Ask around any Minecraft or Rust community for host recommendations, and Shockbyte comes up almost immediately. It’s been around since 2013, it’s hosted well over a million servers, and it’s one of the names people default to without thinking too hard about it. Cybrancee is the newer face in the same conversation, the budget option that keeps showing up in roundups because its cheapest plan doesn’t feel like a cheapest plan.
Put them side by side, and the differences are bigger than the marketing pages let on. This is a straight head-to-head: pricing, refund policy, hardware, the control panel, game support, and how each company’s support actually holds up once something breaks. We’ll use the Minecraft hosting plans as the reference point throughout, since that’s what most people comparing these two are actually shopping for, but we’ll touch on what else each company offers too.
Quick Comparison
| Category |  |  |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (Minecraft) | $1.99/month, 1GB | $3.99/month, 1GB, 10 slots |
| Pricing model | Flat tiers, unlimited slots/storage/bandwidth | Named RAM tiers, slots scale with plan |
| Refund window | 90 days | 3 days (72 hours) |
| Control panel | Custom panel built on Pterodactyl | Custom-built Shockbyte Control Panel (replaced Multicraft) |
| Games supported | 30+ | 60+ |
| Server locations | 6 regions (NA, Europe, UK, Asia, Australia, India) | 13 global locations |
| Founded | 2020 | 2013 |
| Trustpilot | 4.8/5, around 750 reviews | 3.8/5, over 10,000 reviews |
| Also offers | Bot hosting, web hosting, domains | Focused on game server hosting |
What Each One Actually Offers
Cybrancee is a UK company (How About Group Ltd) that launched in 2020 and built its whole pitch around not stripping the budget tier down to make the higher tiers look better. Even the $1.99 entry plan comes with unlimited player slots, unlimited storage, and unlimited bandwidth. The same account also covers Discord bot hosting (with Reddit already live and Slack, X, and Twitch listed as coming soon), plus web and WordPress hosting through Plesk and domain registration, so a small community doesn’t need three separate providers for a server, a bot, and a landing page.
Shockbyte has been doing this since 2013, founded by Mitch Smith out of Melbourne, Australia, while he was still in high school. It’s grown into one of the largest Minecraft-specific hosts around, having powered more than a million servers over the years. It sticks to game hosting rather than branching out, but it covers a lot of ground there: 60-plus titles, and a brand-new custom control panel that replaced its old Multicraft setup, built around a feature called Instances that lets one server run and swap between multiple game setups without cancelling and reordering.
Pricing and Value
Cybrancee’s $1.99/month gets you 1GB, and every tier above that carries the same unlimited slots, storage, and bandwidth as standard. Nothing gets capped and pushed behind an upsell.
Shockbyte’s entry Dirt tier runs $3.99/month for 1GB, but it’s capped at 10 slots rather than unlimited. You move up through named RAM tiers as your server needs grow, and slot limits loosen at the higher end, but a group that outgrows the entry tier is paying more for less flexibility than the equivalent jump would cost on Cybrancee.
Edge: Cybrancee. Unlimited resources on every plan means less math around overage fees later.
Refund Policy
This is the widest gap on the list. Cybrancee backs every plan with a 90-day money-back guarantee. Shockbyte’s terms give new customers a 3-day (72-hour) window, and it’s strict about it: refund requests that come in after that point are typically declined outright rather than handled case by case, which has been a recurring source of frustration in Shockbyte’s own Trustpilot reviews.
Ninety days is enough time to actually run a server with real players for a couple of months before deciding it’s the right fit. Three days barely covers getting everyone invited and testing a few plugins.
Edge: Cybrancee, by a wide margin.
Hardware and Performance
Cybrancee runs Ryzen CPUs clocked over 4GHz paired with NVMe SSDs. Shockbyte recently finished migrating its entire fleet to modern AMD EPYC and Ryzen processors, also paired with NVMe storage, a move that reportedly let it consolidate from more than 2,000 machines down to under 1,000 while actually increasing capacity. Both include DDoS protection as standard.
For a typical Minecraft or Rust server, the difference in day-to-day performance comes down to which node you land on more than which company you picked. Both hosts have the modern hardware to back up their claims.
Edge: Tie. Neither has a meaningful advantage here.
Control Panel and Ease of Use
Cybrancee runs a customized build of Pterodactyl, which will feel familiar if you’ve used another Pterodactyl-based host before. Billing and the server panel share one login, which is a small thing until you’re the one who forgot which password goes where.
Shockbyte’s new panel is a genuine step up from the old Multicraft days. The Instances feature lets you run several game setups on one server and swap between them, the console updates in real time now, and modpack installs are one click from a library of CurseForge, FTB, Technic, and ATLauncher packs, with a built-in file manager so manual FTP uploads aren’t required anymore either. The catch is that billing still runs through a separate login from the actual game panel, a two-login setup that’s a known point of friction in outside reviews.
Edge: Cybrancee, for single-login simplicity, though Shockbyte’s new panel has closed most of the gap that used to exist here.
Game and Feature Library
Shockbyte pulls ahead outright in this category. It supports over 60 games against Cybrancee’s 30-plus, and its modpack library runs past 3,000 with automated installs. For a group that rotates between Minecraft, Rust, and whatever’s popular that month, that breadth is hard to match.
Cybrancee’s game library is smaller but covers the popular titles, and it makes up ground by extending past game hosting entirely into bot hosting, web hosting, and domains under the same account, territory Shockbyte doesn’t touch at all.
Edge: Shockbyte, on raw game and modpack variety.
Support and Response Times
Cybrancee runs 24/7 human support backed by an AI assistant in its Discord for quick questions (the company is upfront that the bot’s answers aren’t guaranteed to be correct, and it’s meant to supplement a ticket, not replace one). Most reviews describe fast, friendly help, though it’s a smaller team than Shockbyte’s, and a handful of reviews mention slower turnaround on more complicated billing questions.
Shockbyte’s support gets a lot of individual praise on Trustpilot, with staff frequently called out by name. But billing tickets specifically have a documented pattern of running slow, with some users reporting five to twelve days to get a resolution, even while technical tickets move at a reasonable pace.
Edge: Cybrancee, slightly. Both hosts get real praise for their support staff, but the billing-specific delays that keep showing up in Shockbyte’s reviews are hard to ignore.
Reputation and Reviews
Cybrancee holds a 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from around 750 reviews. Shockbyte’s actual Trustpilot score sits at 3.8 out of 5 from more than 10,000 reviews, a much larger sample reflecting 13 years in business. Worth flagging: Trustpilot has noted that Shockbyte’s own website displays a higher rating than what its Trustpilot page actually shows, a mismatch independent reviewers have called out as well.
The bigger review pool cuts both ways for Shockbyte. It shows real scale and a long track record, and the majority of reviews are genuinely positive. But it also surfaces more complaints in absolute terms, with billing and support delays as the most common thread. Cybrancee’s shorter, newer review base skews more consistently positive, though it’s also had less time to accumulate the occasional bad experience that any host eventually racks up.
Edge: Cybrancee on rating, Shockbyte on sheer weight of evidence.
So, Which One Should You Pick?
For most people setting up a Minecraft server, a small Rust box, or a Discord bot on a budget, Cybrancee is the easier recommendation. Flat pricing with unlimited slots and storage means no math on overage fees, the 90-day refund window gives you real room to test the server with actual players, and the familiar Pterodactyl panel keeps setup simple. It’s also the better option if you want your game server, bot, and website under one login.
Shockbyte earns its spot for a narrower reason: if your group wants the widest possible game and modpack selection, or values a host that’s spent over a decade building a reputation specifically around Minecraft, its scale and new control panel are genuinely useful. Just budget for the shorter refund window and know that a billing issue, if you run into one, may take longer to resolve than you’d like.
If you’re still not sure, the 90-day guarantee is the easiest way to find out. Set the server up on Cybrancee, run it for a few weeks with real players, and you’ll know soon enough whether it’s the right fit.
Happy hosting!
