Minecraft fan ranks Top 10 hosting servers

Count Jason Lawrence among the millions of fans of Minecraft, the hugely popular multiplayer game that lets players build and explore an infinite virtual world.

Serious players who want to take control of the Minecraft environment and play rules can install the game on their own server.

That server could reside on their own personal computer, but a more practical solution is to rent space through a commercial data hosting service that sells Minecraft hosting packages.

That's what Lawrence did, but not before taking a whole lot of test drives. In his quest to find the best package at the right price, he purchased and tested the offerings from 71 different Minecraft hosting providers.

Along the way, he charted and rated each service and posted profiles of his top 10 vendors on his Minecraft Hosting website.

Lawrence say his ratings are based on these factors:

• The total cost per month
• The ease of setting it up
• Performance of your server under load
• Adding mods to your server
• The support-ticket waiting time
• Extra features in control panel

In his profiles, Lawrence gives vendors high marks for having servers multiple regions, staff expertise in dealing with mods and responsive support. Slow support response or hidden fees turn up in the Negatives column. (See a sample profile below.)

In addition to his Top 10 list, Lawrence has written and posted detailed guides to help server managers choose a Minecraft provider, set up their server and promote its availability and advantages.

The profiles and guides are available for free on Lawrence's Minecraft Server website.

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Written by Ric Manning

Follow me on Twitter @ricmanning and read my technology columns at My Well Being.