Upload files to your game server with SFTP

There are two ways to get files onto your game server: the Files page in your browser, and SFTP with a program on your computer. This guide shows where to find your SFTP details, how to connect, and when the browser is the quicker choice.

Browser or SFTP?

• Files in the browser: best for quick edits and single files of up to 100 MB. You can also unpack archives there.
• SFTP: best for large files, whole folders such as a world or a modpack, and many files at once.

1. Find your SFTP details

1. Sign in to the panel and open Game Servers in the sidebar.
2. Click the name of your server.
3. On the right you find the SFTP card with Host, Port, Username and Password. Click Show to reveal the password. Every row has a copy button.

Three things to know:

• The SFTP password is not your account password. The panel creates it for you, and the same password works for all your game servers.
• The username is different for every server. Always copy it from the card of the server you want to reach.
• The port is not the usual port 22. Use the one on the card.

2. Connect with FileZilla

FileZilla is free and works on Windows, macOS and Linux.

1. Open the Site Manager from the File menu and create a new site.
2. Set the protocol to SFTP.
3. Enter the host and the port from the card.
4. Set the logon type to Normal, then enter the username and the password from the card.
5. Click Connect. The first time, FileZilla asks whether you trust the server. Confirm it.

You now see the files of your server on the right. They are the same files as on the Files page. Drag files from your computer on the left to the server on the right.

3. Connect with WinSCP

On Windows you can also use WinSCP. Create a new site, choose SFTP as the file protocol, fill in the host, port, username and password from the card, and log in.

Prefer a terminal?

The card shows a ready-made command under Connect with. It looks like this:

sftp -P 2022 your-username@your-host

Copy it from the card so the port, username and host are right, and enter the password when asked.

4. Upload without breaking things

• Stop the server before you replace a world, mods or plugins. Click Stop under Server actions, upload, then click Start.
• Make a backup before you overwrite anything you care about: see Back up and restore your game server.
• Put files in the folder the game expects. On a Minecraft server, plugins go in plugins, mods in mods and the world lives in world. Other games use their own folder names.

Uploading in the browser instead

Open Files on your server page. Click Upload, or drag files from your computer onto the list. You can create folders with New folder, and a click on a text file opens it in an editor.

A handy trick for folders: zip the folder on your computer, upload the zip, then click the unpack icon in its row. This works for zip, tar, gz, rar and 7z archives.

If something does not work

• The login fails: copy the username again from the card of the right server. If that does not help, click Reset password on the card. You get a new password that applies to all your servers. After several wrong attempts, logins are slowed down for a moment, so wait a little before you try again.
• You tried an SSH key: SFTP here works with the password only.
• There is no SFTP card: the server is still installing or it is suspended. SFTP is also only available to the owner of the server, not to subusers.
• The connection times out: check that the protocol is SFTP and not FTP, and that you used the port from the card.