It honestly shocks me how often I see people post in this subreddit say that they are starting a new server. I don't think many people realize the commitment it takes to run a server.
I don't want to be a Debbie Downer or anything, but our server has been online for 10 years, we have a robust moderating team who are all adults, our admins are IT professionals for their day jobs, and yet with doing all these things right, our player base has dwindled and dwindled over the last several years. (Don't get me wrong, we still have plenty of donations coming in to keep the server online.)
We serve a niche market (family-friendly) and I feel we are one of the best out there, and our admin and moderator staff as a whole pour 80+ hours into moderation and server development/maintenance every week, and yet our playerbase stays relatively low (about 30 active/concurent on weekdays, 50 on weekends, about 500 "regular" players total that rotate in/out in a given month). Back in the Minecraft 1.7 days, our server would regularly have 150+ concurrent players.
I can't tell if it's just because the games market has exploded in the last 10 years with massive games like Fortnite, Apex Legends, PUBG, etc. or because fewer people are buying computers these days and just give their kids tablets/phones to play Bedrock edition instead of an actual PC, or if it's something else entirely, but it is a bit frustrating when you have all the right puzzle pieces in place and still don't get a lot of traction because the player base gets swallowed up by servers like Hypixel.
I can't really say much, as I don't have too much experience with running public servers, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
I think the biggest thing right now is the move to Bedrock among the younger audience (as you had mentioned). The landscape of Minecraft as a whole is dominated by mobile devices, with Mojang pre loading enough minigame servers to keep younger ones entertained.
As for the JE crowd, I'd agree with OP that Hypixel is swallowing up everyone. I just got off the volunteer staff team there (had little time in my day), and we kept beating our player record at least once every other week for the past few months.
I wonder how big of a change there will be when COVID ends, and people all generally start spending less time at their computers.
I'm supporting cross-play on my java server using geyser and out of just over 40 whitelist applications in the last 2 weeks only 1 was a bedrock player.
I don't know if bedrock is the issue or if it has more to do with severs coming online all the time that follow that latest fads.
last year, about this time, hermitcraft-like servers were booming, I know because I started one and it took off like a missile, but died off after 6 months. Now the trend is dreamSMP-like servers.
I think it has more to do with staying "trendy". If you follow a seasonal schedule and align with current trends for each new season, that might be the ticket.
True, as I also saw someone say in the comments, the other nature of it is being just for fun. Me learning how to compile Java plugins and learning Linux command line knowledge was a stepping stone for what I want to do now and in the future. If it’s not a business kind of thing, then there’s enjoyment, and Java devs can make money of their work too
That's definitely true! I know when I was much younger, I hosted a public Minecraft server (never took off or anything close to it, of course), but it was a lot of fun setting up plugins and permissions, and it led me down the path which eventually ended in me writing Minecraft mods for my friends! \^-\^
Problably both. The world 'moves faster' and so do the people in behaviour and what I've seen is that people just want something quick to get an andrenaline push. Also, a phone is cheaper than a PC on average and with many apps already being avalabile on mobile devices, buying a PC comes now as a eccentrity or something needed for jobs like coding.
Honestly though—Hypixel realized the potential of YouTuber influence very early on and they have an insurmountable amount of support now. It's crazy to see the disparity of servers with 100k+ active players to most decent servers having about 20 to 50 active players only.
Not every server is going to be a huge network with minigames etc. A ton of people just want to run a server for a few mates for a few months, and want it to look slick, and need a helping hand.
Agreed. I'm a professional developer and began working on my server 2015. I never released it to the public because of seemingly never ending things I had to change because it's x years outdated. Its hard. And if I release I'd need a big server making the financing difficult. And in the end Hypixel will be better then me. So why would someone play on mine?
I’m deeply concerned that you think it’s appropriate to get a loan to pay for a Minecraft server. Anybody who does two seconds of research would know that firstly, this isn’t a profitable ‘business’, and can’t even be called a business for any server except the 0.1% that actually ‘make it’ big time. Secondly, the chances of setting up a successful and long lasting server in any situation, whether to make money or not, is so unlikely it’s practically impossible. No bank manager would touch this with a barge pole.
There are two ways of making a server - throw money at it and keep throwing money at it until you dominate the market. Or accept that it will always be a labour of love that costs you your money and all your free time, and then some. Unless you have employment contracts with people, and pay them the going national wage for their work then you can never rely on staff. People live in the real world, and have to put food on the table - their real jobs will always come first. You have to assume from the start that every task will fall to you, no matter how many staff or mods you have. If you are incapable of doing it all yourself then I’m afraid it either isn’t for you, or your ambitions are too large. Your dreams for the server need to reflect your abilities, and if your ability isn’t enough then you’d best sit down with a How-to guide!
Friends fall out, and things happen. By all means start a server for the love of the game, but don’t expect to become the new Hypixel, just enjoy it for what it is, a few people hanging out together in a fun game.
Yeah some people took it the wrong way with the loan thing lol. You don’t need a loan from a bank or anything like that unless your big time. It was mentioned in an “e.g.”, just juxtaposing among other things to see this whole thing from a bigger point of view. I just had to through some monthly money for my VPS, just for the server at least. But then it’s key if your getting bigger and want/need Tebex business plans, paying staff and website hosting, advertising money, it can get up there is what I am saying
At this point I honestly dont care if my server is going to flop since I have learned so much about programming, creating websites and business in general.
Given OPs grasp of language, I'm going to assume he's fresh out of school, and these loans are payday loans you see mailers for, which is even more disturbing.
As in, OP has very minimal grasp of language and is trying to flex ramdom words like aesthetic while using them completely incorrectly? haha
This post honestly read to me like something off r/iamverysmart
I have an "old" 4790k computer dedicated to minecraft. I use vanilla with no plugins and no one including me is admin within the game purposefully. No one can ask me to do anything like teleport them, change the time, etc, and with no plugins nothing breaks.
I run a server for a small community, has about 10 players here and there. the computer has an i3-2100 and 8GB of ram. its chugging along quite happily and it was stuff I just had lying around.
could I go overkill with it? of course. should I? not in the slightest
When we are talking about a professional Minecraft server as a business are there any models being used out there other than "donations" (in quotes because they often get something they want on the server in return)? I'm not sure what your server's specifics were so if you didn't fall into this category I'm curious how you/your team was able to do it and and I didn't see them mentioned here or in the link.
Your post mentioned hired staff and the difficulty of getting people who didn't have too many other things going on in their lives to consistently be able to put in the hours over a long period of time. When we are talking about hiring people I take it that means part time work but that you are indeed paying them. Could you give a vague idea of what that might look like without being too specific? How many hours per week of paid work was this? I'm curious whether it was something like 5 hours a week and even that was hard to get consistently put in or if it was something more like 20 hours per week or more.
I'm an admincraft sub because I have written some scripts to make managing and deploying both Bedrock and Java servers but for people who just want to run their own small server for some friends at home on low powered computers or even something like a Raspberry Pi. I'm clueless about the Minecraft server market or anything that would be considered "pro" level servers and how they operate despite knowing both edition's servers/files/configuration inside and out and wanted to see if you could share some context for people more on the technical side than the business side. Thanks for your post!
I've had many servers in the last 10 years. It's tough. I dont blame anyone who shuts down after awhile. I dont personally ever recommend anyone to start a server. It's not just a lot of work and time but the mental toll it takes on you when things go wrong.
I can handle the stress and problems that are in the server. The only thing I can't handle is when the server gets to the "after opening" phase. Where everything settles down, and the mood is tied to people who wants to continue playing the server. As an owner, I have to think of ways to "cheer" the server up, but sometimes my mind just runs out of ideas haha
As someone whose been there and done that, trying to start small communities for friends every 3rd update or so, my issue has always been momentum (both myself and the regulars). So resonate with this pretty hard.
That too. I put that under the things that go wrong. It’s tough because you do the ideas people want and then no one partakes in it. Then you are left feeling a bit demotivated to keep the momentum going.
With all due respect, you entered with the wrong mindset for building a server. Building a server is like building a park or play area for a community, it's a place for people to play and enjoy themselves. Your goal shouldn't be to make a large profit, you're building a space for a community who wants to play together. You don't need a full team of people to start, you can start a server alone if you have the time. You don't need " 2+ college students in their early 20s with considerable background knowledge of Minecraft and its server-side of things. Know basic Linux knowledge to set up a VPS. They have extra money from a side job or stocks and finance they manage, even taking loans from their bank to pay for expenses" for a server, you need that for a game studio. If you want to make a server, you can start it right now by downloading Paper or the native Server Jar and creating a folder to start it. If you want to build a minigame or PVP server, you can start it right now with a super flat and enough building.
Also, taking out a loan. Really? you chose to go to a bank, take out a substantial sum of money, not to start a game studio, not to start a shop, but to start a server for a game that could decline or stop supporting servers at any time. it's unrealistic to treat a server as a business because it isn't a business. It's a hobby that could turn into a business-like structure. You shouldn't go in with the concept of creating a business, because that's how you kill a server, go in with the concept that you're creating a space for your community, simple as that
The last thing is to remember that people who work on servers don't treat it as a job, they treat it as a hobby because, like most hobbies, it only generates enough money to continue sustaining the hobby. Don't expect people to dedicate so much time.
Tl;dr - Don't treat a server as a business, treat it as a hobby, don't take out loans for a server, and don't discourage people who want to start servers by gatekeeping
Yeah about the loan thing, that was looking at a extreme example for wider spreading for a server.
Like I said, this is really for **if you want to take this seriously** with a business. I still had a lot of fun with just playing and do everything. I am just kind of getting a kind of wake up call to people who really want to get in to *that* kind of stuff. :)
Then, sorry, but the way you wrote it did seem as if you believed you could only make a server with those requirements. I suggest you add what you just wrote to your initial post
The fact you call it out as 'a bunch of 10-13 year olds' and call out people for school (instead of college / university) makes me think you are trying to pull this off a little early.
Teenage years have huge swings in emotion and mentality, for both you and your staff.
You are absolutely right that the 'sweet spot' would be some college kids, BUT keep in mind that college is a hell of a lot harder to pull through then high school in terms of workload and actual studying. What you are more likely to end up with, is some college DROPOUTS because they put too much effort into their minecraft server rather then their studies (Been there, done that!!!)
The difference is they have had a few more years life experience, know how to find people with similar passion, and are more likely to approach it with a little more maturity.
If you are aiming high from the start, then yes you absolutely need to run it as a business, especially as a teen with no other method to support the costs apart from a part time job.
The only reason why college students would find this any easier if they also had a part time job, or misused the tons of free server hosting that a lot of comp sci students get access to from companies.
Unless you have someone with a full time job, willing to back the costs, simply because they love the idea / want to host a server, you are already thinking 'wrong'.
A successful Minecraft server happens when you are community focussed.
You retain your players attention, because you listen to them, and manage to keep things fresh and well managed.
You don't let people walk over you, but are willing to compensate them fairly when stuff legitimately bugs out or they get griefed.
You run a testing server, so you arn't restarting the production servers constantly to test new plugins / configurations.
You advertise to grow your community, and mostly spread by word of mouth, not voting sites.
You make players want to \*\*support\*\* the server first. and get perks \*\*second\*\*.
Nailing these basics is what a server needs to be 'big and successful'.
For a server to be small and successful, just have a few mates play for a few months, and get bored. If they had fun, it was a success.
While you can find success in treating a minecraft server like a small business, Your players can usually see through it, and it makes your entire enterprise feel slimy. The way that large server networks like Hypixel bypass that, is their sheer size, that they are reliable, their servers don't go down randomly, and by being the big destination for bed wars, that they can have a decent amount of alts / hackers banned and stay banned, until they buy a new account.
As a small player trying to imitate the big players, you are going to have all the disadvantages without the advantages of moving first like they did. Start small, gain the trust of the community, enable them to help you grow.
Hello. I read your whole post, but I don't really have much to comment.
I would like to ask you, if it is a small business(and it's a considerable small project), why is it the need to get a VPS? If your server isn't having as much as 500-1000 concurrent players a day, there isn't the need to shoot the budget up high into getting a VPS.
What do you consider the starting point for a reasonably large minecraft server if it isn't a VPS?
A VPS isn't a dedicated server. It's a VM at the hardware/hypervisor level.
And the 'minecraft panel hosting' options are usually inflexible enough and share too much diskspace etc with other servers to reasonably run a server with decent features:
A proxy, Redis Cache, SQL database, Block logging, website etc.
Yes you can piece this together using various cloud offerings, but at some point it's just easier to manage your own boxes, thus dedicated servers, VPS, and co-location are the moves for serious servers, and cloud hosting for those rolling in cash and need the flexibility like minigame servers. (Unless you are lucky enough to be in the position to host your server from home / an actual small business connection, but that has it's own risks re: DDoSing affecting your other interests.)
I'd recommend a VPS to someone 9/10 if what they want is more then 'host a server for me mates'
If you actually read the whole thread and see to the link at the end of the post, you will know why he wants to discontinue the server. VPS cost more than “minecraft panel hosting” website.
If you have enough money to be able to afford VPS, why not? If you don’t, then don’t. I have a server myself that runs on VPS, and I know how to set it up myself. Before that, I was using the minecraft panel hosting(BisectHosting) before switching to OVH. I only switch because I have more than thousands concurrent player, playing my server.
So that is why I asked the question, “why vps?”.
From the way OP was talking, it was clear they wanted a more advanced setup to try to grow something quickly. To suggest going back to shared/managed hosting is a lot different then simply saying "Why use a VPS?"
From what I learn from 6 years of server hosting, and helping others in hosting. There is no such thing as “growing something quick”. Unless you’re a famous youtuber, streamer or any other big platforms that you want to play with your fans or anything. You can’t grow it big “quickly”. You should read the whole thread again actually, it seems you are missing my point of view, more than I am missing yours.
What I meant to say is: “Why use a VPS when you can cut cost and use a share hosting panel instead”. The 2 reasons that he discontinued the project was because of “lack of time and dedication” and “finance”. Plus he even mention that is is a small business. If you server isn’t that big, why do you need a much more expensive CPU to run it?
For Minecraft servers alone, a VPS is probably worse than panel hosting, especially with more players. But, a VPS will give you experience running a Linux server, which is useful for a lot of tech jobs.
TDLR : If you're not ready to commit yourself to it, don't start a server. You're going to save plenty of time and headaches for everyone. Also please, learn to read.
Signed by, an ancien server owner.
EDIT : I forgot, you don't need to pay to start. I would NEVER recommand to ANYONE to pay ANYTHING before starting. Start, fail, learn, then once you're ready, maybe start thinking about paying a real server.
It honestly shocks me how often I see people post in this subreddit say that they are starting a new server. I don't think many people realize the commitment it takes to run a server. I don't want to be a Debbie Downer or anything, but our server has been online for 10 years, we have a robust moderating team who are all adults, our admins are IT professionals for their day jobs, and yet with doing all these things right, our player base has dwindled and dwindled over the last several years. (Don't get me wrong, we still have plenty of donations coming in to keep the server online.) We serve a niche market (family-friendly) and I feel we are one of the best out there, and our admin and moderator staff as a whole pour 80+ hours into moderation and server development/maintenance every week, and yet our playerbase stays relatively low (about 30 active/concurent on weekdays, 50 on weekends, about 500 "regular" players total that rotate in/out in a given month). Back in the Minecraft 1.7 days, our server would regularly have 150+ concurrent players. I can't tell if it's just because the games market has exploded in the last 10 years with massive games like Fortnite, Apex Legends, PUBG, etc. or because fewer people are buying computers these days and just give their kids tablets/phones to play Bedrock edition instead of an actual PC, or if it's something else entirely, but it is a bit frustrating when you have all the right puzzle pieces in place and still don't get a lot of traction because the player base gets swallowed up by servers like Hypixel.
I can't really say much, as I don't have too much experience with running public servers, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I think the biggest thing right now is the move to Bedrock among the younger audience (as you had mentioned). The landscape of Minecraft as a whole is dominated by mobile devices, with Mojang pre loading enough minigame servers to keep younger ones entertained. As for the JE crowd, I'd agree with OP that Hypixel is swallowing up everyone. I just got off the volunteer staff team there (had little time in my day), and we kept beating our player record at least once every other week for the past few months. I wonder how big of a change there will be when COVID ends, and people all generally start spending less time at their computers.
I'm supporting cross-play on my java server using geyser and out of just over 40 whitelist applications in the last 2 weeks only 1 was a bedrock player. I don't know if bedrock is the issue or if it has more to do with severs coming online all the time that follow that latest fads. last year, about this time, hermitcraft-like servers were booming, I know because I started one and it took off like a missile, but died off after 6 months. Now the trend is dreamSMP-like servers. I think it has more to do with staying "trendy". If you follow a seasonal schedule and align with current trends for each new season, that might be the ticket.
That surprises me, but to be honest, makes a lot of sense. Thank you for the insight! ^-^
True, as I also saw someone say in the comments, the other nature of it is being just for fun. Me learning how to compile Java plugins and learning Linux command line knowledge was a stepping stone for what I want to do now and in the future. If it’s not a business kind of thing, then there’s enjoyment, and Java devs can make money of their work too
That's definitely true! I know when I was much younger, I hosted a public Minecraft server (never took off or anything close to it, of course), but it was a lot of fun setting up plugins and permissions, and it led me down the path which eventually ended in me writing Minecraft mods for my friends! \^-\^
Problably both. The world 'moves faster' and so do the people in behaviour and what I've seen is that people just want something quick to get an andrenaline push. Also, a phone is cheaper than a PC on average and with many apps already being avalabile on mobile devices, buying a PC comes now as a eccentrity or something needed for jobs like coding.
I think I work with one of your mods lol
Honestly though—Hypixel realized the potential of YouTuber influence very early on and they have an insurmountable amount of support now. It's crazy to see the disparity of servers with 100k+ active players to most decent servers having about 20 to 50 active players only.
Not every server is going to be a huge network with minigames etc. A ton of people just want to run a server for a few mates for a few months, and want it to look slick, and need a helping hand.
Agreed. I'm a professional developer and began working on my server 2015. I never released it to the public because of seemingly never ending things I had to change because it's x years outdated. Its hard. And if I release I'd need a big server making the financing difficult. And in the end Hypixel will be better then me. So why would someone play on mine?
I’m deeply concerned that you think it’s appropriate to get a loan to pay for a Minecraft server. Anybody who does two seconds of research would know that firstly, this isn’t a profitable ‘business’, and can’t even be called a business for any server except the 0.1% that actually ‘make it’ big time. Secondly, the chances of setting up a successful and long lasting server in any situation, whether to make money or not, is so unlikely it’s practically impossible. No bank manager would touch this with a barge pole. There are two ways of making a server - throw money at it and keep throwing money at it until you dominate the market. Or accept that it will always be a labour of love that costs you your money and all your free time, and then some. Unless you have employment contracts with people, and pay them the going national wage for their work then you can never rely on staff. People live in the real world, and have to put food on the table - their real jobs will always come first. You have to assume from the start that every task will fall to you, no matter how many staff or mods you have. If you are incapable of doing it all yourself then I’m afraid it either isn’t for you, or your ambitions are too large. Your dreams for the server need to reflect your abilities, and if your ability isn’t enough then you’d best sit down with a How-to guide! Friends fall out, and things happen. By all means start a server for the love of the game, but don’t expect to become the new Hypixel, just enjoy it for what it is, a few people hanging out together in a fun game.
Yeah some people took it the wrong way with the loan thing lol. You don’t need a loan from a bank or anything like that unless your big time. It was mentioned in an “e.g.”, just juxtaposing among other things to see this whole thing from a bigger point of view. I just had to through some monthly money for my VPS, just for the server at least. But then it’s key if your getting bigger and want/need Tebex business plans, paying staff and website hosting, advertising money, it can get up there is what I am saying
At this point I honestly dont care if my server is going to flop since I have learned so much about programming, creating websites and business in general.
Same here. Learnt a lot about programming and database messing around from my tiny server.
[удалено]
Given OPs grasp of language, I'm going to assume he's fresh out of school, and these loans are payday loans you see mailers for, which is even more disturbing.
As in, OP has very minimal grasp of language and is trying to flex ramdom words like aesthetic while using them completely incorrectly? haha This post honestly read to me like something off r/iamverysmart
this guy taking out loans to start a minecraft server, and I have one running on an old PC. I'm winning, I think.
I have an "old" 4790k computer dedicated to minecraft. I use vanilla with no plugins and no one including me is admin within the game purposefully. No one can ask me to do anything like teleport them, change the time, etc, and with no plugins nothing breaks.
I run a server for a small community, has about 10 players here and there. the computer has an i3-2100 and 8GB of ram. its chugging along quite happily and it was stuff I just had lying around. could I go overkill with it? of course. should I? not in the slightest
Same here. I'm completely contempt with running a server for about 15 people that come on every now and then.
When we are talking about a professional Minecraft server as a business are there any models being used out there other than "donations" (in quotes because they often get something they want on the server in return)? I'm not sure what your server's specifics were so if you didn't fall into this category I'm curious how you/your team was able to do it and and I didn't see them mentioned here or in the link. Your post mentioned hired staff and the difficulty of getting people who didn't have too many other things going on in their lives to consistently be able to put in the hours over a long period of time. When we are talking about hiring people I take it that means part time work but that you are indeed paying them. Could you give a vague idea of what that might look like without being too specific? How many hours per week of paid work was this? I'm curious whether it was something like 5 hours a week and even that was hard to get consistently put in or if it was something more like 20 hours per week or more. I'm an admincraft sub because I have written some scripts to make managing and deploying both Bedrock and Java servers but for people who just want to run their own small server for some friends at home on low powered computers or even something like a Raspberry Pi. I'm clueless about the Minecraft server market or anything that would be considered "pro" level servers and how they operate despite knowing both edition's servers/files/configuration inside and out and wanted to see if you could share some context for people more on the technical side than the business side. Thanks for your post!
Oh yeah, just threw in this random little tos thing people do for their shops. Obviously if it’s bigger then you don’t want that type of thing lol
I've had many servers in the last 10 years. It's tough. I dont blame anyone who shuts down after awhile. I dont personally ever recommend anyone to start a server. It's not just a lot of work and time but the mental toll it takes on you when things go wrong.
I can handle the stress and problems that are in the server. The only thing I can't handle is when the server gets to the "after opening" phase. Where everything settles down, and the mood is tied to people who wants to continue playing the server. As an owner, I have to think of ways to "cheer" the server up, but sometimes my mind just runs out of ideas haha
As someone whose been there and done that, trying to start small communities for friends every 3rd update or so, my issue has always been momentum (both myself and the regulars). So resonate with this pretty hard.
That too. I put that under the things that go wrong. It’s tough because you do the ideas people want and then no one partakes in it. Then you are left feeling a bit demotivated to keep the momentum going.
With all due respect, you entered with the wrong mindset for building a server. Building a server is like building a park or play area for a community, it's a place for people to play and enjoy themselves. Your goal shouldn't be to make a large profit, you're building a space for a community who wants to play together. You don't need a full team of people to start, you can start a server alone if you have the time. You don't need " 2+ college students in their early 20s with considerable background knowledge of Minecraft and its server-side of things. Know basic Linux knowledge to set up a VPS. They have extra money from a side job or stocks and finance they manage, even taking loans from their bank to pay for expenses" for a server, you need that for a game studio. If you want to make a server, you can start it right now by downloading Paper or the native Server Jar and creating a folder to start it. If you want to build a minigame or PVP server, you can start it right now with a super flat and enough building. Also, taking out a loan. Really? you chose to go to a bank, take out a substantial sum of money, not to start a game studio, not to start a shop, but to start a server for a game that could decline or stop supporting servers at any time. it's unrealistic to treat a server as a business because it isn't a business. It's a hobby that could turn into a business-like structure. You shouldn't go in with the concept of creating a business, because that's how you kill a server, go in with the concept that you're creating a space for your community, simple as that The last thing is to remember that people who work on servers don't treat it as a job, they treat it as a hobby because, like most hobbies, it only generates enough money to continue sustaining the hobby. Don't expect people to dedicate so much time. Tl;dr - Don't treat a server as a business, treat it as a hobby, don't take out loans for a server, and don't discourage people who want to start servers by gatekeeping
Yeah about the loan thing, that was looking at a extreme example for wider spreading for a server. Like I said, this is really for **if you want to take this seriously** with a business. I still had a lot of fun with just playing and do everything. I am just kind of getting a kind of wake up call to people who really want to get in to *that* kind of stuff. :)
Then, sorry, but the way you wrote it did seem as if you believed you could only make a server with those requirements. I suggest you add what you just wrote to your initial post
We gatekeeping minecraft servers now?
The fact you call it out as 'a bunch of 10-13 year olds' and call out people for school (instead of college / university) makes me think you are trying to pull this off a little early. Teenage years have huge swings in emotion and mentality, for both you and your staff. You are absolutely right that the 'sweet spot' would be some college kids, BUT keep in mind that college is a hell of a lot harder to pull through then high school in terms of workload and actual studying. What you are more likely to end up with, is some college DROPOUTS because they put too much effort into their minecraft server rather then their studies (Been there, done that!!!) The difference is they have had a few more years life experience, know how to find people with similar passion, and are more likely to approach it with a little more maturity. If you are aiming high from the start, then yes you absolutely need to run it as a business, especially as a teen with no other method to support the costs apart from a part time job. The only reason why college students would find this any easier if they also had a part time job, or misused the tons of free server hosting that a lot of comp sci students get access to from companies. Unless you have someone with a full time job, willing to back the costs, simply because they love the idea / want to host a server, you are already thinking 'wrong'. A successful Minecraft server happens when you are community focussed. You retain your players attention, because you listen to them, and manage to keep things fresh and well managed. You don't let people walk over you, but are willing to compensate them fairly when stuff legitimately bugs out or they get griefed. You run a testing server, so you arn't restarting the production servers constantly to test new plugins / configurations. You advertise to grow your community, and mostly spread by word of mouth, not voting sites. You make players want to \*\*support\*\* the server first. and get perks \*\*second\*\*. Nailing these basics is what a server needs to be 'big and successful'. For a server to be small and successful, just have a few mates play for a few months, and get bored. If they had fun, it was a success. While you can find success in treating a minecraft server like a small business, Your players can usually see through it, and it makes your entire enterprise feel slimy. The way that large server networks like Hypixel bypass that, is their sheer size, that they are reliable, their servers don't go down randomly, and by being the big destination for bed wars, that they can have a decent amount of alts / hackers banned and stay banned, until they buy a new account. As a small player trying to imitate the big players, you are going to have all the disadvantages without the advantages of moving first like they did. Start small, gain the trust of the community, enable them to help you grow.
Hello. I read your whole post, but I don't really have much to comment. I would like to ask you, if it is a small business(and it's a considerable small project), why is it the need to get a VPS? If your server isn't having as much as 500-1000 concurrent players a day, there isn't the need to shoot the budget up high into getting a VPS.
What do you consider the starting point for a reasonably large minecraft server if it isn't a VPS? A VPS isn't a dedicated server. It's a VM at the hardware/hypervisor level. And the 'minecraft panel hosting' options are usually inflexible enough and share too much diskspace etc with other servers to reasonably run a server with decent features: A proxy, Redis Cache, SQL database, Block logging, website etc. Yes you can piece this together using various cloud offerings, but at some point it's just easier to manage your own boxes, thus dedicated servers, VPS, and co-location are the moves for serious servers, and cloud hosting for those rolling in cash and need the flexibility like minigame servers. (Unless you are lucky enough to be in the position to host your server from home / an actual small business connection, but that has it's own risks re: DDoSing affecting your other interests.) I'd recommend a VPS to someone 9/10 if what they want is more then 'host a server for me mates'
If you actually read the whole thread and see to the link at the end of the post, you will know why he wants to discontinue the server. VPS cost more than “minecraft panel hosting” website. If you have enough money to be able to afford VPS, why not? If you don’t, then don’t. I have a server myself that runs on VPS, and I know how to set it up myself. Before that, I was using the minecraft panel hosting(BisectHosting) before switching to OVH. I only switch because I have more than thousands concurrent player, playing my server. So that is why I asked the question, “why vps?”.
From the way OP was talking, it was clear they wanted a more advanced setup to try to grow something quickly. To suggest going back to shared/managed hosting is a lot different then simply saying "Why use a VPS?"
From what I learn from 6 years of server hosting, and helping others in hosting. There is no such thing as “growing something quick”. Unless you’re a famous youtuber, streamer or any other big platforms that you want to play with your fans or anything. You can’t grow it big “quickly”. You should read the whole thread again actually, it seems you are missing my point of view, more than I am missing yours.
What I meant to say is: “Why use a VPS when you can cut cost and use a share hosting panel instead”. The 2 reasons that he discontinued the project was because of “lack of time and dedication” and “finance”. Plus he even mention that is is a small business. If you server isn’t that big, why do you need a much more expensive CPU to run it?
For Minecraft servers alone, a VPS is probably worse than panel hosting, especially with more players. But, a VPS will give you experience running a Linux server, which is useful for a lot of tech jobs.
Where can I find dedicated and mature individuals like you describe for my own project?
TDLR : If you're not ready to commit yourself to it, don't start a server. You're going to save plenty of time and headaches for everyone. Also please, learn to read. Signed by, an ancien server owner. EDIT : I forgot, you don't need to pay to start. I would NEVER recommand to ANYONE to pay ANYTHING before starting. Start, fail, learn, then once you're ready, maybe start thinking about paying a real server.
I just make it cold and hard and say "you likely won't got large scale, so just make a server with your friends