Recommended Webhost?

[Mardarth]

I have tried several webhosts while trying to get a suitable, fast, stable server setup and I am having very little luck locating one.

I tried minestesthosting, sent an email about upgrading, never received a reply, so I moved on to 1and1, which is a horrible host for anything (can we say they are useless for my needs), I then moved on to vpsservers which was wonderfully wonderful about a flawless install using Ubuntu, but this host is a bit slow for my liking. It is currently running my minetest game with very few problems, but speed is not up to par (lags with very few mods, players are leaving quicker than they are joining).

I then tried a2hosting unmanaged dedicated server, and that too was not a very pleasant experience.

I see many servers running games with features that I am sure hosts many mods with zero lag. Are all of these servers windows servers, or Linux?

I am beginning to think that my problem is trying to run it on Linux, I do not wish to run a server from my home, I do wish to host it on a server that is online 99% of the time.

Are there any successful servers running on Linux , particularly Ubuntu (which I prefer over debian)? And if so, could someone share me the name of the webhost they are using?

[rubenwardy]

Do you want a web host or a server to run Minetest?

For a web host I recommend GitHub or gitlab pages. It's free and can be used with a custom domain. It's very high quality and is used (indirectly) by minetest.net and rubenwardy.com. The only limitation is that it's only for static sites, so you can't have server scripts. You can generate a website using scripts, however this will only run once and not for every users. This means you'll need to use something like discus for comments

For a server to host Minetest I recommend the $10 Linode VPS. It has slightly better specs than digital ocean

[Mardarth]

I'm sorry Ruben, I will check both of these options out, I appreciate the help!

I want a server to run minetest, yet a webhost for the website. I tried using a dedicated server I was planning to use for both, but that did not work out for me at all.

I am basically in need of something that can upgrade easily as players join, as I want to eventually have 500 concurrent player capabilities for a project that I and my team have been working on.

Thank you for the guidance! I'll check them both out now.

[Alex - A2]

Hey Mardarth,

I am sorry to hear your experience with us wasn't a pleasant one. If you'd be open to it, I'd love to have a chat to see where you was experiencing issues and assist you in getting setup with us again if possible?

You can reach me directly at alex@a2hosting.com or reply here and I should see it :).

[Mardarth]

Hi Alex, thank you for your assistance, I sent a personal email about my experience. Thank you for your concern!!

[ChimneySwift]

I'm pretty certain that only a handful (if any) of servers in the server list are running on Windows.

Since most of the devs use Linux, it's a given that Minetest runs well (better?) on Linux, and since Windows costs money I'm not sure that it's even the best solution tbh.

Most of the popular Minetest servers are running Linux, so Linux isn't your issue.

I can't give any direct host recommendations, but you're probably looking for higher per-core performance, rather than lots of slower CPU cores as the lua side of Minetest is single-threaded. I'm pretty sure only mapgen can be multi-threaded. Linode does look like a good option there.

[Mardarth]

Thank you Chimney, I never heard back from Alex of A2 Hosting, so I am still in search of a good webhost that provides dedicated servers, with Linux and Ubuntu preffered.

Right now I am trying Digital Ocean, and after an upgrade with more cores it's actually proving to be exceptional for the price.

Right now I am pleased with their uptime and speed, I won't know for sure if it'll do once the game gets a lot of players, but as far as testing allows, it's proving to be AWESOME.

I don't think I'll try windows now, it's just proven to be frustrating trying to find a webhosting provider to suit my needs.

Thanks for the input!! I know I am new here, but I am reading and researching a lot, and all help is greatly appreciated!

Now that I have a host that is perfect for "testing", I plan to start contributing some mods of my own within the next few mths.

[ChimneySwift]

Nice! Well if you do find an optimal host, I'd be interested to know what server you're running on it (mods, popularity, etc) and what hosting plan you went with by the end of it. There isn't enough information about the performance requirements of minetest servers IMO, granted it is difficult to cover considering how variable the configurations can be.

[deezl]

I used to host multiple servers on one VPS at nfoservers.com, and was very satisfied with the performance. I believe I was paying around $35/mo US. At one time I was running 5 MT servers on that one machine, 4 of them were pretty popular, never went over my data transfer cap. Similar pricing tiers to digital ocean, but I never got the same performance from DO droplets. Good luck!

*EDIT
And always I have hosted my MT servers on Linux, usually Ubuntu Server. I did run one on Arch once, and it was fine as well, but it was on my main rig, so I migrated it off to a VPS. Now I just run on a cheapo box I built specifically for this purpose, at home. I have really good internet now, and use a dynamic DNS service for remote access. It's a basic quad-core AMD with 4GB's of RAM, it runs 3 private servers really well, on 3 different versions of MT at the same time. I don't have a ton of traffic, but they are pretty mod-heavy and run really well.

[meseking35]

I can offer a minetest hosting services with a starting price of £2 a month. My business can promise near 24/7 hosting. Please contact me at minetesthost@gmail.com.https://minetesthosting.yolasite.com/ This website is under development at time of this post.