Shockbyte Hosting Review
Whether you’re simply playing Minecraft with your friends during your free time or running a huge community, you’ll definitely need a good Minecraft server website hosting provider. By choosing the right hosting provider, not only will you get to enjoy lag-free multiplayer sessions but also make sure that your in-game achievements are protected through frequent backups and additional security.
There is plenty of available Minecraft hosting you can choose from, with each varying according to your specific needs and set budget. However, this article will particularly detail Shockbyte hosting, one of the best hosting services you can get for Minecraft. Moreover, this will include a thorough discussion of what Shockbyte is, some of its pros and cons, and will specifically look into all the features that it has to offer.
Kickstart your Minecraft server with an amazing host from Australia
Shockbyte is currently considered among the most well-known server providers on the market. In 2013, the company was founded in Australia and gradually made itself known throughout the years because of its quality services.
One well-known fact about Shockbyte is its exclusive Minecraft hosting offering, which remains an essential part of its business up until this day. As a hosting provider, its prime goal is to provide high-quality Minecraft hosting service at the most affordable price. Their consistency and long history slated them in the category as one of the greatest hosting services like Minecraft. They have since then branched out and now offer servers for Rust ARK: Survival Evolved, including Valheim.
Whatever kind of Minecraft server project you’re up to, using specialized hosting remains indispensable. In this regard, you can particularly seek a professional service that not only adapts to the needs and demands of Minecraft hosting but also promises connection speed and a seamlessly pleasant gaming experience.
Still unsure whether you should sign up with Shockbyte hosting? You came to the right place. Listed below are some Pros and Cons you can generally expect from this hosting provider, as well as an in-depth look at some of its features.
Pros
Shockbyte often steals the spotlight among its competitors due to its wide array of features and affordable packages that offer a smooth-playing gaming adventure without any downtime or latency. Here are some of the perks you’ll most particularly enjoy:
- 100% Uptime Guarantee.
The company’s service level agreement covers any network outages that may happen. This ensures customers trouble-free coverage anywhere in the world.
- 24/7 Support.
Here, you get a readily-available support team that can help you with any of the concerns or inconveniences that you experience along the way. For this, they have an online chatbot system to tackle clients’ valuable inquiries. Otherwise, customers can also easily reach out via email.
- Guaranteed protection through DDos
Shockbyte also provides DDoS security on all servers and makes use of certain tools, features, and strategies to screen inbound traffic, effectively forestalling a DDoS assault. Furthermore, they also compensate their clients in case of security failure brought by online attacks. Guaranteed protection through DDoS helps ensure that players don’t lose any sensitive or valuable information.
- Free sub-domain
Clients also get to receive a free sub-domain that you can use to make your personalized IP address with your respective server name. Such a feature makes Shockbyte unique compared to other Minecraft hosting providers.
- Instant reconfiguration
Shockbyte also offers valuable add-ons and features such as instant reconfiguration, custom jars, or mod packs. Here, Shockbyte’s hosting system instantly activates your brand new server through automation.
Cons
- No free trial or free version
Despite the many features you can utilize with Shockbyte, there’s no free trial or version available for it, which would be helpful if customers would want to get a feel of Shockbyte’s services first before purchase.
- Poor customer support response
While customer service is made available 24/7 through online chatbots or emails, the response usually takes longer than expected. Furthermore, waiting for the dedicated IP add-ons through customer support tickets can also be a painstaking process to go through.
Plans and pricing
For you to achieve your gaming dreams, Shockbyte provides twelve different plans — most of which are called after various blocks of resources from Minecraft — with three premium ones named Spartan, Zeus, and Titan.
All of Shockbyte’s plans come with a 100% uptime guarantee, a free subdomain, protection against DDoS attacks, as well as a 24-7 customer support. Moreover, the number of RAM or GB you’ll get alongside the number of slots highly depends on how much cash you’re willing to splurge on Shockbyte.
If you’re going for the most budget-friendly plan, you can opt for “Dirt,” which costs about $2.50 per month with over 20 slots and 1GB of RAM. On the other hand, the most expensive option begins at $40 per month, with 16 GB of RAM and NVMe SSDs, those of which are approximately six times faster than regular SSDs.
However, if none of the pre-designed plans seem to meet your expectations, you can freely make a custom one which is always a great choice to make.
Currently, two free trials are being offered with Minecraft server hosting plans. One of which is the “45 Days of the Enjin Advanced” plan, which allows you to make a server website packed with features like a vote for diamonds, donation store, and more. Meanwhile, the other is called “30 Days of Buycraft Premium” — the most popular webstore solution for servers in Minecraft.
Additionally, Shockbyte offers a 24-day money-back guarantee instead of the usual 30 days. Because of this, it’s important that you immediately test your hosting service and notify the support team if any problems arise.
Shockbyte typically accepts Payment wall, Paypal, and credit or debit cards for payment methods.
Ease of use
Whether you’re searching for a network server for a few gamers or if you like to gather a group of over ten members, Shockbyte has you covered. It offers several plans, and getting started with any of them is as convenient as it can be. Also, if you’re not in it for Minecraft, which is usually the favorite, there are still other games available such as Valheim and Rust ARK — two of which will be coming sooner than expected.
However, if you particularly want to go for Minecraft, you have two options to choose from: the Bedrock edition or the classical PC edition. The Bedrock edition is often the better choice if you like cross-platform gameplays, but, even so, either option is good enough, especially since plans are presented in a user-friendly way.
After this, you’ll have to go to your cart. You will be requested to choose a billing cycle, server location, currency and decide whether or not you specifically like a dedicated IP that costs about $5 or $15 per month server management service. This helps ensure that the technical team configures and installs all mod packs, customer jars, and plugins for you. Needless to say, you can opt to do it on your own and save money while you’re at it, especially since SHockbyte already provides an easy one-click installer.
To complete your purchase — if you don’t have a Shockbyte account — you will have to make one by filling out a form that needs your personal data. It’s recommended that you thoroughly read the Terms and Services so you can avoid potential complaints or arising concerns in the future.
After payment is complete, your server should be easily up and running within a few minutes. Multicraft, the control panel inclusive of ShockByte’s Minecraft plans, will especially serve as your one-stop solution for all matters surrounding your Minecraft server.
Speed and experience
Since Shockbyte uses the NVMe SSDs, this means that they have six times the speed of the standard SSDs, while also being twelve times quicker than HDDs, which, to say the least, is lightning fast.
Add to that its top-notch 100% uptime guarantee that SLA covers; you can expect your servers to operate with only minimal downtime. Despite this, you still get compensated accordingly for every downtime of five minutes, which should ease the frustration of being kicked out temporarily in the game.
Support
Even with Shockbyte’s impressive perks and features, this doesn’t mean that it’s already a perfect hosting service to a fault. Most of its users tend to be particularly displeased with their customer support’s responsiveness because of the lengthy waiting time it takes to get their queries answered. Upon testing, you can generally expect a response from the support team in about 30 minutes or so, which may not be too bad. Despite this, it can still prove to be too long for someone with more urgent and complex issues that needs immediate attention.
Apart from live chat, their technical team can also be contacted through a support ticket. Since their support response isn’t really that popular for being fast, you can spend your time exploring many of their self-help options which are honestly impressive. Besides their Youtube channel, there’s also a helpful FAQ section and a substantial knowledge base that comprises about 200 articles — 167 of which are Minecraft-related.
The competition
Both Shockbyte and Apex Hosting use Multicraft as their own control panel to ensure that users have an intuitive experience. More than that, both also provide a wide range of various plans, free backups, a full range of plugins and mods, as well as a huge network of server locations globally. However, Shockbyte outperforms by mixing in a cut-edge NVMe SSDs that are steps ahead of a regular SSD, unlike Apex Hosting.
Bisect is also another well-known option similar to Shockbyte in its versatility and flexibility with the features and plans it offers. However, Shockbyte stands out since it has a much cheaper option than the former, with the price starting at $2.50 per month compared to Bisect’s $7.99. Because of this, Shockbyte remains the better choice, especially for users looking for a hosting provider at a low-cost price.
Even so, Bisect hosting can help you if you’re seeking a host where you can launch your website with. This is because they provide VPS, dedicated, and shared server hosting. Meanwhile, SHockbyte is merely focused on Minecraft server hosting.
Final verdict
For all these reasons, we can say that Shockbyte is an excellent hosting service provider worthy of recommending to anyone wanting to rent servers for the Minecraft games. Not only are they simple, beginner-friendly, and convenient to set up, it also comes jam-packed with a wide array of features, including numerous packages that are suitable for any pocket. Furthermore, its commendable network connection speed allows users to experience a lag-free and smooth-flowing game without any interference, maximizing the quality of your overall game experience.
Undeniably, Shockbyte is a great option when you want to kickstart your Minecraft server because of the many perks that you can obtain from it. Otherwise, if you’re simply looking for a host where you can set your website up, Bluehost or Hostgator can be a viable choice as well.
