Bridge limits and Bridge Pro

One Bridge address is free, with no card. Bridge Pro is $3 a month or $30 a year, and every paid FadeHost subscription includes it: a $2.50 server slot, a paid bot or app, a VPS, any of them turns Pro on for the account.

Side by side

The program itself is free in both cases, updates itself in both cases, and is the same program. So are the server plugin and the mods: nothing about the download, the claim or the steps changes with the tier, and all of them work on a free address.

The traffic budget

A free address carries 300 GB a month, counted in both directions through the relay. The month runs with the calendar. The address’s page in the panel shows where the month stands.

For Minecraft that is a lot. A player uses a few hundred kilobits while they are moving around, so a group of friends playing most evenings lands well inside it. What eats a budget like that is sending files: a big resource pack served to everyone on every join, a world download, a voice server running day and night for a large group.

An address that reaches 300 GB is paused until the next month. The program says why instead of just failing, the offline screen goes up for players, and nothing is deleted. Bridge Pro lifts the cap the moment it is on, and the address starts answering again.

Fair use on Pro means what it says: there is no counter stopping you, and we will talk to you rather than switch you off if one address starts carrying the traffic of a small hosting company. A tunnel carrying something other than a game is a different matter and is covered by the terms.

An idle free address is released

A free address that nobody connects to for 30 days is released, and the name goes back in the pool. The program reconnecting keeps it alive, so an address stays yours while you use it, even if your machine is off for a week. We mail you before it happens.

Addresses on Bridge Pro are never released.

What Pro adds, in practice

• Four addresses. One for the survival world, one for the modded world, one for the voice server, one for whatever you are testing.
• Eight ports each. Java, Bedrock, voice chat and a second game on one name.
• A name you choose. frost.play.fadehost.net or frost.shulker.xyz rather than a word pair, on one of our Minecraft domains or with your own domain in front of it. An address that moves to one of our domains keeps answering on its old play.fadehost.net name too.
• Login protection on the way in: a password gate that runs on the relay, before a connection reaches your PC at all, so an offline-mode world is not open to every name.
• A Discord ping when friends hit the offline screen while you are away.
• No traffic cap, and priority on the relays when one is busy.

Turning Pro on

Open Bridge in the panel and press Upgrade, or start any paid subscription and it is already on. If you cancel the last paid subscription, Pro stays until the end of the period you paid for, then the account goes back to the free tier. An address that fits the free tier keeps working. One that does not, because it is not the first address on the account, carries more than two ports, has a name you chose or sits on one of our domains, is paused with its settings kept, and we mail you which of those it was. Turning Pro back on resumes it.

What neither tier does

• It does not keep the server up when your machine is off. See the offline screen.
• It does not make your home upload faster. Every player’s traffic still crosses it, which is the one thing a hosted server changes: when the PC is not enough.
• It does not carry mail, web or remote desktop ports: ports we refuse.