Getting Started with Your Project Zomboid Dedicated Server

So you bought a Zomboid server. Now what?

Right. You've clicked the button, the order went through, and somewhere in one of our racks a container has spun up with your name on it. This guide is the bit between "order confirmed" email and "actually playing with your mates on Friday night". Nothing fancy, just the stuff I wish people knew before they opened a ticket.

If you haven't ordered yet and you're reading this for research, the game page is over at /game-servers/project-zomboid-server-hosting — pick a plan, come back.

Before you start

A couple of things you'll want within arm's reach:

Project Zomboid on Steam. Everyone who wants to join needs their own copy, no way around that.
Your server's IP and port, which you'll find on the service page in control.low.ms.
The admin password you set during checkout. If you skipped it or forgot, you can reset it from Service Settings in the panel.

Default PZ port is 16261. Keep that in mind, it'll come up.

Logging into the panel

Our control panel lives at control.low.ms. It's a TCAdmin install, and once you're signed in you'll see your Project Zomboid service in the list — click it and the sidebar on the left is where you'll spend most of your time.

The bits you actually care about:

Service Settings for the basic knobs (password, slots, start/stop).
Configuration Files for editing servertest.ini and the sandbox .lua in a browser tab, no SFTP needed.
Web Console for typing server commands without alt-tabbing into the game.
Mod Manager which, yes, works for PZ and has a Workshop browser baked in.
File Manager when Configuration Files isn't enough and you want to poke at things directly.
Log Viewer, Steam Update, Scheduled Tasks, Cloud Backup, Cloud Restore, Backup Manager, Current Activity & Stats, Commandline Manager. Most of these are self-explanatory, a couple get their own mention further down.

If you prefer doing things the old-fashioned way, SFTP is on port 8822 and plain FTP is on 8821. Same panel credentials.

First boot

Hit Start. That's it.

Worth saying out loud because people expect some kind of dramatic "world generation" step here, and PZ doesn't do that. The world in Zomboid is streamed in chunks as players walk around, so the first boot is really just the server writing out its config files (servertest.ini, servertest_SandboxVars.lua, a spawnregions file) and then sitting there waiting. It's quick. If you're staring at the Log Viewer for more than a minute or two on a fresh server, something's wrong and I'd open a ticket.

You'll know it's ready when the log stops scrolling and you see a line about the server being ready for connections. In-game, you're good to join.

Connecting

Fire up Project Zomboid, hit Join from the main menu, and you've got two options.

Direct connect is the one I always recommend. Punch in your server address and port — something like your.server.ip:16261, or a real-looking example, 203.0.113.10:16261. Password if you set one. Pick a character. Done.

The server browser works too if you flipped Public=true in servertest.ini, but honestly the browser is a mess at the best of times and direct connect is just faster. Use whichever you like.

Can't connect? The usual suspects, in order:

Server actually running? Check the panel, not your gut feeling.
Right IP, right port. Zomboid uses 16261 by default, not 25565 or whatever you muscle-memoried from another game.
Game version matches. More on that below.
Password typed correctly (they're case-sensitive and PZ won't tell you which field is wrong).

If you're still stuck, the Project Zomboid Troubleshooting article covers the weirder edge cases.

Making yourself admin

This trips people up, so pay attention — there's no "first player on the server gets admin" thing in PZ, despite what some outdated guides claim. You grant admin to yourself after you're in-game, using the server console.

Here's the flow:

Start the server and join it as a normal player. Pick your character name carefully, because that name is what you'll be promoting.
Back in the panel, open Web Console from the sidebar.
Type: /setaccesslevel "YourUsername" "admin" and send it.
Your access level updates live. You'll get the admin tools on your next action in-game, sometimes instantly, sometimes after a quick log-out/log-in.

Both arguments need to be quoted, both need the quotes, and don't forget the leading slash. I've seen people bang setaccesslevel admin admin into the console and then wonder why nothing happens.

The access levels, explained honestly

PZ has five access tiers and they're not a clean hierarchy — they do genuinely different things, which catches people out:

admin — the full-fat thing. Runs every command, changes every setting, can do whatever they want.
moderator — kick, ban, teleport, spectate. Cannot spawn items. Good for a trusted mate who you don't quite want handing out katanas.
overseer — invisible, godmode, spectator, chat. Cannot interact with the world at all. It's an observer-with-chat role, not a junior admin.
gm — the opposite of overseer in a way: visible to players, can spawn items and zombies, teleport, godmode. Event-runner role.
observer — spectator only. That's the whole job.

Pick the lightest one that does what you need. Handing out admin to everyone because it's easier is how servers get griefed.

Commands worth bookmarking

Nothing exotic, just the ones I end up typing constantly:

/servermsg "hello" — broadcast to everyone online.
/save — force a world save. Do this before you touch settings.
/kickuser "name" and /banuser "name" — does what it says.
/adduser "name" "pass" — add a whitelisted user if you're running whitelist mode.
/quit — clean shutdown. Better than hitting Stop in the panel mid-session.

Editing servertest.ini

Open Configuration Files in the sidebar, pick servertest.ini, edit, save, restart. That's the happy path for 95% of changes and I'd start there before reaching for SFTP.

The settings I always look at on day one:

ServerName — rename it to something that isn't "servertest", your future self will thank you. Public — leave false unless you actually want randos. Password — set one, even a weak one, it filters out drive-by joiners. PVP — personal taste. PauseEmpty — I'd leave this on for small groups of friends who play at similar times, turn it off if you want the world ticking along 24/7 so loot respawns and erosion do their thing.

MaxPlayers is there too but don't crank it past what your plan supports — see our plans on the Project Zomboid hosting page if you need more slots.

For the full settings tour (sandbox vars, zombie population curves, loot respawn, all that), the Project Zomboid Server Configuration article goes deep.

Mods

Mod Manager in the sidebar is the easy route. It's a curated Steam Workshop browser with one-click install, and it'll populate the WorkshopItems= and Mods= lines in your ini for you. For a casual server that's probably all you need.

If you want manual control — specific load order, mods the browser doesn't list, whatever — drop back to Configuration Files, open servertest.ini, and edit WorkshopItems= and Mods= by hand. Restart after.

One gotcha: every player joining a modded server needs the same mods subscribed on Steam. If they're missing something the server will tell them, but it's not always obvious which mod is the problem, so keep the list short until you know what you're doing.

Build 41 vs Build 42

Quick honesty section because there's a lot of noise about this. Build 41 is the stable branch. It's what you should be running for a public server or anything where you want things to just work.

Build 42 multiplayer went to the unstable Steam branch in December 2025 as 42.13, and at time of writing it's still very much a stress-test. The Indie Stone themselves are recommending whitelisted servers with twenty players or fewer while they iron things out. It's playable, it's fun, but it's not production-ready in the same way B41 is. If you want to run it anyway, make sure every player has opted into the b42unstable beta on Steam (Properties → Betas) and expect bumps. The Build 42 multiplayer survival guide on the blog has more detail on what's different.

For most people reading this: stick with B41 for now.

Backups and the boring stuff

Cloud Backup runs automatically — you don't have to think about it, but you should know it's there. If something goes sideways (bad mod update, someone runs /quit at the wrong moment, sandbox vars get mangled), open Cloud Restore, pick a snapshot, done. I'd still run /save before you make big changes though, belt and braces.

Scheduled Tasks is worth a look if you want nightly restarts or a weekly clean reboot. Zomboid servers are pretty happy long-running but a 4am restart never hurt anybody.

Friends, pass this on

When you invite people, they need three things: the address (your.server.ip:16261), the password if you set one, and which branch they should be on (B41 stable for almost everyone). That's the whole handover. If they can't join after that, it's almost always the Steam branch being wrong.

For a deeper dive on server tuning, the best Project Zomboid server settings for 2026 post is what I'd read next. The server hosting guide is the more general starting-out piece.

Right. Go survive.