Hello!
I have now been with 3 hosts, and have decided to share my opinion and hopefully inform some people of the advantages and disadvantages of them. Lets begin.
Multiplay have been hosting game servers since 1997, so they have plenty of experience and have had enough time to realize what causes their servers to lag, as a result of this, however, the prices aren't cheap! The first server I ever rented was with Multiplay. It took roughly 1 hour to set up and start playing on it, which is actually very fast! At the time I lacked money, so I chose to go with 8 players slots and 600mb RAM. This was...okay...for the first month, turning any mob on would cause immense lag. This was fixed later, though. The world ended up becoming well over 60mb, and still there was no lag, even with mobs on (ONLY monsters). The service was excellent, either through the forums or by submitting a ticket, it'd take 1 - 2 hours to get a good reply, not that this happened much. The only time I needed to was either to (A) Request Mods (more info on that in a sec) or (:cool.gif: Ask questions about their services.
It wasn't all that good, however
The control panel 'ClanForge', was very nice, but VERY slow. The console didn't show what had been said in chat or what commands had been used, let alone plugin errors that had caused my users not to be able to log in (in the end I had to download a 4+gb .log file and find it manually from there. it was HELL!) Also, the CP only had support for some plugins. There was a list that you could chose from, if it wasn't on there, then you'd have to submit a request for it, or DEAL WITH IT.
This was probably my overall favorite hosting, it was cheap, setup took about 2 hours, and I didn't have any lag issues, playing at 600mb RAM! The player cap is 512 (Which I believe to be the max that Minecraft can support anyway, correct me if I'm wrong :wink.gif: ), which of course you can change manually from the server.properties file. It uses TCAdmin as a control panel- which, while being very fast, I found to be bulky and horrid-looking. I don't remember having the option for backing up the map either. The support was top- , and updates are constantly seen on the facebook and twitter pages whenever a machine gets shut down. These guys offer FTP support too. The customer-support was awesome. I would get a response to my tickets within the hour, and the live chat, while not being online too much, was very useful! Facebook is the way to go for the best support, however, with my questions being answered by the staff and the public within minutes! I have *never* had *any* lag issues, either. Very nice.
This is the worst of the 3. I purchased a 20 slot server with 1gb of RAM for £12 a month. 'Bargain!' I thought. They offered FTP Support, SSH support, and an amazing control panel. FTP worked amazing fast. Didn't ever get around to trying SSH. And the control panel was...decent...but VERY slow and VERY annoying. I also had a bit of trouble when paying, and ended up nearly having to pay £15, which was given back a week after I raised a ticket and I payed through paypal. BUT, OH, WAIT A MINUTE, today (about half-way into the server hosting) it reappeared on my statement. I have raised a ticket, and am currently awaiting reply. The server that I rented (and currently rent) has random lag spikes, which seems to happen whenever I install a mod and restart the server for about 30 seconds every 10 seconds, about 10 times before it settles down. The console was showing NO errors.
Value for money - 3/10
Support - 5/10
Lag - 2/10
Control panel - 5/10
Overall - 3/10
Website (AVOID AT ALL COST!)
However, I would like to recommend them for their fantastic web hosting. THAT they are good at. NOT Minecraft server hosting.
Summary:
Multiplay: Fantastic if you have enough money and want an easy to use control panel
BroHoster - Fantastic if you know how to install mods to a bukkit server, and don't want to spend a lot
Hostsign - Fantastic for webhosting and domain registration. AVOID AT ALL COST IF YOU WANT A MINECRAFT SERVER.
Well, I hope that you enjoyed and that you now feel a little more educated.
Thanks
-Pebsie
I also support Brohoster. Good stuff for low prices, and their support is amazing. Practically everything is possible, you just have to ask for it. They also have a very fast MySQL server, which is very useful, especially if you are using BigBrother or LogBlock, because these plugins send and request quite a lot of data.
Brohoster was good, but it now doesn't exist, the website shut down without any warning, and now it is cancelled. We can't even get our map we used for the server, I liked it and the prices were fair, but its gone now so i'm searching for a new hoster.
I have now been with 3 hosts, and have decided to share my opinion and hopefully inform some people of the advantages and disadvantages of them. Lets begin.
Multiplay have been hosting game servers since 1997, so they have plenty of experience and have had enough time to realize what causes their servers to lag, as a result of this, however, the prices aren't cheap! The first server I ever rented was with Multiplay. It took roughly 1 hour to set up and start playing on it, which is actually very fast! At the time I lacked money, so I chose to go with 8 players slots and 600mb RAM. This was...okay...for the first month, turning any mob on would cause immense lag. This was fixed later, though. The world ended up becoming well over 60mb, and still there was no lag, even with mobs on (ONLY monsters). The service was excellent, either through the forums or by submitting a ticket, it'd take 1 - 2 hours to get a good reply, not that this happened much. The only time I needed to was either to (A) Request Mods (more info on that in a sec) or (:cool.gif: Ask questions about their services.
It wasn't all that good, however
The control panel 'ClanForge', was very nice, but VERY slow. The console didn't show what had been said in chat or what commands had been used, let alone plugin errors that had caused my users not to be able to log in (in the end I had to download a 4+gb .log file and find it manually from there. it was HELL!) Also, the CP only had support for some plugins. There was a list that you could chose from, if it wasn't on there, then you'd have to submit a request for it, or DEAL WITH IT.
Summary
Website
This was probably my overall favorite hosting, it was cheap, setup took about 2 hours, and I didn't have any lag issues, playing at 600mb RAM! The player cap is 512 (Which I believe to be the max that Minecraft can support anyway, correct me if I'm wrong :wink.gif: ), which of course you can change manually from the server.properties file. It uses TCAdmin as a control panel- which, while being very fast, I found to be bulky and horrid-looking. I don't remember having the option for backing up the map either. The support was top- , and updates are constantly seen on the facebook and twitter pages whenever a machine gets shut down. These guys offer FTP support too. The customer-support was awesome. I would get a response to my tickets within the hour, and the live chat, while not being online too much, was very useful! Facebook is the way to go for the best support, however, with my questions being answered by the staff and the public within minutes! I have *never* had *any* lag issues, either. Very nice.
Website
This is the worst of the 3. I purchased a 20 slot server with 1gb of RAM for £12 a month. 'Bargain!' I thought. They offered FTP Support, SSH support, and an amazing control panel. FTP worked amazing fast. Didn't ever get around to trying SSH. And the control panel was...decent...but VERY slow and VERY annoying. I also had a bit of trouble when paying, and ended up nearly having to pay £15, which was given back a week after I raised a ticket and I payed through paypal. BUT, OH, WAIT A MINUTE, today (about half-way into the server hosting) it reappeared on my statement. I have raised a ticket, and am currently awaiting reply. The server that I rented (and currently rent) has random lag spikes, which seems to happen whenever I install a mod and restart the server for about 30 seconds every 10 seconds, about 10 times before it settles down. The console was showing NO errors.
Website
(AVOID AT ALL COST!)
However, I would like to recommend them for their fantastic web hosting. THAT they are good at. NOT Minecraft server hosting.
Summary:
Well, I hope that you enjoyed and that you now feel a little more educated.
Thanks
-Pebsie
I suppose that's true. But I'd found out about all of these 3 from google. I had no other people influencing my opinion. But, yeah, you are right.