TrueTick vs Apex Hosting: flat monthly plans vs metered, never-oversold hosting

If you've searched "apex hosting alternative," or you're comparing quotes for a Minecraft server bill, Apex Hosting is probably already on your list. It has been around since 2013, hosts Minecraft and 20+ other games, and sells monthly plans with 24/7 live chat and ticket support. That's a mature product. This page is about what differs: TrueTick bills for the hours a server is awake, and reserves a CPU share for every running server in code. It's written by the metered competitor, so every claim about Apex below links to their own site — check it before taking our word for anything.

Who each one is actually for

Apex Hosting is for a group that wants one predictable monthly bill and support at any hour — 24/7 live chat, a one-click installer with 200+ modpacks, and servers in 14 locations across five continents.

TrueTick is for a group whose server isn't busy all day. Metered billing charges for the hours the server is awake, and every running server gets a CPU share that admission control reserves for it: a node that can't back one more refuses the start instead of squeezing it in.

The comparison

Two different bets: one monthly price for a server that's always online, or a bill that follows the hours a server is awake. Checked September 2026 — every Apex cell links to their own site:

	Apex Hosting	TrueTick
Pricing model	Billed monthly (10% off quarterly), tiered by RAM — 4 GB is $14.99 a month after a discounted first month	Metered: $0.012 per active GB-hour, or flat $3/GB-month if you want always-on
Pay for idle time?	Yes — plans are billed monthly, the same whether the server runs one hour or all month	Metered: only the idle wait before it sleeps (a delay you set per server), then $0 while asleep. Flat: every day it runs
CPU	4 dedicated vCores on the 16 GB EX Series; "Shared" on their standard Ryzen plans — their own comparison table	A reserved CPU share per running server; admission control refuses a start the node can't back
Uptime	"Always Online Game Servers"	Sleeps when empty, wakes when a player connects to its address
Modpacks	One-click installer, 200+ modpacks	Forge, NeoForge and Fabric from the Modrinth and CurseForge catalogues, sized to your RAM tier
Other games	20+ games	Minecraft only
Locations	14, across North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Oceania	NA (Canada) and EU (France)

Where Apex Hosting is the right call

• You want four cores that belong to one server. The EX Series puts 16 GB on "4 exclusive vCores". No self-serve plan here reserves that much CPU for a single server.
• Your players are outside North America and Europe. Apex runs servers in São Paulo, Tel Aviv, Singapore, Tokyo and Sydney. We run NA and EU only.
• You want someone on live chat at 3 a.m. Apex offers 24/7 live chat and tickets. We answer by email and Discord, and we don't promise a response time.
• You also run other games. Palworld, Valheim, Rust and 20+ more sit on the same account; we host Minecraft and nothing else.
• A flat monthly number is simpler for your group. No GB-hour math, no thinking about when the server sleeps — one predictable line item every month is a legitimate preference, not a lesser one.

Where the two differ in our favour

• What you pay follows the hours the server is awake. A 2 GB server that's awake five hours a week costs $0.12 that week on the metered plan, and a 4 GB one $0.24; awake time runs until the server hibernates after the last player leaves, a delay you set per server. Apex's 4 GB plan is $14.99 a month whether anyone logs in or not.
• A CPU share reserved in code, on every plan. Apex's own table lists the vCores on its standard plans as "Shared", with no number next to it; dedicated vCores come with the EX Series. Here every running server's share is reserved before it starts, and admission control refuses a start the node can't back. What that protects against is measured in our oversell benchmark.

Live TPS and MSPT also sit on our server page — on Paper, Purpur, Forge and NeoForge, and on Vanilla and Fabric from Minecraft 1.20.3 — so "is it lagging?" is a reading rather than an argument. We haven't found an Apex page that says whether their panel shows a tick number, so it isn't on the list above.

Verdict

If you want four cores of your own, servers on five continents, or live chat at any hour, Apex Hosting is a well-established pick, and on those points it is ahead of us. If your server is quiet most of the week and you'd rather pay for the hours it's awake, on a CPU share that's reserved while it runs, check the maths for your server or create one and watch the tick line yourself.