Migrate from Pterodactyl

This is a different category of tool, not a competitor. Pterodactyl is a generic game-server hosting panel — Docker-isolated containers, admin/billing UI, customer self-service, multi-game (ARK, Rust, Minecraft, etc.). PrexorCloud is a Minecraft-network orchestrator — process supervision (no Docker), proxy-aware routing, automatic scaling on player count, deep MC-domain primitives like Network Composition and the Player Journey Bus.

If you run Pterodactyl because you sell hosting to customers, stay on Pterodactyl. PrexorCloud has no billing, no customer-isolation model, and no per-tenant resource limits. If you run a single Minecraft network on Pterodactyl because that’s the panel you knew and it’s getting in your way, this recipe is for you.

What you gain by switching

flowchart LR
  PT["Pterodactyl<br/>panel"] -.hosts.-> S["6 manually-managed<br/>'servers'"]
  PT -.no.-> P["proxy routing"]
  PC["PrexorCloud<br/>orchestrator"] --> NC["Network Composition"]
  PC --> SCL["dynamic scaling"]
  PC --> CR["crash recovery + journey"]

What you gain	Source
Proxy-aware topology routing. Players land in the lobby through one record (NetworkComposition); kicks bounce back through the fallback chain automatically.	Concepts → Network Composition
Player-count auto-scaling. Bedwars scales from 1 to 24 instances on player demand without writing a line of code.	Guides → Custom Scaling Rules
Player Journey Bus. Per-player append-only log of every connect, transfer, crash. Answers “where did this player go in the last hour?” instantly.	Concepts → Architecture
Rolling deployments. Push a template, roll it across 24 game instances with health-gated batches and auto-rollback.	Guides → Rolling Deployments
Active-active controller HA. Two controllers, one Mongo, one Valkey, ~15s failover.	Guides → HA Controller (Redis)
First-class GitOps. prexorctl group apply -f groups/ plus a CI workflow → declarative cluster state.	Recipes → CI/CD Deployments
Cosign-signed module bundles. Verifiable supply chain for first-party and third-party modules.	Internals → Cosign Pipeline

What you lose

You should know exactly what is not in the box before you commit:

What you lose	Reason
Container isolation. Pterodactyl uses Docker; the daemon supervises bare JVM processes. No cgroup memory cap, no per-instance network namespace. Memory/CPU limits are JVM-flag-based.	Architecture §3 calls this out explicitly: “Process isolation is not in v1 scope.”
Multi-game support. PrexorCloud is Paper / Spigot / Folia / Velocity / Bungee only. Want to run an ARK server alongside? Pterodactyl.
Per-tenant billing / customer accounts. No “user can buy 4 GiB Bedrock server” UX. Operators are admins, not customers.
The web UI for end-users. Pterodactyl has a customer-facing console; PrexorCloud’s dashboard is admin-only. Players don’t get a web UI.
One-click software switching. Pterodactyl’s “egg” system lets users swap server type. PrexorCloud requires a group-config change + redeploy.
SFTP file access. Pterodactyl exposes SFTP per-server. PrexorCloud doesn’t — file access is via templates and prexorctl template push.
Image-pinned versions. Pterodactyl’s eggs lock a specific image. PrexorCloud uses a catalog (platform + version → URL); you control the URL.

Should you migrate?

Use this checklist:

• You run a single Minecraft network, not multi-tenant hosting.
• You operate the cluster yourself; no customers self-service it.
• You want proxy-aware routing without managing velocity.toml by hand.
• You want player-count auto-scaling out of the box.
• You can accept process-level (not container-level) isolation between MC instances on a node.
• You don’t need to host non-Minecraft games on the same daemons.

Six checked → migrate. Fewer than four → stay on Pterodactyl, possibly front it with PrexorCloud’s lobby/proxy model and let Pterodactyl host your game instances. That hybrid setup is unusual but works (point PrexorCloud’s catalog at Pterodactyl-managed instance addresses; you’ll lose scaling and Player Journey Bus features but gain Network Composition).

Migration steps (if you’re going for it)

There is no Pterodactyl-to-PrexorCloud importer. The shapes are too different. Plan a fresh install plus a one-time data move.

1. Inventory what you have

For each Pterodactyl server you run today:

- name, MC version, port range, RAM
- plugins / mods directory
- world directory (if persistent)
- whether it's behind a proxy you also manage
- player counts at peak / off-peak

2. Install PrexorCloud alongside

Stand up PrexorCloud on different hosts, or on the same hosts with a non-overlapping port range:

# Get the Quickstart-shaped install going
sudo prexorctl setup --component controller --non-interactive

See Getting Started → Installation.

3. Convert each Pterodactyl server to a group + template

For one-off persistent worlds (survival, creative, towny):

survival.yml

name: survival
platform: paper
version: "1.21.4"
scaling: { mode: STATIC, min: 1, max: 1 }
ports: { from: 25565, to: 25565 }
exposeOnHost: true
resources: { memoryMB: 4096 }
templates: [base-paper, survival]
volumes:
  - hostPath: /var/lib/prexorcloud/worlds/survival
    mountPath: ./world
placement:
  noEvict: true

Copy the world directory off the Pterodactyl host into the new location. See Recipes → Survival Server for the full pattern.

For ephemeral game-modes (bedwars, skywars), pick the patterns from Recipes → BedWars Network instead — these groups don’t have persistent worlds, so no copy is needed.

4. Push templates

cp -r ./pterodactyl-server-files/plugins templates/lobby/plugins
prexorctl template push templates/lobby/

5. Decommission Pterodactyl

When the new network is healthy, shut down Pterodactyl Wings (the daemon equivalent) and stop forwarding DNS to it. Keep the panel running for billing/audit-archive lookups; you don’t have to delete it.

How to verify the migration worked

prexorctl status                           # cluster up
prexorctl group list                       # all your servers as groups
prexorctl instance list                    # each one running

# Players land where you expect
prexorctl player journey <uuid> --limit 10

In Minecraft, check that:

• The persistent worlds (survival, creative) have their data intact.
• /server <name> and /play <group> route correctly.
• Op permissions and plugin permissions still apply.

Common pitfalls

Symptom	Likely cause
World looks empty after migration	Wrong mountPath. Paper uses ./world by default; check level-name in server.properties.
OOM during peak	Pterodactyl’s container kept memory in cgroup; PrexorCloud trusts JVM -Xmx. Right-size and add -XX:+ExitOnOutOfMemoryError.
Plugin can’t find a config file	Pterodactyl mounted /home/container/, plugins reference absolute paths. Patch plugin config to use relative paths.
Players hit “Connection lost” instead of fallback	No Velocity in front + no Network Composition. Add the proxy group + the network.yml from Your First Network.
You miss the per-server SFTP UI	There isn’t one. Use prexorctl template push for config and prexorctl instance console <id> for live access.

Where to go next

• Concepts → Architecture — read this before committing; it explains the no-Docker decision.
• Getting Started → Your First Network — build the proxy + lobby + game shape that Pterodactyl can’t do natively.
• Recipes → Survival Server — the closest 1:1 to “a Pterodactyl Minecraft server” pattern.