Move your Minecraft world to a new host in 10 minutes

Moving hosts sounds scary because it's your world — months of builds, your plugin config, your players' inventories. But a Minecraft server is just files. If you copy the right folders and don't delete the old server until the new one is proven, there is no way to lose anything. The whole thing takes about ten minutes of actual work, most of which is waiting on an upload.

Here's the order that keeps you safe.

Back up first, always

Before you touch anything, pull a full copy of your server down to your own machine. Even if the migration tools do the copying for you, a local backup means there is no single point of failure. On almost every host this is Files → Download or an SFTP grab.

The folders that actually matter:

• world/, world_nether/, world_the_end/ — your map, all dimensions. This is the one you cannot regenerate.
• plugins/ — the jars and the plugins/<name>/config.yml files. The config is often more painful to recreate than the plugin itself.
• mods/ — for Forge/Fabric/NeoForge servers. Match the loader version on the new host.
• server.properties, ops.json, whitelist.json, banned-players.json — your settings and permissions.

Skip logs/, cache/ and libraries/ — they're regenerated automatically and just slow the transfer.

Two ways to move the files

Once you have a backup, you've got two paths onto ChunkyHost. Pick whichever matches how you work.

Drag and drop. Open the in-browser file manager, drag your world/, plugins/ and mods/ folders straight in, and let them upload. No FTP client, no terminal. This is the simplest option and fine for worlds up to a few GB.

Mirror over SFTP. If your world is large or you'd rather not push it through a browser, paste your old host's SFTP URL and credentials into the import box and ChunkyHost pulls the files server-to-server. Data centre to data centre is far faster than routing everything through your home connection, and it doesn't tie up your laptop.

One-click import from the big hosts

If you're coming from Apex, BisectHosting, Shockbyte or Aternos, you don't have to do the file shuffle by hand. Point ChunkyHost's auto-import at the source, authorise it once, and it copies the world, plugins, mods and your server.properties over for you, keeping the folder layout intact. It's the same result as the manual paths above — it just saves you the clicking. Aternos in particular is a common reason people move, since the queue and forced ads get old fast. See the host comparisons for the specifics on what carries over from each.

Test on a whitelist before you flip anything

This is the step people skip and regret. Once the files are on the new host, start the server but leave it on a different IP and turn the whitelist on (whitelist on in the console, then whitelist add <yourname>). Now log in yourself and check the things that actually break in a move:

• Does the world load at spawn, and do your builds look right?
• Are all your plugins/mods loading clean? Watch the console for red on startup.
• Are op/whitelist permissions intact?
• Right Minecraft version and loader (1.21.x Paper, Fabric, NeoForge — whatever you ran)?

If anything's off, your old server is still untouched and still running. Fix it on the new box at your leisure. Nobody on your community has noticed a thing.

Re-point your DNS or IP, then flip

When the new server passes, it's time to send players to it. If you connect with a raw ip:port, just give people the new address. If you use a domain (an A record or a SRV record pointing at your host), update that record to the new IP. DNS can take anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours to propagate, so do this when the server's already healthy — not while you're still debugging.

Then turn the whitelist back off, let your players in, and watch the new server for a day before you cancel the old one. There is no rush to delete anything.

Try it before you commit

The honest reason migrations stall is fear of paying for a host before you know it works. So test first: ChunkyHost gives you a 7-day trial with no card, which is enough to import your world, run it on a whitelist, and decide for real. If you don't like it, you've lost nothing and your old server never went down.

When you're ready to size the new box, run your modpack and player count through the free RAM calculator so you don't overpay, and check current pricing for what hibernation actually saves you on a server that isn't busy 24/7.