A popular pastime for many Minecraft players is spending time on a Minecraft server. Minecraft servers can be small, Vanilla worlds for you and your friends; or large, public servers full of custom games and plugins.
However big you want your server to be, we’ll show you ways to start it!
Server Hosting
One popular way of owning a server is renting out nodes from a large company. Some examples of popular server hosting companies are:
- MCProHosting
- Apex Hosting
- Pebble Hosting
- Shockbyte
Each of these server hosting companies range in price and power! Some host discount servers, while others are more expensive, but include more features!
When you rent a server from a server hosting company, they will automatically give you the IP to your server! If you plan on hosting a vanilla server for some friends, this is all you need to do. But, if you want to host a large, public server, there’s more steps.
Plugins
If you have ever been on a large Minecraft server, such as Hypixel or Mineplex, you may have noticed a lot of features you would not find in a normal singleplayer world. These are all plugins!
Plugins are defined as new functions to a host program without altering the host program itself. Plugins range from being entire mini-games to small chat messages.
There are a few different ways to acquire plugins. You can download free plugins from sites such as SpigotMC, or you can hire a developer to make custom plugins just for your server! To upload plugins to your server, you will need to use a FTP client such as FileZilla.
Overall, starting a Minecraft server is a lengthy and expensive process, but it can be worth it in the end.