Minecraft Proxy Networks: Building a Multi-Server Setup with Velocity or BungeeCord

Running a single Minecraft server is great for small groups of friends, but once your community starts growing — or once you want to run multiple gamemodes, a lobby, a creative world, and a survival world all under one roof — a single server starts to show its limits. That's where a proxy network comes in. In this guide we'll walk through what a proxy network is, how it works, and how you can spin one up on ServerPrism in a few clicks.

What Is a Proxy Network?

A proxy network (sometimes called a "BungeeCord network" or "Velocity network") is a setup where a lightweight proxy server sits in front of several backend Minecraft servers. Players connect to a single address — the proxy — and the proxy routes them to the right backend based on commands, portals, or hub logic.

The big advantages:

• One IP, many servers — your community only needs to remember play.yourserver.com
• Seamless transfers — players can jump between worlds/gamemodes without disconnecting
• Shared resources — cross-server chat, player lists, economies, party systems
• Scalability — add or remove backends without changing the public address

ServerPrism supports the two dominant proxies in the Minecraft ecosystem: Velocity (modern, async, recommended for new setups) and BungeeCord (older, still widely used).

Velocity vs BungeeCord — Which Should You Pick?

If you're starting fresh in 2026, go with Velocity. The performance gain is real, especially once you cross 50+ concurrent players.

How a Proxy Network Is Structured

A typical setup looks like this:

                    [ Players ]
                         |
                         v
              [ Proxy — Velocity (2GB) ]
              /          |           \
             v           v            v
       [ Lobby (4GB) ] [ Survival (8GB) ] [ Creative (4GB) ]

• The proxy itself doesn't host any gameplay — it only routes connections, so it doesn't need much RAM (2GB is plenty for most networks).
• Each backend runs its own Paper/Purpur server and hosts actual gameplay.
• Backends are offline mode (the proxy handles authentication), which means players must connect through the proxy — direct connections to backends get rejected.

Setting Up a Proxy Network on ServerPrism

ServerPrism lets you build this kind of network without manually wiring up forwarding.toml, config.yml, or the Velocity secret on each backend. Here's the flow:

Step 1: Deploy a Proxy Server

Head to the Minecraft Proxy Hosting page, pick a small plan (2GB is more than enough) and choose Velocity or BungeeCord as the runtime type. When the server finishes provisioning, you'll see a new tab in the server UI called Network — this is where the magic happens.

Step 2: Deploy Your Backend Servers

Spin up as many backends as you need — lobby, survival, minigames, creative. Each is a separate ServerPrism service, typically running Paper or Purpur. Pick whatever RAM makes sense for that gamemode.

Step 3: Link Backends to the Proxy

In the Velocity server's Network tab, you'll see a list of your other Minecraft servers. Tick the ones you want to include in the network and hit Save. ServerPrism automatically:

• Writes the backend addresses into Velocity's velocity.toml under the [servers] section
• Generates a shared forwarding secret (used for Modern forwarding — the secure, recommended mode)
• Pushes that secret to each backend's paper-global.yml and forwarding.secret file
• Enables velocity-support in the backend Paper configs

No SSH, no SFTP, no copy-pasting secrets between configs. One checkbox per server.

Step 4: Set Your Hub Server

In velocity.toml, set the try list under [servers] to point to your lobby (the first server players land on when they join). ServerPrism's Network tab has a dropdown for this too — pick your lobby server from the list.

Step 5: Point Your Domain

Point an A record (or SRV record for a custom port) from your domain to the proxy's IP. ServerPrism also provides free *.serverprism.online subdomains if you don't have your own domain — the Network → Subdomain tab auto-generates one on server creation.

Features ServerPrism Proxy Networks Get For Free

Running a proxy network yourself means dealing with a lot of plumbing. ServerPrism handles:

• Automatic forwarding secret rotation — change it once on the proxy, backends update automatically
• Modern forwarding by default — more secure than legacy BungeeGuard, no IP spoofing risks
• Backend health checks — the Network tab shows which backends are online, offline, or unreachable
• Subdomain provisioning — SRV records created automatically per server, so lobby.yournetwork.com and survival.yournetwork.com just work
• One-click backend restart — bounce a backend and the proxy handles reconnection gracefully
• Cross-region support — proxy in EU, backends wherever you want; routing is all IP-based

Common Pitfalls (and How ServerPrism Handles Them)

Online-mode mismatch. Backends must run in offline mode since the proxy handles auth. If you try to add an online-mode backend to the network, ServerPrism flags it and offers to flip the setting for you.

Forwarding secret mismatch. The #1 cause of "Can't verify username" errors on proxy networks. Since ServerPrism syncs the secret automatically, this just doesn't happen.

Version incompatibility. Velocity can only route between backends running compatible protocol versions. Mix 1.20 and 1.8 backends and players will be kicked when switching. ServerPrism warns you in the Network tab if versions don't line up.

Missing plugin messaging. Plugins like LuckPerms-Bungee need bungee-plugin-message-channel enabled. ServerPrism's default Paper configs have this turned on out of the box.

Scaling Your Network

Networks grow. Starting with a 2GB proxy + 4GB lobby + 8GB survival is a good baseline, but here's how to scale each tier:

• Proxy RAM: Roughly 10MB per concurrent player for Velocity. 2GB handles ~200 players; 4GB handles ~400.
• Backend RAM: Depends entirely on gamemode. Minigames are cheap (2–4GB), survival with mods is expensive (8–16GB+).
• Splitting a server: ServerPrism's split feature lets you take a bigger plan and divide it into multiple smaller servers — great for carving a 16GB plan into 4GB + 4GB + 8GB for lobby + creative + survival without buying three separate plans.

Wrapping Up

Proxy networks are the standard architecture once a Minecraft community grows beyond 20–30 concurrent players. With Velocity + a few Paper backends, you can build a professional-feeling network in an afternoon — and ServerPrism takes care of the secret-syncing, config-linking, and subdomain-provisioning grunt work so you can focus on actually running the server.

Spin up a Velocity proxy from our Minecraft Proxy Hosting page, drop a couple of Paper backends next to it, and you've got a proxy network running in under 10 minutes.