Minecraft-hosting.pro Review – A Service That Deserves a Chance in Spite of its Flaws
Minecraft is a pretty old game by this point but that certainly isn’t stopping people from playing it. In fact, the blocky survival game recently experienced a new surge in popularity. After many trials and tribulations, the Bedrock edition of the game finally released on the PS4 earlier this month. And, even more importantly, the game features cross-play between all platforms, which is a very important milestone for gaming in general. That said, the game started out on PC and if you’re looking for the best Minecraft experience that’s where you’re going to find it. And if you play on PC you’ll want to rent a private server where you can play with your friends without having to worry about toxic players.
Finding a good Minecraft server hosting provider can be a bit of a challenge if you don’t know exactly what to look for. Well, Minecraft server hosting just happens to be one of our areas of expertise and we’ve recently come across a provider that we think has a lot to offer. The company in question is Minecraft-hosting.pro, a provider with over seven years of experience that specializes exclusively in Minecraft hosting. Check out our review below if you want to learn more about this company because we’re going to delve deep into everything that makes Minecraft-hosting.pro tick.
Before We Begin
Even though we think Minecraft-hosting.pro is a decent provider, we want to state upfront that we don’t think this is a good option for everybody due to some of its drawbacks, which we will discuss later on in this review. If you came here looking for an all-around excellent Minecraft hosting provider we would recommend checking out Shockbyte instead. Shockbyte is a cheaper alternative to Minecraft-hosting.pro that also outclasses most of the competition in terms of features and performance. If you decide to go with Shockbyte, make sure to use our coupon code to get 25% off any hosting plan during your first month.
Navigation and Ease of Use
You shouldn’t have any issues finding Minecraft-hosting.pro’s homepage because the company uses that exact same name for its website. The first thing you’ll notice upon visiting the website is that the people who made it are very passionate about Minecraft and video games in general. The site has a retro gaming vibe that instantly catches the eye. But even though the site is quite flashy, there’s very little clutter and you won’t have any issues finding the important stuff, such as the price of the various hosting plans or the features you can look forward to.
Most of the important information can readily be found on the homepage. Aside from that, there are only two other pages you need to worry about, one of which displays all the hosting plans and prices in detail while the other lists tutorials and other useful articles. The only other thing worth noting about the site is that you don’t necessarily need to create a new account in order to log in because Minecraft-server.pro supports logins with Facebook and Twitter.
As far as the service itself is concerned, you can easily manage your Minecraft server using a custom control panel that features a similar design and color scheme as the company’s website. I don’t know about you but I always enjoy seeing this type of consistency across the board. The control panel was built with simplicity in mind, however, if you find it unappealing for some reason, you can always manage most aspects related to your server from the live web console instead. The console allows you to launch commands remotely, consult the status of your server, debug plugins, configure mods, and more.
Speaking of mods and plugins, Minecraft-server.pro offers 1-click installs for most of the popular ones. Using the same easy to use installers, you can also quickly set up various server types and custom maps without breaking a sweat. A few examples include CraftBukkit, Spigot, PaperMC, Forge, and Snapshot, among many others. And just in case Minecraft-server.pro doesn’t have a 1-click installer for the plugin or modpack you want to add, you can simply upload the JAR file to your server using an FTP client like FileZilla or the company’s own web FTP client.
Plans and Pricing
The first thing I noticed when trying to buy a hosting package from Minecraft-hosting.pro is that the company is very particular in regards to the currency you can use. To be more specific, Minecraft-hosting.pro only supports payments in EUR. I found that a bit strange considering that the company has servers not just in Europe but also in North America. That said, you can still use a service like PayPal to make the purchase because your local currency will automatically be converted to EUR during checkout, so it’s only a minor hassle. On the bright side, the company offers discounts of up to 30% off if you subscribe for several months in advance.
If you’re the type of person who likes to test things out before committing to a purchase you’re in luck because you can check out Minecraft-hosting.pro for free for a limited time. The company offers a free tier that features some pretty nice specs but can only be used for up to 10 days. In addition, you can get a free Minecraft server by joining the company’s partnership program. In order to be eligible, you need to be a Minecraft content creator on YouTube and agree to advertise the company’s products in your videos. The requirements aren’t unreasonable and you would be able to keep the server for an unlimited period of time so this is a pretty good deal for up-and-coming content creators.
As far as the standard plans are concerned, Minecraft-hosting.pro’s cheapest package will set you back €7 per month. Prices go up to €30/mo for the high-tier plans and you can also add a handful of add-ons to your package for an extra monthly fee. If you have money to spare, you can select the ‘premium hardware’ option when customizing your plan to unlock two extra CPU cores on the machine that’s powering your server. This option costs €10 per month regardless of which plan you choose. If all of that sounds a bit too expensive for your taste, you can purchase a 10-day plan for any of the servers for as little as €2.33 per month if you want to do a bit of testing and see if the service is worth more of your money.
Specs and Slots
Most hosting companies put a great deal of emphasis on the hardware nowadays but Minecraft-hosting.pro takes it a step further. The company uses cutting-edge tech to power its servers, including HP NVMe SSD storage, Samsung DDR memory, and AMD Ryzen 24-core CPUs clocked at 4.6 GHz. Even more impressively, Minecraft-hosting.pro doesn’t make its best hardware exclusive to the more expensive plans. Depending on which package you choose, you will get various amounts of RAM and, as mentioned, you can add more CPU cores to your plan if you want. Aside from that, though, the specs are pretty much identical for all plans.
If you decide to try out the free 10-day plan, you’ll get 2 GB of RAM right off the bat along with unlimited SSD storage. Trials usually come with very limited amounts of resources so I found Minecraft-hosting.pro’s offer to be pretty generous. The main downside of the free plan is that it can only support up to four players, which isn’t exactly a lot. At the same time, it’s hard to complain about the number of slots for a free server that comes with a good amount of resources.
Just like the free plan, the first paid plan includes unmetered storage and, in this case, you also get support for an unlimited number of players. However, you still have 2 GB of RAM to work with even with the first paid plan so if you decide to build a large community around your server, you’ll need to upgrade to something better. At most, you can get up to 10 gigs of memory with the most expensive package, which should be enough to ensure a smooth experience for a large community of players. And if you need a bit more juice, you can always add two extra CPU cores for an extra €10 per month.
Additional Features and Tools
Minecraft-hosting.pro certainly doesn’t skimp on the features, as you can probably tell by now. I’ve already talked about some of the most important ones in the previous sections but there a few others worth mentioning. One of the most useful ones, in my opinion, is the fully-featured files manager. The manager can be found in the control panel and allows you to easily edit any of your configuration files directly from your browser. This is a nice feature for people who don’t like poking around in the installation folder and messing around with the files there.
Minecraft-hosting.pro also gives each user a custom URL that can be set up to accept donations for your server. If you’re playing alone or with a couple of buddies you probably won’t think much of this feature but if you’re a Minecraft content creator or streamer, this sort of thing can be very useful. Speaking of useful features, Minecraft-hosting.pro also offers daily automated backups, DDoS protection, a free MySQL database, instant setup, and the ability to upload an unlimited number of plugins and maps.
All of the features mentioned earlier are free and available with all plans, including the free one. However, there are a few additional ones that you can only get if you’re willing to spend a bit of money. These include an advanced backup tool, an automated tasks scheduler, and the ability to select a custom domain for your server. The advanced backup tool is particularly useful because it allows you to recover any file or folder from a backup without having to import the whole thing. These additional tools cost between €3 and €4 per month, however, custom domains are only available with 3-month plans or longer.
Performance and Reliability
Minecraft-hosting.pro is one of those companies that you’ll either absolutely love or absolutely hate depending on how long you’ve been a client. That’s because until fairly recently the provider had a lot of stability issues. The servers used to be laggy for a lot of users and crashes were pretty common. These days, however, that’s rarely the case anymore. Over the past two months, the company invested a lot of resources into migrating all of its servers to brand new hardware and it seems to have paid off big time. Now the company’s 99.9% uptime guarantee seems more realistic than ever.
As of late November 2019, all servers are running on Ryzen 3900X-based hardware. This upgrade was no doubt costly for the company, especially when you consider that the prices of all plans have remained the same. Whether profitable or not, Minecraft-hosting.pro seems to be very proud of this upgrade judging by the fact that the company created a presentation on its website that covers the entire server assembly process in detail.
Among other things, Minecraft-hosting.pro mentions that servers are now kept at under 40% charge at all times in order to avoid overloads. Having plenty of spare power will also help in case of usage spikes and should prevent server lag moving forward. Until Minecraft-hosting.pro manages to make their servers completely stable, we recommend looking at Shockbyte as a potential alternative if you’re looking for servers that run smooth as butter 24/7.
In addition to upgrades to the hardware, the company has also been working on improving the control panel. The enhanced control panel is expected to launch sometime in January 2020 and will be accompanied by a mobile app designed to give users an additional method of managing their servers.
Location Coverage
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that location coverage isn’t Minecraft-hosting.pro’s strong suit. If you go to the company’s homepage you may notice that Minecraft-hosting.pro claims to have a ‘world fiber network.’ Well, the reality is that you actually only have two server locations to choose from, one in North America (Canada) and one in Europe (France). Granted, the 1 GB fiber network should allow you to have an overall smooth experience wherever you are located in the world. But I do want to heavily emphasize the word ‘should’.
If you have any sort of experience with online games you probably already know how important it is to play on a server that’s located as close to you as possible in order to reduce latency. Being able to choose a nearby server is particularly important in fast-paced games like first-person shooters but latency issues can definitely affect games like Minecraft as well. That’s why it’s a bit disappointing to see that Minecraft-hosting.pro only has two locations to choose from.
Customer Support
Customer support is another area where Minecraft-hosting.pro isn’t doing particularly well. I’ve read a lot of customer reviews about the company before doing my own and almost every time there was negative feedback, it was directed at either the reliability or the customer support. As mentioned, Minecraft-hosting.pro recently upgraded its servers and the reliability is less of an issue now. When it comes to the customer support, however, let’s just say there’s still a lot of room for improvement.
I wanted to mention reliability again because while the company was working on the server upgrades, it apparently also started taking steps towards improving its customer support. Support agents reply faster now and are generally more helpful, but only if you’re lucky enough. It’s still not common to have to wait hours or even days for a reply, which might be an indication that Minecraft-hosting.pro has a pretty limited number of support agents at its disposal. It also doesn’t help that you can only reach out to support agents via tickets as there is no live chat option. If you want a provider that does offer this option, along with more reliable customer support in general, check out Shockbyte.
Having said all that, Minecraft-hosting.pro does have a very impressive section dedicated to tutorials and guides so if you’re looking for self-help resources you definitely won’t be disappointed. The tutorials section covers everything from how to manage various aspects of your servers to how to easily install plugins or mods and much more. There’s even a lengthy video tutorial that acts as a step-by-step guide to everything you need to know about using Minecraft-hosting.pro.
F.A.Q.
Does Minecraft-hosting.pro Use the Multicraft Control Panel?
If you’ve worked with other hosting companies in the past you probably already know that most of them use the Multicraft control panel. Even though Multicraft is the most popular panel at the moment, Minecraft-hosting.pro decided to go against the trend and designed a new control panel from scratch. The company’s custom control panel is arguably superior to Multicraft in many ways and also easier to manage.
How Long do I Have to Wait Until I Can Play on My Server?
Assuming nothing goes wrong, you will receive full access to your new server pretty much immediately after the company processes your payment. Make sure to check your mailbox for your login credentials and other important information related to your server.
What Happens If I Forget to Renew My Server?
Minecraft-hosting.pro doesn’t work with an automatic billing system so you’ll need to manually renew your subscription before it expires. If you don’t renew your subscription, your server will be automatically deleted as soon as the subscription expires.
Can I Upgrade or Downgrade My Hosting Plan?
Customers are able to upgrade or downgrade their hosting packages at any time after purchasing them. However, once you upgrade or downgrade your plan, you’ll need to wait at least 5 days until you can repeat the process. Upgrading and downgrading can be done from the control panel so there’s no need to contact customer support to help you with the process.
What’s Minecraft-server.pro’s Refund Policy?
At the time of this writing, Minecraft-server.pro doesn’t offer any money-back guarantees.
Final Thoughts
Minecraft-server.pro is a flawed but decent option for anyone who is looking to rent a new Minecraft server. Although the company had its fair share of problems in the past, it’s clear that the people in charge are aware of them and are actively trying to improve things. The customer support, in particular, seems to be a big point of contention for a lot of people while the performance continues to be less reliable than some of its competitors despite the recent hardware upgrades. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to have a few more locations to choose from.
On a more positive note, Minecraft-hosting.pro offers a lot of great features and a custom control panel that’s a joy to work with even in its current state. Presumably, the upcoming version that’s expected to launch early next year will be even better. As far as the pricing is concerned, there’s not too much to complain about if you ask me. There are a few cheaper options out there but at Minecraft-hosting.pro you get access to great hardware along with unlimited storage and slots.
And if you’re not sure about the service, you can just grab a 10-day plan for cheap or even test things out without spending a penny thanks to the free 10-day trial. In short, you don’t really have anything to lose by checking out Minecraft-hosting.pro. Who knows, this company might turn out to be exactly what you were looking for so make sure to give it a chance.
If you’re the type of person who doesn’t like companies that are hit or miss, we recommend checking out what Shockbyte has to offer. The company’s servers don’t suffer from the reliability problems Minecraft-hosting.pro is struggling with and the customer support is a lot better thanks to the live chat. Shockbyte also has better location coverage, plenty of great features, and prices starting at just $2.5 per month. In addition, you can get an even better deal on your hosting by using our coupon code, which grants you 25% off during your first month.
