Renewing Your Free Server: The 7-Day Cycle Explained
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The single most-asked question we get in support tickets from new users is some version of: “My server got suspended — what happened? Did I lose my world?”
The short answer is no, you almost certainly haven’t lost anything. The longer answer is the renewal cycle — the 7-day timer that keeps free servers alive — and once you understand how it works, you’ll never get caught out by a suspension again.
This post explains exactly what happens at each stage of the cycle, what triggers a suspension, and how to set up auto-renew so it never happens accidentally.
The cycle in one paragraph
Every free server has a renewal date. When you deploy a server, that date is set 7 days in the future. To keep the server alive past that date, you spend coins to renew, which pushes the date 7 days forward. A starter server renews for 500 coins; the cost scales with your resource pool and is split across your active servers, so the exact amount is always shown on the server card. If the date passes without a renewal, the server is suspended — its files are kept, but it stops running. After a grace period, suspended servers are permanently deleted to free up resources for active users.
That’s the whole system. The rest of this post is the practical detail.
Day 0 — deploying your server
When you finish the deploy wizard and your server provisions, two things happen:
- The server gets created with whatever name and resources you picked.
- Its renewal date is set to today + 7 days.
The dashboard’s server card shows the renewal date front and centre. You’ll see something like “Renews in 6 days” counting down day-by-day.
The first 7 days are essentially a free trial of the cycle — you don’t owe coins yet, and the server runs normally regardless of your balance.
Days 1-6 — the active period
During this stretch, your server runs as long as your account is in good standing. You can play on it, edit configs, install plugins, restore backups — everything works.
Your coin balance during these days doesn’t affect the server in any way. You could have zero coins for the entire week and the server stays online. Coins only matter when the renewal day arrives.
This is the time to earn coins so you have enough ready when the renewal hits (500 for a starter server, a bit more if you’ve upgraded your pool). A few minutes a day on the earn page or one daily ritual claim handles that easily — see the coin economy guide for the full breakdown.
Day 7 — renewal day
On the renewal date, one of three things happens:
Scenario A: You manually renew
Click the Renew button on the server card. The server’s renewal amount (shown right there on the card) is deducted from your balance, and the renewal date pushes 7 days forward. Server keeps running, no interruption, you don’t even need to restart it.
You can renew at any point during the cycle, not just on Day 7. Renewing on Day 4 simply pushes the date to “Day 4 + 7” — your timer is reset to a full 7 days from the moment you renewed. So if you’ve earned the coins, there’s no benefit to waiting.
Scenario B: Auto-renew handles it for you
If you’ve purchased the auto-renew unlock from the dashboard’s store (a one-time 5,000-coin upgrade) and your balance covers the renewal, the system automatically renews the server on its expiry date.
Auto-renew runs as a scheduled background job once a day. As long as you have the coins, it just works. No notification, no email — the server simply keeps running and your balance drops by its renewal amount.
If your balance can’t cover the renewal when auto-renew tries to run, the renewal silently fails and the server proceeds to Scenario C.
Scenario C: The server suspends
If neither manual nor auto-renew happens, the server is suspended. Concretely:
- The server’s running process is stopped immediately
- Players currently connected get disconnected
- The server card on your dashboard shows a “Suspended” badge
- All files (worlds, configs, plugins, data) are preserved on disk
A suspended server is not deleted. Your data is intact. You just can’t connect to or interact with the server until you renew.
After suspension — the grace period
Suspended servers enter a grace period during which you can still recover them by renewing. The exact length of the grace window is intentionally not published precisely — partly because it can shift based on platform load, partly because the right answer is always “renew as soon as you notice.” But it’s measured in days, not hours.
To recover a suspended server:
- Top up your coin balance so it covers the server’s renewal amount if it isn’t there already (daily ritual, earn page, or buy a coin coupon).
- Click the Renew button on the suspended server card.
- The server resumes from its last state. Your world, configs, and data are exactly as they were before suspension.
That’s it — there’s no “restore” step or admin ticket required. Manual renewal recovers a suspended server the same way it extends an active one.
After the grace period — permanent deletion
If a suspended server isn’t renewed within the grace window, a daily background job permanently deletes it. At this point:
- All server files are removed
- The server card disappears from your dashboard
- Your server slot in the resource pool becomes available again
This is irreversible. There’s no recovery from deletion — backups are gone, worlds are gone, configs are gone. The grace period is the last chance.
This sounds harsh, but it’s necessary: free hosting only works because reclaimed resources rotate back into the pool. If we kept every abandoned server forever, paying users would feel the squeeze first.
How to never miss a renewal
Three strategies, in order of effectiveness:
1. Buy auto-renew
The cleanest solution. 5,000 coins is roughly 4 days of perfect daily-ritual streaks, or a couple of weeks of casual earn-page usage. Once unlocked, you literally never have to think about renewals again as long as your balance stays funded.
The only failure mode is “I let my balance hit zero.” If you treat your balance the way you’d treat a phone bill (don’t let it run dry), auto-renew becomes set-and-forget.
2. Pin a daily reminder
Put a daily 5-minute reminder on your phone that says “Witchly daily ritual + check renewals.” Click in, claim the daily, glance at server cards, renew anything that’s <2 days out. It takes 60 seconds and you’ll never have a suspension.
The dashboard also surfaces upcoming renewals in the notification bell, so if you’ve enabled in-app notifications you’ll see a reminder before the cycle hits.
3. Calendar invites
If you’re really worried, add a recurring calendar event for each of your servers’ renewal days. Most people stop needing this after a couple of weeks of running the cycle, but it’s a useful crutch early on.
What about Elite servers?
Elite servers don’t use the renewal cycle at all. They’re paid via Stripe subscription on a monthly basis, the way you’d pay for any other hosting service. Your subscription’s billing cycle is what keeps them alive, not coins.
If you’ve outgrown the free tier or want to stop thinking about renewals entirely, Elite plans start at $2/mo for lighter workloads. (Elite servers also stay running through brief payment-method failures via a grace window before suspension, similar to the free-tier suspension grace.)
Common renewal questions
“Can I renew multiple weeks at once?” No. Each renewal extends the date by exactly 7 days from the renewal moment. You can stockpile coins, but you can’t pre-pay multiple cycles in one click.
“Does the server need to be online to renew?” No. You can renew a suspended server, an offline server, or a running server identically. The renewal only affects the expiry date and your coin balance.
“What if I’m travelling for two weeks?” Either buy auto-renew before you leave, top up your balance to comfortable levels, or accept that if both fail, you’ll renew the server when you get back as long as it’s within the grace window. Worst case: you lose nothing as long as you act within grace.
“Why 7 days specifically?” Long enough that casual users don’t have to log in constantly. Short enough that genuinely abandoned servers cycle out fast. Most platforms doing this kind of thing land in the 5-14 day range; we picked the middle.
“Can I get a notification when my server is about to expire?” Yes — the dashboard’s notification bell surfaces an upcoming-renewal alert in advance. Email notifications can also be enabled in Settings under notification preferences.
Wrapping up
The 7-day cycle exists for one reason: to make free hosting sustainable. Active communities renew effortlessly with the coins they earn from existing on the platform. Inactive accounts cycle out naturally. There’s no catch — the system is designed to reward engagement, not penalise people who occasionally forget to log in (that’s what the grace window is for).
If you remember nothing else from this post:
- Renewal = from 500 coins, every 7 days (scales with your pool, split across your active servers)
- Suspension is recoverable; deletion isn’t
- Auto-renew is the cheat code if you can spare 5,000 coins once
For the dashboard walkthroughs, see the server renewal & lifecycle doc and the coin economy doc.