Frequently Asked Questions

Yes! Our mission at Deduck is to democratize Minecraft hosting. We believe that everyone should be able to play with their friends without financial barriers. We offer a generous free-tier that will always remain free of charge. To sustain this, we rely on optional premium upgrades for power users who need dedicated resources, as well as non-intrusive advertisements on our dashboard. Our infrastructure is optimized to provide high-quality hosting even on the free plan, ensuring a smooth gameplay experience for small communities.

To ensure that our hardware resources are distributed fairly among all active players, we use an automated system to manage idle servers. If a server has zero players online for more than 24 hours (for free-tier servers), it will automatically enter 'Sleep Mode'. In this state, the server process is suspended to save CPU and RAM. However, all your world data, plugins, and configurations remain perfectly safe. You can wake your server up instantly with a single click from your dashboard, and it will be back online in about 30 seconds.

Absolutely! We fully support Minecraft: Java Edition, Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, and the newly released Hytale (Early Access). For Minecraft servers that want to allow players from both platforms to play together, we offer easy integration with GeyserMC and Floodgate. Hytale servers utilize our specialized C# scripting instances and are optimized for the game's native C++ engine. You can toggle these options in the 'Versions' or 'Plugins' tab of your server dashboard.

Our primary data centers are strategically located in Germany (Frankfurt/Falkenstein via Hetzner), Finland (Helsinki), and our newly opened North American nodes. These locations are chosen for their excellent global routing and low-latency connections. We use high-speed 10Gbps uplinks to ensure that your server can handle traffic spikes without lagging.

Yes, you have full control over your server's files. You can use our integrated web-based File Manager for quick edits, or connect via SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) for larger uploads. This allows you to migrate your existing worlds, install custom mods, or even synchronize your Hytale assets. We support popular SFTP clients like FileZilla and WinSCP.

We don't use weak, virtualized VPS nodes. Deduck runs on high-performance bare-metal dedicated servers. Our nodes are equipped with modern CPUs (such as AMD Ryzen 9000 series or Intel Core i9-14900K+) and ultra-fast NVMe SSDs. This hardware configuration is essential for modern sandbox titles, which rely heavily on single-core CPU performance and fast disk I/O. We ensure that our nodes are never over-provisioned, so your server always has the resources it needs.

Security is a top priority at Deduck. All our servers are protected by enterprise-grade DDoS mitigation layers provided by Hetzner and Cloudflare. This system can filter out massive volumetric attacks (up to 2.5Tbps+) and sophisticated application-layer attacks (Layer 7). Your server IP is hidden behind our global proxy network, making it extremely difficult for attackers to directly target your gameplay session.

Technically, there is no hard limit on the *number* of plugins you can install on your Deduck server. However, plugins consume RAM and CPU cycles. We recommend starting with essential plugins like LuckPerms, EssentialsX, and WorldEdit. If you are running on a Folia instance, ensure your plugins are specifically compatible with multi-threaded ticking for maximum safety.

Yes! You can switch between different Minecraft versions (e.g., from 1.21 to 1.26.1) at any time through our version switcher. We support various server cores including Vanilla, Paper, Folia, Fabric, NeoForge, and Hytale. Note that while you can easily upgrade a world to a newer version, 'downgrading' a world to an older version can cause data corruption. We always recommend taking a full backup before changing your server version.

Server lag can be caused by three main factors: Client Lag (your computer), Network Lag (internet connection), or Server Lag (TPS/MSPT drops). Server lag is usually caused by too many entities, unoptimized plugins, or very high player counts on a low-resource plan. To fix this, check your console for 'Can't keep up!' warnings or use `/spark profiler` to find the bottleneck. Our technical support team on Discord is also happy to help you diagnose specific issues.