review we want to mention that our hands-on experience with GGServers has been overall positive. However, while conducting our research we found that there are a few other providers out there that are quite a bit better than GGServers at game hosting. If by the end of this review you decide that GGServers is not for you, we strongly recommend looking into Shockbyte instead.

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Shockbyte is another very popular provider that offers better prices and includes more features with its packages. They currently have a huge 25% discount on all their plans with other offers being released quite often, so try to keep an eye out on them.

GGServers Review: Ease of Use

GGServers is a straightforward service that can be considered beginner-friendly. The way the service works is pretty much exactly as you would expect – you visit the website, you select the game, and then you select the package you want to purchase. You may notice that it’s possible to choose between many games, however, most of them are actually labeled as “coming soon”, with Minecraft being the only supported title as of this writing.

The setup process itself is fairly intuitive and you can expect to be able to access your Minecraft server very quickly after making the purchase as GGServers offers instant activations. If you’re looking for specialized servers, you’ll be happy to know that you can find 1-click installs for many of the most popular Minecraft mod packs and plugins. A few notable examples include Spigot, PaperMC, CraftBukkit, Pixelmon, Void’s Wrath, and BungeeCord. You can also expect support for both Java and Bedrock versions of Minecraft.

Custom Control Panel for Managing Servers

When it comes to managing your server, you will be using a customized version of the popular Multicraft control panel. The panel will allow you to not only manage the server but also add or remove players, view chat and server logs, create new worlds, and more. You also have access to a remote console that you can use to check on everything that’s happening on your server without having to actually be in the game.

Overall, I found GGServers to be very user-friendly and easy to work with. If you’re new to Minecraft server hosting, you don’t need to worry about most of the technical stuff because GGServers does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. At the same time, there is a good amount of advanced options that experienced users can work with.

Plans and Pricing

GGServers isn’t the cheapest option out there but its prices are certainly not unreasonable. When compared to some of the other popular game hosting providers on the market, such as the aforementioned Shockbyte, the service is only a little above average in terms of pricing. Namely, plans start at $3 per month and can reach up to $36 per month for a Standard package. If you want to take things to the next level, you can also go for one of the Premium packages, each of which costs double the amount you would pay for its Standard counterpart, so anywhere between $6 and $72 per month.

There are quite a few differences between the Standard and Premium packages, some of which I’m going to describe in more detail later on in this article. Suffice it to say that Premium users get a number of benefits in exchange for paying extra. For instance, Standard servers run on less powerful machines and come with fewer features than the Premium ones.

Discounts for Longer-Term Subscriptions

GGServers works with a variety of billing cycles, including monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, and annually. If you decide to pay for several months in advance you will be able to benefit from discounts, which get better and better the more you are willing to pay upfront. For example, the quarterly plan shaves 5% of the price while the annual plan will grant you 15% off.

Additional Features

GGServers doesn’t offer a lot of notable features but it does have all the basic ones you might expect. You get full FTP access and DDoS protection with all plans along with a free subdomain and several server locations to choose from. If you go with one of the Premium packages, you can also expect MySQL database access and unlimited player slots.

You can still benefit from these two features even if you purchase a Standard plan and there are two ways of acquiring them. The first is to simply outright purchase them, as GGServers offers unlimited slots and MySQL database access via add-ons that cost $2 a piece. Alternatively, you can get them for free just like Premium members by subscribing to the service for at least three months in advance. If you need these features, it’s cheaper to go with the quarterly subscription as the basic plan would only cost you $8.55 for a 3-month period. Meanwhile, the same package with the add-ons would cost you $7/mo for the first month and $5 for each subsequent one if you stick with the monthly billing cycle.

Extra Features for Extra Costs

GGServers does a pretty good job of letting potential customers know what they’re getting for their money, however, there are a few interesting features that aren’t actually advertised on the home page. Instead, you’ll learn about them during the checkout process. For example, you can add a dedicated IP to your server for $3 and unlock a few extra add-ons, such as a free month of Buycraft Premium or 45 days of Enjin Premium. For an extra fee, you can have GGServers’ technical team install various plugins and mod packs to your server. Namely, those that don’t already have 1-click installs. These additional services also include technical support in case you ever need it but are somewhat expensive, ranging in price from $5 to $15.

Specs and Slots

The cheapest Standard plan ($3/mo) comes with 1 GB of RAM and support for up to 12 players. GGServers’ pricing system is very straightforward so all you need to remember is that each GB of RAM supports 12 slots and costs $3/mo. Hence, if you want to have 24 players on your server, for example, you’re going to need 2 GB of RAM, which will cost you $6 per month. Pretty simple.

You can also buy an add-on for a one-time fee of $2 if you want to unlock unlimited slots for your server. Alternatively, you could just go with a Premium plan instead and have unlimited slots without having to pay anything extra. As far as the storage is concerned, you get an unlimited amount of it with any package, regardless of whether you’re a Standard or Premium user.

Premium vs. Standard Servers

The specs of the servers themselves differ depending on the type of plan you choose. Standard servers come equipped with an Intel i7-6700k CPU, DDR4 2133 MHz RAM, and Soft RAID 1 SSD storage. As you might expect, Premium servers have slightly better specs, though the difference is honestly not too significant. A Premium plan will give you access to a server that features an overclocked Intel i7-7000K processor, DDR4 2400 MHz memory, and NVMe SSD storage.

Both types of servers come with very solid specs, however, you should notice a bit of a speed difference if you go with the Premium version as the NVMe drives are quite a bit faster than the Soft RAID 1 counterparts.

Performance

GGServers is very proud of the performance of its servers and is very upfront about what potential customers can expect in terms of speed and uptime. You can find detailed information regarding the performance by visiting the “Server Status” section of the company’s website. If you enjoy looking at statistics, you’re going to get a kick out of this page because it tells you everything you might want to know about each individual server, including its status, location, uptime, response time, and more.

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Based on this data, it would appear that GGServers has an overall uptime of 99.9895%, which is very impressive. It’s also interesting to note that some of the Premium servers have been running 24/7 without any interruptions (100% uptime) for the past several weeks or even months in certain cases. On the rare occasion when a server does malfunction, the downtime seems to last anywhere between 3 and 80 minutes. Waiting for more than an hour for your server to be back online is a bit much, however, this doesn’t happen very often.

Higher Response Times for Premium Servers

As far as the response times are concerned, these will differ based on your location. The closer you are to a server, the better the response time. On average, the response times we got range between 40 and 150 ms. I did find it a bit strange that the Premium servers actually have higher response times than the Standard ones. Given that Premium servers are quite a bit more expensive, I expected them to have lower response times but apparently that’s not the case.

There’s no doubt that GGServers does a pretty decent job when it comes to speed and uptime. That said, there are even better options out there for those who value performance. Based on the data we’ve collected, you can expect to run into some hiccups every now and then with GGServers. If you’re looking for a more reliable alternative that can keep your server running smooth as butter 24/7 we recommend checking out Shockbyte instead.

Location Coverage

The location coverage at GGServers is fairly decent as the company’s network spans across four different continents. The provider has a total of 9 global locations to choose from, 3 of which are found in North America – 2 in the US (Oregon and Virginia) and one in Canada (Montreal). There are also four locations in Europe – London (UK), Frankfurt (Germany), Roubaix (France), and Helsinki (Finland) – one in Singapore, and one in Sydney (Australia).

When you purchase a Minecraft hosting plan you are able to choose the location of your server, however, there is a little caveat. If you go for a Standard plan, you can only pick between two locations – Montreal and Roubaix. If you want to choose between all the available locations, you’re going to have to purchase a Premium package. Although the location coverage is pretty solid, I found this system to be unfair and a bit strange. There are no Standard locations in the US so the company is shooting itself in the foot here by being so restrictive to American users.

Customer Support

Users have a good amount of channels at their disposal for reaching out to GGServers’ customer support team. The company offers 24/7 ticket and live chat support along with a Discord channel. In addition, you can also ask for assistance on the discussion forums or hit up the knowledge base found on the official website for useful articles and tutorials. The only important thing missing here is phone support, however, that’s not very unusual for video game hosting companies.

GGServers has many positive reviews on TrustPilot but many users on other websites and forums seem to have mixed feelings towards the company. I mentioned the mixed reviews earlier but I want to touch upon it again in this section as they are, for the most part, related to the company’s customer support team. The general consensus is that GGServers’ support team is a bit hit or miss and it’s actually pretty easy to see why that might be the case.

Heavily Understaffed

According to GGServers themselves, they have deployed over 500.000 game servers and successfully served more than 400.000 clients since their inception. Pretty good figures, however, there’s a problem with them. The company also mentions that it only has a little over 20 staff members on its team. As you might expect, such a small team would find it difficult to provide proper support for so many clients. So although the staff might be knowledgeable and helpful, you may have to wait quite a while before one of the agents is able to help you in case of a problem.

Support Doesn’t Come for Free

A lot of users are also pretty upset about the fact that GGServers charges for services that other providers offer for free. For example, you’ll need to pay the company $10 if you need help configuring BungeeCord and $15 if you need them to help you install plugins or set up permissions on your server. Even more baffling is the fact that you have to pay for these services even if you purchase a Premium hosting package.

F.A.Q.

Does GGServers Allow Me to Upgrade or Downgrade my Server?

The company does allow that and even makes it easy for users to upgrade/downgrade their servers. In order to do so, you will need to access the client area and pay the difference in case you want to upgrade. If you’re downgrading, you won’t be able to get the price difference back, so make sure to wait until the start of the next billing cycle if possible.

Can I Change to a Different Type of Server?

Users are able to switch from one type of server to another at any time. If you want to change your server from Spigot to Pixelmon, for example, simply go to the control panel and make the switch whenever you want.

Can I Add Subusers to My Server?

GGServers allows customers to add subusers to their accounts via the control panel. You can also set permissions to your subusers, however, if you don’t know how to do it yourself, you’ll need to pay GGServers $15 to help you out.

Is it Possible to Upload a Custom World?

You can indeed upload a previously created world to your server. All you need to do is upload the files to the server and the new world should automatically show up in the control panel.

Does GGServers Have a Money-Back Guarantee?

Yes, but the refund policy is less than impressive. You can only request a full refund from GGServers within the first 24 hours of making a purchase. Once the 24 hours are up, there is no guarantee that you will be able to get your money back.

Final Thoughts

There’s a very good reason why GGServers is one of the most popular providers of Minecraft servers on the market right now. The company shines in the performance department and its prices are overall pretty reasonable. There’s also not too much to complain about when it comes to the features as the company manages to cover most of the basic ones.

Having said all that, it’s a bit hard to recommend the company’s Premium plans given their high price tags, especially since you’re not getting much extra in terms of performance. If you decide to go with a Standard package, on the other hand, you would be missing out on a couple of important features like MySQL database access and unlimited slots. You can buy these things separately, however, I feel like they should be included in the base package.

The Big Downside

This brings us to one of GGServers’ main drawbacks – the need to pay extra for many features and services. While adding unlimited slots to your package will only cost you a couple of bucks, asking for help with installing certain plugins or configuring certain tools will set you back up to $15. That’s a bit too much for a service that many other providers offer for free. This ties into the overall subpar customer support, which is another big con in my book.