Mum & Dad’s Guide to Minecraft and Server Hosting

Questions about Minecraft

What is Minecraft?

Created by a company called Mojang in 2009, Minecraft rose to international fame rapidly. A creative sand-box game that promotes building, exploration and problem-solving, using simple graphics and worlds made up entirely of blocks, there is no end goal or specific objective. Players are encouraged to find a place to settle down, build a home, gather precious resources and make discoveries at their own pace.

Is Minecraft child-friendly?

Completely, In fact it is quite often used in schools as an educational tool. You can read more about that here.
The game contains no bad language, inappropriate themes or graphic content and any fighting the player gets into is not gory or bloody and with the 16-bit style graphics and generally cartoon-like appearance of the monsters, is far removed from real threat or violence.

There are many websites like Autcraft.com that promote cooperative play, child-friendly environments and respect for all.
If you have any concerns about specific elements of the game, you are welcome to open a support ticket at any time. We are always happy to help, whether you own a server with us or not.

Questions about Minecraft Server Hosting

What is a Minecraft Server?

Your child may want to play Minecraft online with their friends. That’s where StickyPiston and Minecraft servers come in.

We provide hosted and managed servers that allow players from all over the world to join each other on the same world and play together. Put simply, a server is a computer that holds a Minecraft world and files and makes it available for anyone with the correct login details.

A server can not communicate with your child’s PC in order to gain any personal information, install viruses or otherwise be a technical nuisance. It simply allows a player to connect and run the files within the game.

Our servers are fully equipped to handle private and public settings, protect against online attacks from outside the network and ensure a safe and secure online space for your child to play.

What does a Minecraft Server cost?

Our servers have a wide pricing structure that covers all possible variations of Minecraft that your child may want to play.
You can see a break-down of our prices here.

All versions of Minecraft, whether they be the unedited (Vanilla) version of the game, a modified experience or a pre-built Adventure Map, have been fully tested with our systems and we have used that data to create a guide of how much memory the server will need to run.

Ordinarily, a regular “Vanilla” version of Minecraft (You may know it as Java Edition) will only require 2GB to 3GB of memory to run smoothly with a fair number of players. Again we can help you through the process of deciding on memory amount and provide more information if required.

With StickyPiston, there are no hidden costs and no additional fees. You pay monthly, quarterly or yearly and everything is covered in that payment. Server hosting, Premium Support and Full Server Management included from day one.

You can read more about what we can help with in the Tools for Server management section below.

How does billing work?

When you place an order for a server with StickyPiston, you will be asked to link it to your PayPal account and be required to set up an account on our site. This will grant access to our billing system and can be used to track and display invoices as well as other useful tools for account management.

Invoices are usually sent out automatically 4 days before the bill is due and automatic PayPal billing is supported.

What about Refunds?

There’s a 14 day refund policy if you’re not happy with the service, this gives us good time to solve any problems with your server.If, for example, your child has tried the server and simply isn’t interested then a refund can be arranged easily enough.

In the case of something like being unable to join the server or other technical issues, we would prefer to work through them and get everything running smoothly for you before the cancellation and/or refund is processed.

Is Minecraft Server Hosting safe for my child?

As with any online game, it can be concerning for a parent when other players can interact with their child.

StickyPiston provides a full security suite for all our servers that helps protect players identities and information as well as allowing for complete control over who can join your child’s server.

There are facilities to specify usernames that will allow only your child and their friends to join and play the server.
No unexpected guests or outside influences can disrupt the game using the built-in whitelisting functions. These allow you to restrict access to only the players that you whitelist by username.

As a GDPR compliant business, we ensure full clarity of the information we store and how you can access it for review.
You can read our full Privacy Policy here.

Free Trials

What are Free Trials?

If you are unsure of jumping in and ordering a server today then why not can take advantage of the completely free trial system that StickyPiston hosts 24/7.

It is a simple and quick process that will create a temporary server that will run for between 1 and 24 hours dependant on the type of Minecraft you choose and is 100% free.

You can try as many different Minecraft maps and game-modes as you like, as often as you like, forever.

Go to our free server trials page to get started and open a support ticket if you have questions.

We can even transfer your trial world to a permanent server should you choose to place an order when the trial ends.

What can you do next?

The next step, if you want to order a server, is to find out what sort of Minecraft your child wants to play and how many friends they expect to have playing together online.

With that information to hand, you can either start the order process using our memory recommendations to ensure a smooth play experience or get in touch with us and we can help get things moving for you.

If you place an order you can expect to receive the following e-mails:

Welcome to StickyPiston Minecraft Hosting
Contains your Support & Billing Passwords to log into the client area.

Order Confirmation – StickyPiston Minecraft Hosting
Breaking down your order and the monthly costs.

Customer Invoice – StickyPiston Minecraft Hosting
This is an automated Invoice that you will be sent each billing cycle.

Invoice Payment Confirmation Thank you – StickyPiston Minecraft Hosting
Thank you for paying your invoice & receipt number.

Your Minecraft Server is ready to play – StickyPiston Minecraft Hosting
The final email in the sequence that contains all the information you need to join your server and Multicraft Control Panel

A member of the team will also be in touch with an e-mail highlighting the various services you have access to, as well as checking in through the control panel to chat to the players and make sure everything is running well on the server in the first 48 hours.

We encourage questions and provide support to everyone equally, Server Owners, Players, Free Trial users and even people that don’t host with us.

Tools for Server Management

There are a variety of tools that come as part of our Managed Minecraft servers.

Included is a control panel using Multicraft. This control panel gives you the Server Owner complete control over every aspect of the game from being able to turn the server on or off all the way to changing settings in the game itself as your child requires.

There are ways to switch between different worlds and types of Minecraft with our Click and Play Installer, Whitelisting options to allow only specific players to join, Scheduled Tasks like restarting the server or automatically sending a “Bed-time!” message to everyone in game.

The possibilities are endless and everything is completely in your control.

Alongside the control panel, we pride ourselves on being the premier “Managed Hosting Service”.
This differs from many other Minecraft server hosts, in that, we can and will help with any aspect of the server’s management and day to day running.

Whether that be restoring a world, creating a backup, providing a secure download of files, changing options in-game, testing and fixing bugs or problems, helping with installing extras or customising the server in other ways.

You or your kids can open support tickets any time to request assistance. No matter how big or small the problem is, our managed server hosting means that we will always be willing to help get you and your children back on the server and playing in the smoothest experience possible.

If you would like to research Minecraft and Servers yourself, we have a fully stocked Knowledgebase that is packed to the brim with useful information, articles, tutorials and more. Best of all it’s completely free and open to access for anyone.

Read our full Terms of Service | Open a Support Ticket | Start a Free Trial | Order a Minecraft Server