About SadHost
SadHost is a free game server hosting platform for playing with friends: create a Minecraft Java or Valheim server in under a minute, invite everyone with a single address, and never pay a cent.
Why we built it
SadHost started with a simple idea: hosting a Minecraft server should be free, fast and easy enough for anyone — without confusing control panels, hidden fees, or servers that quietly disappear after a week. Most "free" hosts either expire your server after a trial, push you into a paid plan after an hour of play, or make you fight a command line to install a single plugin. We wanted the opposite.
So we built our own control panel on top of proven infrastructure. Creating a server is one step: pick a name, choose your software or game, and press create. Within a minute your friends can join your world.
What we offer today
- Free Minecraft Java servers — 2 vCores (200% CPU), 5 GB RAM and 5 GB disk, with a modern web panel.
- Your choice of software — Paper, Purpur, Fabric, Folia and Forge, with an in-panel version and loader switcher that keeps your world.
- One-click installers — plugins and modpacks installed from the panel instead of by hand over SFTP.
- Free Valheim dedicated servers — including the BepInEx mod loader for server-side mods.
- Free subdomains — give your server a real address instead of a random IP and port.
- A file manager with Extract — upload a world or mod archive as a ZIP and unpack it in place.
How free hosting can actually work
Two things make it possible. The first is Semi-24/7 hibernation: when nobody is playing, a server sleeps and its memory is released to the pool; the moment a player connects, it wakes automatically. That means we are not paying for thousands of idle Java processes, and you are not paying for a server nobody is visiting at 4am. The second is that our public content pages — the guides you are reading — carry advertising, while the control panel and your server console never do.
Idle servers are hibernated, and servers that are never woken are cleaned up on a published schedule so capacity keeps moving. Everything you need to download your world is in the panel, so nothing you care about is ever locked behind a payment.
Guides, not support tickets
We write things down. The SadHost blog covers the practical side of running servers — creating a server that stays online, installing plugins, uploading an existing world, fixing lag, Valheim setup and Valheim mods — while the Helpdesk documents the panel itself.
We are still growing
SadHost is in beta. That means you may occasionally hit a rough edge, but it also means your feedback genuinely shapes the product. If something breaks, or you want a feature that would make your server better, tell us on the contact page or in our Discord.