VS
So you’re shopping for a Minecraft host…
Let’s be honest, there are dozens of options, and most of them look the same on paper. I’m going to walk you through what actually happens after you pay, comparing Shockbyte’s real-world performance, pricing and support against what we do here at ExpHost. Everything is sourced from our own public docs, our Trustpilot profile (4 / 5, 2025-08-15 snapshot) and Shockbyte’s Trustpilot page (3.9 / 5 at the time of writing).
1. The hardware you’ll actually play on
ExpHost: Ryzen 9 7950X3D nodes (9950X on Pro), DDR5, NVMe Storage. Shockbyte: They don’t publish exact CPUs; community tests and their own staff comments point to mixed Xeon E-2288G / Ryzen 7 5800X fleets with DDR4 and SATA SSDs on nodes. In practical terms that’s 30-40 % lower PassMark per thread and slower chunk I/O when your world grows past 15 GB. We publish our specs on every node; Shockbyte does not.
2. Money talk
ExpHost: £1.50 / GB (Basic) to £2.00 / GB (Pro). No “sale” price that jumps after the first invoice. Shockbyte: Advertises “from $2.50 / GB” but that’s a 50 % off intro coupon. Standard renewal is $5.00 / GB (£3.90). That’s roughly 2.6× our Basic rate and 1.95× our Pro rate for slower hardware.
3. Support that feels like Discord DMs, not a ticket abyss
Trustpilot snapshot
• ExpHost: 4 / 5, 89 % of reviews mention “fast”, “personal”, “Discord in 5 min”.
• Shockbyte: 3.9 / 5, 13 % are 1-star reviews citing “AI bot loop”, “ticket ignored for days”.
We keep a permanent private ticket open for every customer in Discord. Average first response last month: 3 min 42 s.
Shockbyte’s public docs say “24/7”, but Trustpilot shows multiple users stuck with auto-responders or 48-hour waits during peak.
4. Backups that don’t cost extra
ExpHost: Two daily off-site full backups, 7-day retention, free restore button in Cosmo UI. Shockbyte: One daily backup on the node only; off-site or more frequent backups are a paid add-on ($2 / mo per 5 GB). Losing a world because the node RAID died is not theoretical—search “Shockbyte lost world” on Trustpilot.
5. DDoS protection that just works
ExpHost: CosmicGuard, 400 Gbps tested, included on every plan. Shockbyte: Voxility / Path filtering, but 1-star Trustpilot reviews from October 2024 mention “server null-routed for 6 hours” and “no mitigation until ticket escalation”.
6. Locations and latency
ExpHost: Frankfurt only, 9 ms to most of EU, single-digit TPS drop even under load. Shockbyte: 11 locations, but Trustpilot flags “US-East oversold, 180 ms ping spikes at prime time”. We prefer one great node over five mediocre ones.
7. Control panel that doesn’t feel like 2012
ExpHost: Cosmo UI—dark-mode Pterodactyl fork with VS-Code editor and one-click mod installer. Shockbyte: New Shockbyte Panel (2024), prettier than Multicraft but still outdated.
Bottom line
Shockbyte is older, larger, and has more flags on the map. We’re smaller, faster, cheaper, greener, and we actually answer your question at 3 a.m. If that sounds like your vibe, the button’s below.
Tech-Spec TLDR
Free with ExpHost - Paid elsewhere
- CosmicGuard DDoS protection (Shockbyte: add-on on cheaper plans)
- 2× daily off-site backups (Shockbyte: $2 / mo)
- DDR5 RAM (Shockbyte: DDR4 on most nodes)
- NVMe SSD (Shockbyte: SATA SSD on legacy nodes)
- Sub-5-minute Discord support (Shockbyte: ticket queue / AI bot)