For the right people and use cases, hourly game server hosting can be both incredibly convenient and provide significant cost savings. Let's look at why.

First, about the convenience factor

If you are paying for game servers hourly, like you do with Fenrik, this means that your server isn't always running, which means there is always a delay when it starts up. If this isn't worth the cost savings, then Fenrik isn't for you. However, our service is used by the same folks developing it and we think that Fenrik servers work nicely:

Quick starts: The average Fenrik server starts up in under 3 minutes, though this does vary by game.
Discord integration: You don't have to be logged into our control panel to start a server. You can do it from Discord and even share with your server friends.
Auto shutdown: Don't ever worry about needing to shut it down. We have a configurable idleness timer that will shut down your server for you.

Other roadmap items to reduce that inconvenience:

Scheduled starts: We've discussed implementing a startup schedule, but haven't implemented this. If interested, join our Discord to vote and discuss.
Server sharing: If you don't use Discord, we plan to add a way for multiple Fenrik users to share a server.

How to math this out

You can find all sorts of random sources on the internet telling you how much time the average gamer spends playing, but what matters is how much time you spend playing. Or, if you game socially, how much time your group spends playing.

The deciding factor for me, the founder of Fenrik, was looking at how often my group played. With Valheim we averaged around 60 hours of server time (not individual play time) per month. It's important to note that if you are calculating for a group, you need to focus on the number of hours the server is running, not the number of hours that you play the game.

Knowing that we needed 60 hours a month, we looked at other game server hosts, divided their pricing by 60, and found that we could be getting a general purpose hourly server from a cloud provider like AWS for a fraction of the cost. Which is how you can think of Fenrik. AWS-style pricing for game servers.

So, let's break this down:

Monthly provider cost / Needed server hours per month = Cost per hour at current host

Is that cost less than Fenrik's cost for the same game and server hours? You can check our pricing calculator on our homepage and see specific size recommendations on each game's page, or check out our sister site: ServerHowler to compare our pricing to some popular monthly hosts.

Does this fit your lifestyle?

For my group, the cost savings were worth the switch. Anyone can start any of our game servers from our Discord server and then get notified when the server is running. So it just becomes a matter of sending a quick Discord message before sitting down to game.

FAQs

How is "hourly billing" calculated?

Billing for your server starts the moment we detect that the server is up and available, meaning that you get the startup time for free. The moment you press stop, billing stops. If you use our idleness timer, then billing stops when it detects that your server has been idle for that configurable length of time.

Is hourly hosting actually cheaper than monthly hosting?

It depends on how much your server needs to run. We cover this above in the post, but it comes down to how much you play and how much the rest of your group plays. It could be, but it could also not be. If want assistance figuring this out, join our Discord and ask!

What happens if I forget to stop my server?

By default, all servers have an idleness timer. We guarantee that your server will be shutdown in that amount of time. You will NOT be billed for any time longer than that.

Do I need to be logged into Fenrik to start my server?

No. While you can easily log into Fenrik and start your server, our Discord bot allows you to easily start it from Discord. You can even configure it to allow other members of your group to start the server.

How do I estimate my monthly cost before launching a server?

Use our pricing calculator on the homepage. If you aren't sure what size of server you need, check out each game's page. Palworld, for example, has a minimum size of 8GB.