Server Hosting/Renting Questions

[ohiodino93]

In a previous discussion I stated I have issues with crashes. People have suggested I could rent a server but I have a few questions.
1. It is mostly just my wife and I who play Ark together. We have a friend who plays with us occasionally but I do not see us having to need more than 10 people on at once. Are there any server hostings that are for 10 or less people?
2. If my wife and I get bored of Ark and decide we do not want to play for a while so we decide to stop paying for the server, can we still save our data to our laptops so if we decide to play again we will not have to completely restart?
3. If we do start a server could we move our singleplayer data to the server or start over?

[Natjur]

1. The cheapest option is just host it yourself instead of hiring a server, it does not take much to setup. All other server providers normally have a min of 10 users and cost $15-25 per month. If your going to stop and start the server all the time, just host it on a spare machine locally or if you have a good pc, on your pc.

2. Stopping the server, saves the world and its paused until you start it agian

3. Yes, you can us the same world files. There is only one file that need to be renamed, and that is the player file of the current host of the non-dedicated server.

[Vesuvius]

I think there are some that do 10 slot servers? Most do a minimum of 15.

At around $15us per month... its quite cheap.

Make sure your host has ftp access... you can use that to download backups for later use/fixing issues.

Yes you can move your SP data to a server and visa versa.

You can password your server as well.

[ohiodino93]

Nitrado is offering Public Servers for a little over $5 a month. Is this a good deal or is there something I don't know about?

[Vesuvius]

Dont know what they mean by public lol... but yeah for your purposes that would probably be fine.... was that for 10 slots?

[ohiodino93]

Originally posted by Vesuvius:

Dont know what they mean by public lol... but yeah for your purposes that would probably be fine.... was that for 10 slots?

Actually for 4. Considering its mostly me and my wife, with 1 friend occasionally, it seems like a good deal but I'm going to keep researching.

[Vesuvius]

Originally posted by ohiodino93:

Originally posted by Vesuvius:

Dont know what they mean by public lol... but yeah for your purposes that would probably be fine.... was that for 10 slots?

Actually for 4. Considering its mostly me and my wife, with 1 friend occasionally, it seems like a good deal but I'm going to keep researching.

Hmm... id be concerned about having enough server memory to cope with mods.... personaly i dont go less then 10 slots .... but you can always try it out for a month... keep backups... and change later if its not working well enough :)

[Wikumos]

I would recommend Host Havoc, I've used them for over a year now, their customer support is awesome, 7 days a weeks, they answer tickets within 10 minutes and resolve whatever issue you have typically within 10-15 minutes. They have FTP access (so you can upload/download your world save). They cost $15/month for a 15-slot server (doesn't mean you have to have 15 players playing on them), just means they have a decent amount of RAM to handle things, which means with 3-4 players you'll not see any server lag.

Typically on my servers there's 5-10 players on at a time, and server lag isn't an issue at all, except maybe a minor lag when a meteor storm hits on Extinction.

[KitsuneShiro]

I really liked g-portal. And you can switch the Ark server out for other games if you get bored and want a break from Ark.

Just use FTP to backup saver saves and ini files.

[Small]

After months of looking around and trying all the different server hosts out there I settled at G-portal. It offers me the ability to allow others to look after servers, automatically updates mods and ark, allows plugins, and doesnt charge for extra ram. you can take a minimum of 10 slots.

The other thing is g-portal has decent support

It also doesnt over service their machines.