PixARK server hosting
where a restart keeps your digging.

From $16.50/mo for 6 GB of guaranteed dedicated RAM, $22 for 8 GB, $27.50 for 10 GB, and up the ladder to $59 for 24 GB. No setup fee and no slot pricing — the player cap is a setting in your panel, not a line on your bill.

Measured, not guessed. Read off the kernel on our own node, a fresh PixARK server held 3.26 GB on the main world with nobody on and 3.34 GB with a player in it. The other two maps sit higher: Terracrypt idled near 3.8 GB and Skyward near 3.5 GB. On a 4 GB box Terracrypt would start at 95% with nobody on, so the plan starts at 6 GB. What we have not measured yet is a busy server — every number here is an empty world or one player. Big group? Start at 8 or 10 GB — the plan is a pool, so you can move the RAM later without losing the world.

No — and on PixARK that is the question worth asking. PixARK keeps its blocks, everything dug out and everything placed, in a separate terrain store that its ordinary save command never writes; the game commits it on its own five-minute cycle, or when it closes the chunks. Stop a server with Ctrl-C or a kill and everything since that last cycle is gone: the holes fill back in, and placed blocks are missing from the world and not back in anyone’s inventory either. A stop or restart from our panel saves the world, then ends the server through the game’s own exit command, which closes and saves every chunk before it quits. We proved it with a player on the server: blocks placed and holes dug moments before a restart were all there afterwards. A crash is different, and so is a server hung too hard to answer that command — nothing gets the chance to close the chunks, so the game’s last five-minute terrain save is what comes back.

Your server shows up in PixARK’s own server browser under the name you give it in Settings, and the panel shows its address. Want it private? Set a join password in Settings. One thing we fixed so you never meet it: a PixARK server has to register with Steam as the game itself, not as the server tool it is installed from. Set up the other way, it runs perfectly and never appears in the list. Ours registers as the game.

Yes — 84 of them, each a labeled field with the game’s own default beside it. Before a key became a field we checked that the server program itself contains it, and dropped the ones it does not — including a few that hosting guides still list, which would sit in your config doing nothing. Two things worth knowing: PixARK ignores the player cap in its own config file and rewrites it, so the Player slots field goes on the command line, the one place the game takes it from; and the game’s built-in presets may override some multipliers, which the fields that could be affected say beside them. It all lives on your volume, so a restart, a resize or a game switch cannot reset it.

Yes. A PixARK world is one folder, and the server opens it by name. In the file manager, go to Saved/CubeServers/ and the folder for your map (CubeWorld_Light is the main world), make a folder for your world — letters, numbers, - and _ — and upload your world’s files into it: World.ini, Generator.ini, Terrain.arg, the two terrain databases and the Map folder with its .ark. Then set World name in Settings to that folder’s name (and Map, if it is a Terracrypt or Skyward world) and apply. We tried exactly that on our own node: the copied world came up in under a minute, the speed of a world that already exists, kept its own seed and left its terrain files byte for byte as they arrived — nothing was regenerated. The terrain databases are about 800 MB each, and the file manager sends big files up in pieces, so on a home connection that part takes a while. Your players’ characters are kept outside the world folder, in Saved/SavedArks/; bring that folder too, or everyone starts a new character.

Change World name in Settings and apply. The server opens a brand-new world in a folder of that name, with its own random seed, and builds its terrain on the first start (about a minute and a half on our node). The old world stays exactly where it was: set the old name back and it comes up again. Every world you make this way keeps its own folder, at roughly 1.5 GB each.

Yes — all three maps boot on our servers, and picking one is the Map setting: the main world, Terracrypt or Skyward. Each map keeps its own world, so switching starts a separate one and switching back brings the old one up again. Terracrypt is paid DLC, so your players need it too.

Yes. PixARK’s modes are switches on the Settings tab. Pioneering — PvE, nobody can hurt anybody — is the game’s own default, and we checked that a fresh server really starts there. For Chaos, PvP around the clock, turn PvE off and switch on PvP at all times. For Fury, PvP only inside a weekly war window, turn PvE off and switch on PvP in the war window. PixARK runs that window every weekend, from Saturday to the end of Sunday, UTC; the hour it opens on Saturday is a field right beside the switch. The days and the Sunday 23:59 close are fixed by the game itself — we tried setting them on our own server and it ignored every other value, so we offer the one part it takes.

Yes to both. The Players tab lists everyone by name with their Steam ID, read from the server over RCON, and Kick sits on each row — tested with a player on our own server. A kick does not stop them rejoining. Bans are not in the panel yet, because we only wire what we have proved with someone on the server; until they are, a join password in Settings decides who gets in.

Yes — PixARK has RCON, so the console takes commands: save the world, see who is online, put an announcement across everyone’s screen, say something in chat as SERVER, and kick by Steam ID. Type help for the list. Each one was tested with a player on our own server, and we stop at that list on purpose: PixARK answers a command it does not recognise with Server received, But no response!!, which reads like success, so a typo would look as if it had worked. The save there is the game’s own: it writes creatures, structures and characters, while the terrain is written on the game’s five-minute cycle and when the server stops.

Not yet, and we would rather say so before you buy. We have not proved that a PixARK dedicated server loads Workshop mods on our setup, and we do not put a button on a page until it works on our own server — so there is no mod button here. Both of the server’s config files open in the panel’s file manager, and its settings are panel fields.

Yes — nightly, automatically, off-site on a separate network, plus your own named copies we never overwrite and one kept from before every game update. Restore or download any of them yourself from the panel, no ticket. One PixARK detail we would rather tell you than have you find: PixARK writes its terrain to disk every five minutes and when the server stops, so for a backup with every last block in it, stop the server first — the stop writes everything before the copy is taken.

Because PixARK builds the world’s terrain the first time a world starts. On our node that took about a minute and a half on the main world, and after that a start is under a minute; Terracrypt’s first start is the longest of the three maps. The server is busy, not stuck.

Yes, and your PixARK world stays put. Switching moves your plan’s RAM to a different game; switch back and the world is waiting. No second bill, no reinstall and no extra charge — the plan is a pool of RAM, not a slot in a box.

NA East (Montreal) — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, NVMe storage, DDoS-protected network, direct game and query ports with no proxy hops.