Velocity and BungeeCord network hosting on your own VM
A Minecraft network is a proxy with several servers behind it. Minecraft Gateway gives you a virtual machine dedicated to you, where you run the proxy and every backend from one panel.
How a Minecraft network is built
Players never connect to your game servers directly. They connect to a proxy, which passes them on to a backend server: usually a lobby first, then survival, creative or minigames. Moving between them with /server or a lobby menu does not disconnect the player.
The proxy is light. It handles logins and routing, not the game world. The backends are normal Paper or Purpur servers that do the real work. Because everything shares one address, players only ever see a single server.
Velocity, BungeeCord or Waterfall
| Velocity | BungeeCord | Waterfall | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maintained by | PaperMC | SpigotMC | PaperMC (development has ended) |
| Player info forwarding | Modern forwarding with a shared secret | Legacy IP forwarding | Legacy IP forwarding |
| Plugins | Velocity plugins | BungeeCord plugins | BungeeCord plugins |
| Best for | New networks | Networks that depend on BungeeCord plugins | Existing setups only |
For a new network, choose Velocity. Its modern forwarding needs Minecraft 1.13 or newer on the backends; older backends can use legacy forwarding.
Plan the RAM on one machine
On Gateway, the proxy and all backends share the VM's memory, so add them up before you choose. Leave about 1 GB for the system itself.
- Proxy: 512 MB–1 GB is enough for most networks.
- Lobby: 1–2 GB, kept small with a short view distance.
- Survival: 3–6 GB depending on players and plugins.
- Each minigame server: 1–2 GB.
- Example on Gateway M (8 GB): proxy 1 GB, lobby 1.5 GB, survival 4 GB, the rest for the system.
Plans
| Plan | What you get | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Gateway S | 2 vCPU · 4 GB RAM · 40 GB NVMe | €11.99/mo |
| Gateway M | 4 vCPU · 8 GB RAM · 80 GB NVMe | €19.99/mo |
| Gateway L | 6 vCPU · 16 GB RAM · 160 GB NVMe | €36.99/mo |
| Gateway Network | Velocity + … | On request |
Prices per month. Billed monthly, no long contract.
See all plansSet up your network on Gateway
- Request a Gateway machineChoose S, M or L, or ask for a Network setup. The VM is ready a few minutes after it is created.
- Install the proxyInstall Velocity, Waterfall or BungeeCord from the panel, at the latest available version.
- Create the backendsAdd a lobby, survival, minigames, each with its own loader and version, each managed from the panel.
- Turn on forwardingOn Velocity, set player-info-forwarding-mode = "modern" in velocity.toml, then on each Paper backend enable proxies.velocity in config/paper-global.yml with the same secret and set online-mode=false in server.properties.
- Point your addressUse a custom subdomain or your own domain for the proxy. Set try = ["lobby"] so new players land in the lobby.
Security basics for any network
- Backends run with online-mode=false, so they must only accept connections from the proxy. Make them listen on 127.0.0.1 or block their ports from outside.
- Keep the forwarding secret private. Anyone who has it can fake a player's identity on your backends.
- On BungeeCord or Waterfall, set ip_forward: true in config.yml and bungeecord: true in each backend's spigot.yml.
- Use a permissions plugin with a shared database, so ranks stay the same on every backend.