[ad_1]
Shockbyte was founded in March 2013 with a mission to make server hosting for games like Minecraft “easy and affordable” for anyone looking for an action-packed adventure or simply wanting to improve their gaming skills. Shockbyte, headquartered in Victoria (Australia), is considered one of the pioneers and top server hosting providers for the titans of multiplayer gaming such as Minecraft, Rust, ARK: Survival Evolved and a few others.
Although Shockbyte was originally focused on Australia, Shockbyte is now present on three continents: Europe (UK, Germany, France and Poland), Asia (Singapore) and North America (USA and Canada).
The visual style of Shockbyte’s main website matches the style of the game that played a huge role in making it famous. Even the Shockbyte staff have been turned into highly esteemed pixelated Minecraft-like characters, which is absolutely amazing. The same fate befell Shockbyte’s official blog, which is filled with various articles that Minecraft fans are sure to find very interesting. The blog itself seems active enough, with a few articles coming out every month.
Social networks are currently present on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, Discord, and most importantly, YouTube as it comes with great step-by-step video tutorials that many users are sure to find helpful. Since Twitter and Facebook also act as support channels, as a co-user you are welcome to reach out to them if you have any signs of problems.
Plans and Pricing
To make your gaming dreams come true, Shockbyte offers twelve different plans (most of which are named after different Minecraft resource blocks), three of which are Premium (“Spartan”, “Zeus” and “Titan”).
All plans include a 100% uptime guarantee, protection against DDoS attacks, 24/7 support and a free subdomain. The number of GB of RAM you get and the number of slots (which is actually a recommendation since there are unlimited numbers on all plans) depends on how deep you are willing to dig into your pockets. The most pocket-friendly pan is labeled “Dirt,” costs $ 2.50 per month, and comes with 1GB of RAM and more than 20 slots. On the other hand, the most expensive starts at $ 40 a month and includes 16GB of RAM and the use of NVMe SSDs, which should be six times faster than regular (SATA) SSDs.
If none of the pre-made plans fit your needs, then you can create a custom plan which is always a great choice.
At the moment there are two free trials that come with all Minecraft server hosting plans. One of them is the “45 Days of the Enjin Advanced” plan which allows you to create a Minecraft server website with features like donation storage, voting for diamonds, and more. The other is “30 Days of Buycraft Premium”, the most popular web store solution for Minecraft servers.
Instead of the standard 30-day money-back guarantee (most other hosts spoiled us with it), Shockbyte offers one that is only valid for 24 days. So try them out as soon as possible and notify support if necessary.
Shockbyte accepts credit / debit cards, PayPal and Paymentwall as payment methods.
user friendliness
It doesn’t matter if you are looking for a network server for a few players or if you want to assemble a group of 10 or more players, ShockByte will help. There are many plans on offer and getting started with any of them is as easy as possible. If you’re not here because of Minecraft (which is the site’s favorite), few other games are available (Rust, ARK: Survival Evolved, and Valheim) and two of them should be coming soon (Hytale and Arma 3).
If Minecraft is what you want, you can choose between the classic PC and Bedrock editions (which is a better choice for cross-platform gameplay). Since all plans are presented in an easy-to-understand manner, the choice should not be a problem. After that, head to your shopping cart where you’ll be prompted to choose a billing cycle, currency, server location, and decide whether you want a dedicated IP (which costs $ 5) or server management services (which go for $ 15 a month). This service ensures that ShockByte’s technical team installs and configures all plugins, mod packs and customer jars for you. However, because ShockByte offers a handy one-click installer, you can save some money and easily do it yourself.
To complete your purchase, if you don’t already have an account with ShockByte, you will need to create one by filling out a familiar form with your personal information (nothing unusual). We recommend reading the Terms of Use through and through, as only then could a large number of customer complaints about ShockByte’s services have been avoided.
Thanks to the instant setup feature, your server should be up and running in less than a minute after completing the payment. The control panel that ShockByte includes in its Minecraft plans is known as Multicraft, which is an easy-to-use and one-stop solution for all aspects of your Minecraft server. The control panel for Rust and Ark is based on Multicraft, so you shouldn’t have much trouble finding your way around.
ShockByte’s one-click installer lets you use one of forty different modpacks (including Forge, Feed the Beast, ATLauncher, Technic Modpacks, Vanilla, and so on). The same applies to a large number of plugins that can be installed using the “Plugin List†function in the control panel or uploaded manually via FTP. All in all, once you are familiar with Multicraft, you are ready for a great adventure.
Speed ​​and experience
Shockbyte uses NVMe SSDs, which means their speed should be six times faster than standard SSDs and twelve times faster than HDDs, which is lightning fast. Looking at the speed performance of Shockbyte’s servers, we tested the performance of their main website, which should at least use SSDs. After trying it out with GTmetrix (our speed test tool of choice), we got pretty good news. The overall score wasn’t perfect, but close enough with an A (94%).
With Shockbyte offering a world-class 100% uptime guarantee backed by SLA, can you expect your server to run 24/7 with no trace of downtime? Not exactly, but you should be compensated for every five minutes of downtime, which should alleviate some of the pain of being thrown out of the game while you felled a tree to rid you of existential anxiety. To test this, we monitored the availability of their main website for a month without a break using UptimeRobot as our tool. Unsurprisingly, not a single second of downtime was found in our records, which justifies Shockbyte’s confident 100% uptime guarantee.
support
Since there is no rose without thorns, Shockbyte is also not a flawless host, especially when it comes to customer support it seems. After examining what Shockbyte users thought of them, most of the complaints were related to the responsiveness of their support team, so we felt compelled to do our own research. We were already willing to wait a while, asked them a few questions via chat, and got our answer in just over 30 minutes, which is fine. However, we are fairly aware that someone with a more complex problem may be less fortunate than we are.
In addition to the live chat, the Shockbyte technical team can be reached via a support ticket. Since his support isn’t known for being lightning fast, you can kill time by exploring their self-help options, which are (actually) commendable. In addition to the YouTube channel, there is an FAQ section and a comprehensive knowledge base with more than 200 articles, 167 of which are dedicated to Minecraft.
The competition
Both Apex Hosting and Shockbyte use Multicraft as their control panel to ensure an intuitive user experience. Both hosts offer a variety of different tariffs, a wide network of server locations around the globe, a full range of mods and plugins, free backups, and much more. However, while Apex Hosting uses SSD hard drives to provide lightning-fast, lag-free servers to its customers, Shockbyte goes a step further by throwing in state-of-the-art NVMe SSDs that should outperform a regular SSD by six times.
Bisect hosting is another popular option that, much like Shockbyte, gives its users impressive flexibility in their plans. In terms of options and features, the two are remarkably similar, but the most budget-friendly option with Bisect Hosting starts at $ 7.99 per month, while Shockbyte costs just $ 2.50 per month. So if you want to save a few bucks, go for Shockbyte. If you are looking for a host to start your website with, Bisect Hosting can help you with that too as they offer shared, VPS and dedicated server hosting. On the other hand, Shockbyte is entirely focused on hosting Minecraft servers.
An excellent alternative to Bisect hosting if hosting Minecraft servers isn’t what you’re looking for would be hosts like HostGator and Bluehost. With their myriad of hosting options, features, and add-ons available, both are one of the most popular options for newbies and webmasters alike. On top of that, both offer a money-back guarantee so that you can see everything for yourself without hesitation.
Final verdict
Shockbyte is a rock solid provider that we would recommend to anyone looking to rent servers to host their Minecraft games on the electronic highway. Shockbyte is not only easy and quick to set up for beginners, but with all its packages it offers a whole range of features that fit (with everything) in every pocket. So start your Minecraft server with Shockbyte, but if you change your mind along the way, you should do so within 24 hours.
However, if you are just looking for a host to set up your website with, take a look at HostGator and Bluehost because they have something for everyone.
[ad_2]
