Hey guys, I've been thinking lately about running my own server for Minecraft, but my connection can't handle the requirements, much less my computer handling the processor and RAM requirements, so I can't run an actual server from my desktop.

I want to run it from a more specialized server, meant for such a task, and was hoping you guys could give me some suggestions for what I would need, where I could get it from, what sort of specs in the server I should look for, etc. but most importantly, about how much such things would cost.

Right now, I mostly want a point of reference, so I know what to expect, and when I choose, where would be the best place to get such a server from.

It will pretty much only be hosting Minecraft, and as Tari suggested, if I decide to make a website for the server, then it will likely be on a different server, meant for a website. I'd like it to be able to handle 20 people well enough, as I'm pretty sure that that's around the general area of how many people I'd have online at most.

Anyways, thanks for any help. I'm leaving for a trip on the 23rd, and coming back the 29th, so don't expect a response before then. Thanks in advance for all of your help!

The first thing you should be aware of is that you'd definitely not be able to host a Minecraft server on the type of hosting that Cemetech is on, called shared hosting, where your account is one of several on the server. I know that rcfreak0 uses virtual hosting, where several people share a powerful server but each one appears to be a single server, and is guaranteed a certain number of CPU cores and RAM (and you of course pay proportional to the specs you get). The other option of course would be to build yourself a new computer, which would be more expensive in the short run but potentially cheaper in the long run.

The only problem with building myself one, is that I don't have the bandwidth for one, or in my eyes a reliable enough connection. I know I could probably set up another connection for my house specifically for the server, but I'd rather spend a few bucks more so I don't have to worry about the hassle.

I used to run mine at my house but some plugins i am running was eating too much bandwidth on my home connection. I moved it to my vps and i love it. Currently i pay $30 a month for mine, and I've never come close to my (current) 50gb month bandwidth limit. Anyways, get minimum 2gb of ram to abuse for the server. If you plan on running 20+ players your going to want to it be safe, i use 2gb on mine, tho mainly because i can.

Fair enough, then that leaves you with getting dedicated hosting. Unfortunately, I've heard truly ridiculous things like that hosting a Minecraft server requires you to have 256MB of RAM per player or something like that? That would mean you'd need at least a 5GB RAM VPS in order to support 20 people.

Yeah that was probably more true back in alpha. It alot better now, grated it still a RAM hog, this also depends on how many plugins you are using and what ones you are using. If you run pretty much just a vanilla server you can get away with alot less ram, assuming you have a good connection to keep up with sending all the data. I know people that ran 10~ people on on about 512MB RAM and it ran really well with a decent amount of plugins. All depends on the quality of the hardware and connection sometimes.

Me and a friend found a good host called servercraft.co, and they recommend 1-16 people for a server with 1GB of RAM, for $30 a month.

After looking at that, we saw that Linode, the place Tari suggested, charges $40 for about the same. :/ Currently trying to see if it's because they have better processors, or what.

Anyways, anyone else know of any other reputable server hosts so I can get a few comparisons before I decide?

Well, after finally getting the capital and the income (soon enough now that I have a job) I've been taking a second look around for some servers.

I looked up a few reviews of Servercraft, and apparently their support for uploading plugins, updating plugins, and editing plugins is minimal at best, and they don't allow you to SSH to do it yourself, so I'm pretty sure I'll be better off without using them.

Now, in seeing these reviews I did find a few other recommendations for Minecraft related serverhosts. Below is a list of all the ones I found.

VeraciousHost.com
InvasionServers.com
TerminatorServers.com
Wright-Servers.com
provisionhost.com
gsverse.net
pigsaddle.com

So, does anyone have any recommendations?

EDIT: Decided to go with GSVerse.net. It took me a little while to get it started up, but within minutes of contacting support it was up and running. The representative I talked to didn't know the solution, but he contacted an administrator that emailed me with the solution, and later that day one of their representatives came on the server to warn us about a restart so we didn't lose any progress. So far, it's been an all around great experience, especially for this being my first serverhost.