Renting your own game server can be quite a daunting process and with a wide range of options to suit any budget, it can often be overwhelming to start. In this article, we will break down the common factors that affect game server rental costs.
What Impacts Game Server Rental Costs?
There are thousands of dedicated game server rental companies that cost anywhere from $5 or less, all the way up to $100+.
While there are often sacrifices when going with extreme budget options, there is also diminishing returns when paying for expensive services.
It is vital to do your research when considering a specific provider for your budget. Below we have listed some of the common factors that affect cost in game server rental.
Reliability & Uptime
Many budget hosts will use cheaper hardware and cheaper data centers that often have outages. This can result in multiple hours of downtime which at best can be a minor nuisance and at worst can cost your game server business a lot of money.
On the flip side, expensive providers can use hyper-reliable data centers and premium hardware which results in almost no downtime ever. This comes with a premium in the cost and often the closer a host gets to 100% uptime the more exponential the cost becomes. If you are running a large gaming community and any form of downtime will cost you money then it is very easy to justify spending extra to guarantee uptime and performance.
Performance & Hardware
As mentioned previously, budget hosts often use cheaper hardware. This not only affects uptime but also the performance of the game server. Older hardware can struggle to run modern game servers which can cause lag and crashes.
Premium hosts focus on using the latest-generation hardware to ensure a lag-free experience for all servers. This will increase cost but it is often less drastic than you may think. As a hosting provider, the networking and power costs us much more than the upfront cost of the hardware. Newer hardware is generally more efficient and thus there is not really an excuse for a host to use older hardware if they are focusing on long-term success.
Shared vs Dedicated
Sharing resources is a great way to save money. When using shared hosting you share the dedicated server resources with other customers, this allows your server to use more resources when it needs them while other servers may not need their full resources and can "share".
There is a fine line between shared hosting and overallocation. Many extreme budget hosts will over-allocate the number of servers they put per machine, resulting in machine saturation and a laggy experience. We utilize custom algorithms to strategically deploy our shared game servers onto nodes with the lowest usage, this allows us to offer affordable hosting without oversaturating machines.
You can purchase a dedicated server to avoid any performance bottlenecks. These are often more expensive but can host multiple game servers and give you full root access to install whatever software or OS you want.
We suggest smaller communities and first-time server owners begin their journey with shared game server hosting. As the community grows we suggest looking into our dedicated server lineup. These machines are dedicated purely to yourself and can be optimized to perform exactly to your needs. This reduces any points of failure.
DDoS Protection
Budget hosts will often use non-DDoS-protected servers. This may be fine for a while but once a large attack comes in this could kick all your players offline for hours. Large-scale attacks often last days and can cause popular servers to lose a lot of their players if they keep getting attacked.
Premium hosts usually charge extra for DDoS protection. It is important to note that not all DDoS protection is built the same and there are often filters designed for specific games. Having generic DDoS protection is almost useless when a skilled attacker knows how to target specific games. Our Pine Hosting DDoS protection comes included for free with all our game servers. We also partner with CosmicGlobal, one of the market leaders in game server DDoS protection to ensure your server stays online.
Support & Knowledgebase
One of the biggest cost cuts for budget hosts is hiring less support members. Many budget hosts will have multi-day response times for tickets which can be annoying for new server owners.
Premium hosts may offer quicker support options or a reduced support response time. We offer 24/7 support to all our clients as well as a built-in live chat on the panel for even faster response times.
Extra Perks & Features
And finally, we have all the bells and whistles. Budget hosts often try and just offer the bare minimum and you won't get any extras along with your service. They will often use stock panels, provide no extra services, and give you no custom tools to manage your service.
Premium hosts may offer extra perks included in the package. Some hosts charge fees depending on the features and perks you request. Pine Hosting offers a wide variety of features for free with all our game server plans. Some of our most popular features are:
- Daily offsite backups
- Custom control panel
- Easy config to manage server settings
- Workshop and plugin installers
- Free trials of partner software/services
What Is The Average Cost Of A Dedicated Game Server Rental?
As we discussed previously, game hosting costs can range drastically from each provider, and even the type of game being hosted. At Pine Hosting we try to target that "sweet spot" in pricing. We aim to price all our plans as affordably as possible without cutting corners anywhere. This means our average server often starts from around $10-$15.
We also offer the ability to easily scale server resources up or down at any time. This allows you to seamlessly grow your servers as required and to pick a plan that suits almost any budget.
Discover Dedicated Game Server Rentals With Pine Hosting
With all that information it can be quite overwhelming to pick the best provider for your budget. Many providers focus on offering various levels of service resulting in massively different prices from host to host, it would be easy to just select the cheapest host you could find but this can cause many problems down the line or put you off game hosting altogether.
Just as with all things in life, the best service is often found at that sweet spot between price and performance, look out for hosts with unusual or "too good to believe" pricing as many smaller hosts have been known to cut costs in order to grow but have gone bankrupt as a result.
When pricing for a game server it's important to invest in a high-quality service with a proven track record of providing outstanding service. At Pine Hosting we have years of experience in providing quality services at an affordable price for most people.
Best of all? We offer a 48-hour money-back guarantee if you are not satisfied with anything. If you are looking to start your game hosting journey and want the most bang for your buck, Pine Hosting is the perfect place to start.
