Small server of friends, might be growing again soon. We've been running on 3GB RAM and are happy with that. Survival server, no elaborate mods. The more installation and other support the better.
We have been with ProvisionHost for several years and were very happy with them. They do have excellent service. But recently they moved us from Toronto to New York (which is fine, who cares) and our speed went down drastically. On my gaming machine I dropped from 120+ fps to like 75. 75 is fast enough to play the game, but the catch is, most of my players have less energetic hardware, and the speed drop was universal. Everyone went down. (Provision says they are now "offering better performance for all clients!" This has not been our experience!!!) I know one other of their clients, and they have experienced the same drop in speed, at least when I play there, to the extent that I MUST use my gaming computer, my regular computer just will not work. This might be my California location, but there are a lot of people in California.
We need very good service. This is where hosting companies either work or they don't. That means responses to trouble tickets 24/7. I prefer the McMyAdmin control panel (if only because it's the one I'm familiar with). Currently most of my players are in California, but we'd like to be accessible to the whole US. Toronto worked fine for us, so location isn't that important. Not Europe, please. SSD, MySQL, FTP access, and so forth, the usual. I want to log on and see 120+ fps on my gaming computer, not 75 plus excuses.
Money (in reasonable quantities) is not a problem for us.
This is going to sound kind of simple, but for us it really works.
Just ask for donations. Don't give anything out as a reward except maybe a green name or something, or a designation to show that you donated. The EULA says that kind of thing is OK. Remind people every now and again that if there is no money there will be no server. And send thank you notes to people who do give money.
I realize that this may not work with little children, but I'm not so sure little children should be pestering their parents to donate money to minecraft servers anyway. As players get older, into their teens, they have money, and they need to start thinking about taking responsibility, and that designation or green name is a reminder that some people do take responsibility and maybe you should too. If some of your players are adults, and even kid servers often have some adult players, they will step up and donate if they value the community and the experience. If some of your players are disabled adults who don't have money, well, you shouldn't be trying to get money from them anyway.
This is all we do at our server, we've been doing it for almost three years, and we have money in the bank, over three months ahead. And no, we don't have any big donors. It comes in small pieces.
And if you want to make more than just cover host fees? Well, stop doing it. Get a real job.
Mine is DigStraightDown, mc.digstraightdown.com. However, we only admit adults. We encourage adult players to log on. We are "greylisted" so anyone can log on to take a look.
I'm not sure what you mean by "chat commands." We are so close to vanilla that there aren't too many things you can do by way of commands. You can /sethome (everyone only gets one) and you can go there by typing /home. You can get to spawn with /spawn.
There are a few others. Log onto the server and go /help for a list.
We do give you the option, via a portal at spawn, to go into Spectator Mode. In Spectator you can fly! And teleport to other players, or to specific coordinates, or to some builds we consider outstanding. And you can die too!! What you cannot do is interact with any blocks or /sethome. Look, but do not touch! It's a great way to tour the place and scope out a location where you might want to build later.
Write down the coordinates, you're going to have to walk back to start building!
We run a server which accepts donations - we depend on them for hosting fees - but you get nothing for giving money. A green name, that's it. We have like 7 months hosting fees in the bank in advance. No problems. If you run a quality server people will be generous. You don't have to sell your soul or sell the ability to fly or something.
Of course we're all adults. That might be a factor.
You should also be aware that Mojang is taking the position that making money from servers is a violation of the end user agreement. Which they are threatening to enforce.
Are we ever still open!! Bigger and better than ever before! But still small enough to make new friends. Come and be one. Never too many friends in this world.
Need 10 slots. (Modest start: may grow later.) Requesting hardware in California because all players are here, to diminish lag. New server owner, so good support and set-up services appreciated.
This time all clients were informed promptly by email. Thanks, ProvisionHost! Appreciate the good service, hope you resolve the difficulties without too much trouble.
At this point I do want to say that we have been very satisfied with ProvisionHost, which we have used for some time. The customer service has always been great, and we all know how important that is.
We have had I think five different hosts, two of whom suddenly vanished without a trace, and the others made massive messes of other kinds. It's a rough world out there in minecrafthost-land, and there are a lot of flakes. ProvisionHost has always been a diamond among cobblestones. Anyone reading this is welcome to PM me if they want to hear more.
I'm glad you guys got the website running again, and I am very reassured.
"You mean to say you don't have access to your company's customer mailing list, internally, and that you don't have an external email address (ie. provisionhost-at-gmail-dot-com) that you can utilize to send company notice emails from???
"Secondly, I shouldn't have to sign up with Facebook, or Twitter, just so I can find out why I can't access my services with you guys. If you know what's wrong with your system, before your customers do, the responsible thing to do is to reach out to your customers and explain the situation before they even realize there's a problem… thereby saving them hours of confusion, panic, and frustration. "
I can only agree. I don't use Twitter or Facebook. This is supposed to be a business transaction. I would not do business on Twitter or Facebook even if I did use them.
Picking up from PitchBright here, an email to all your clients - you have all our email addresses - explaining what is going on would have been better public relations. Email does not cost anything.
You've been a good hosting service and I hope that continues, but you will lose clients unnecessarily over this as people try to reach client support, fail, and draw the wrong conclusions.
And no, I'm not going to chase you all over and follow your Twitter feed. It is yours to keep in touch with us.
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We have been with ProvisionHost for several years and were very happy with them. They do have excellent service. But recently they moved us from Toronto to New York (which is fine, who cares) and our speed went down drastically. On my gaming machine I dropped from 120+ fps to like 75. 75 is fast enough to play the game, but the catch is, most of my players have less energetic hardware, and the speed drop was universal. Everyone went down. (Provision says they are now "offering better performance for all clients!" This has not been our experience!!!) I know one other of their clients, and they have experienced the same drop in speed, at least when I play there, to the extent that I MUST use my gaming computer, my regular computer just will not work. This might be my California location, but there are a lot of people in California.
We need very good service. This is where hosting companies either work or they don't. That means responses to trouble tickets 24/7. I prefer the McMyAdmin control panel (if only because it's the one I'm familiar with). Currently most of my players are in California, but we'd like to be accessible to the whole US. Toronto worked fine for us, so location isn't that important. Not Europe, please. SSD, MySQL, FTP access, and so forth, the usual. I want to log on and see 120+ fps on my gaming computer, not 75 plus excuses.
Money (in reasonable quantities) is not a problem for us.
2
Just ask for donations. Don't give anything out as a reward except maybe a green name or something, or a designation to show that you donated. The EULA says that kind of thing is OK. Remind people every now and again that if there is no money there will be no server. And send thank you notes to people who do give money.
I realize that this may not work with little children, but I'm not so sure little children should be pestering their parents to donate money to minecraft servers anyway. As players get older, into their teens, they have money, and they need to start thinking about taking responsibility, and that designation or green name is a reminder that some people do take responsibility and maybe you should too. If some of your players are adults, and even kid servers often have some adult players, they will step up and donate if they value the community and the experience. If some of your players are disabled adults who don't have money, well, you shouldn't be trying to get money from them anyway.
This is all we do at our server, we've been doing it for almost three years, and we have money in the bank, over three months ahead. And no, we don't have any big donors. It comes in small pieces.
And if you want to make more than just cover host fees? Well, stop doing it. Get a real job.
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0
There are a few others. Log onto the server and go /help for a list.
We do give you the option, via a portal at spawn, to go into Spectator Mode. In Spectator you can fly! And teleport to other players, or to specific coordinates, or to some builds we consider outstanding. And you can die too!! What you cannot do is interact with any blocks or /sethome. Look, but do not touch! It's a great way to tour the place and scope out a location where you might want to build later.
Write down the coordinates, you're going to have to walk back to start building!
0
Of course we're all adults. That might be a factor.
You should also be aware that Mojang is taking the position that making money from servers is a violation of the end user agreement. Which they are threatening to enforce.
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We have had I think five different hosts, two of whom suddenly vanished without a trace, and the others made massive messes of other kinds. It's a rough world out there in minecrafthost-land, and there are a lot of flakes. ProvisionHost has always been a diamond among cobblestones. Anyone reading this is welcome to PM me if they want to hear more.
I'm glad you guys got the website running again, and I am very reassured.
0
"Secondly, I shouldn't have to sign up with Facebook, or Twitter, just so I can find out why I can't access my services with you guys. If you know what's wrong with your system, before your customers do, the responsible thing to do is to reach out to your customers and explain the situation before they even realize there's a problem… thereby saving them hours of confusion, panic, and frustration. "
I can only agree. I don't use Twitter or Facebook. This is supposed to be a business transaction. I would not do business on Twitter or Facebook even if I did use them.
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2
You've been a good hosting service and I hope that continues, but you will lose clients unnecessarily over this as people try to reach client support, fail, and draw the wrong conclusions.
And no, I'm not going to chase you all over and follow your Twitter feed. It is yours to keep in touch with us.
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