Server software (overview)

Server software is what runs your Minecraft server, it's what allows you to play with your friends together on a server. What server software you have also decides what kind of experience you and your friends and or players are going to have.

Different software supports different ways of altering the base game, some support mods, other support plugins, some are fast and may alter vanilla game mechanics slightly, while some are begrudingly slow and in turn provides a more true to life experience, but noticing a difference in vanilla game mechanics can be a challenge, they're so miniscule even listing them is hard.

You also have the base game, or vanilla server software which is provided by Mojang/Microsoft directly. It is slow, but there are no changes to gameplay. It may be useful for server administrators who want a server for redstone, technical players who want to create things and need tick times to be exact for their redstone machines to work.

Minecraft servers operate at 20TPS, or 20 ticks per second, and one tick is the smallest unit of ticks you can have, and one tick converts to around 50 milliseconds. Tick times are used to handle when grass should grow, after how long, or how often a server will refresh what's inside a chest when you're checking it. A server administrator might set the tick refresh rate of a chest when it's opened to every 1st tick, 5th tick, 3rd tick and so on.

Minecraft server software options

It can be difficult finding out what server software you want your server to run, which is the reason why by default our servers come preinstalled with Paper. Our servers come preinstalled with Paper because it's a well-regarded, stable, and performant fork for Minecraft server administrators, and you get to experiment with plugins. In this guide we'll be using the term fork as it's the most commonly agreed upon term for Minecraft server software. A fork is server software that's an expansion or continuation of other server software. So bukkit is a fork of the standard server software provided by Mojang/Microsoft called Vanilla, and Spigot is a fork of bukkit, and then Paper is a fork of bukkit again.

Vanilla Minecraft

Vanilla Minecraft is the base game, or base server software. There are no fancy whistles and you can't install plugins or mods to your server using Vanilla Minecraft, which means you are limited to the base game and no fun rocket launching bazookas can be added to your server. However, it still has a place in the ever evolving space of Minecraft server software. It is slow, but there are no changes to gameplay, and you get to preview early samples of the game. In addition to that, it's perfect for technical redstone players who need tick times for their redstone machines to work. One major downside to Vanilla Minecraft are exploits, like one person being able to crash the server, and people duping items.

Bukkit

Using Bukkit might be a long-shot, it's outdated and discontinued (in 2014), it's in this guide for reference only. It has extensive plugin support, and a lot of plugins use the Bukkit API today, but under the Paper subdomain. An API in this context is what developers use when creating plugins for Minecraft, and when they add new features to the game.

Spigot

Spigot is a fork of Bukkit, which means it has all the same features as Bukkit does, including their API. This means you can install Bukkit plugins on your Spigot server no eyebrows raised. Spigot also has it's own modding API and it's extensivly supported. Spigot is also here just for reference, using Spigot nowadays is not recommened. Just like Bukkit, it has extensive security flaws and exploits, in addition to that it's also slow compared to todays standards.

Paper

This brings us to Paper, the gold standard for Minecraft server software forks, and a fork of Spigot. It has all of the features of Bukkit and Spigot, without any of the downsides. The only disability with Paper and the aformentioned forks is that it might not be a good fit for technical redstone players seeing as they need tick times to be up to pair. In addition to having it all, Paper keeps on giving with it's fantastic performance, it's made to handle extensive player counts, up to the hundreds (with optimizations).

Downloads

PS: Our servers come preinstalled with Paper.

Vanilla Minecraft (opens in a new tab) - Bukkit (opens in a new tab) - Spigot (opens in a new tab) - Paper (opens in a new tab)

Install and update Minecraft server software

Note: To prevent data corruption when updating/changing server software it's recommended to take a backup of your server. Different server software might handle world data and player files differently, which could lead to the loss of player data and or progress and displaced chunks.

Updating Minecraft server software

Before updating to a new version of your servers server software make sure that the plugins you use support the newest version of that software you're updating to. You can do this by going to the download pages for your plugins and checking what version they support.

If you haven't installed custom server software since the purchase of your server then you're in luck. All you have to do is power off your server, take a backup, go to the settings tab on your control panel and hit reinstall. This will rerun the installation script for you server, installing the newest version of whatever server software your server is running. Pro tip: To check what server software your server is running you can do version in console.

You might've installed your own custom server software, the process here is also pretty straightforward. Power off your server, take a backup, delete the server.jar in your servers file manager, upload an updated version of the software you're using, and you're done, you can now safely power back on your server.

Installing Minecraft server software

Before installing new server software onto your server first make sure that the plugins you use support the new software you're installing. You can do this by going to the download pages for your plugins and checking what version and server software they support.

Turn off your server, take a backup, delete the server.jar file in your servers file manager, upload the new jar you plan on utilizing, rename it to server.jar, power up your server and you're done.