📂 Upload an existing factory

Factorio saves are single zip files, which makes this one of the easier games to move. Do not unzip it — the server wants the zip exactly as it is.

1

In the panel, stop the server from the Console tab.

2

On your machine, find your save. On Windows it is under %appdata%\Factorio\saves and will be something like my-factory.zip.

3

In Files, open the saves folder.

4

Upload the .zip as-is. Do not extract it.

5

If the server is set to load a specific save name, either rename your upload to match or update the name on the Startup tab.

6

Start the server and watch the console — it prints the name of the save it loaded, which is the quickest way to confirm it took yours.

🧩 Install mods

Every player needs the same mods at the same versions. Factorio checks this on connect and refuses mismatches, so sort the server out first and have everyone match it.

1

Stop the server.

2

Download the mod zips from the in-game mod portal or from mods.factorio.com.

3

In Files, open the mods folder — create it if it does not exist — and upload the zips. Keep the original filenames, the version number in the name is how Factorio resolves dependencies.

4

Upload any dependencies too. Big overhauls like Krastorio or Space Exploration pull in several libraries and will not load without them.

5

Start the server. The console lists every mod it loaded at boot.

⚙️ Password and visibility

Server settings live in server-settings.json. It is JSON, so a stray comma will stop the server booting — if it will not start after an edit, that is the first thing to check.

1

In Files, open server-settings.json.

2

Set "game_password" to keep it private, and "name" and "description" for how it appears in the browser.

3

To keep it off the public list entirely, set "visibility" → "public" to false and give people your IP and port directly.

4

"autosave_interval" is in minutes. The default is fine for most bases; drop it if your factory is huge and you would rather lose less on a crash.

5

Save and restart.

👥 Let your friends help run it

You can give friends access to the Factorio server without ever sharing your account password. Sub-users get their own login and only the permissions you tick.

1

Open your server in the panel and go to the Users tab.

2

Click New User and enter their email address.

3

Tick the permissions you want them to have — Control for start/stop/restart and console, File for the file manager and SFTP.

4

They will get an email invite. Once they register they can manage the server from their own panel account.

💾 Keep your own backups

There are no server-side backups here. Every server has a backup allowance of zero — storing hundreds of gigabytes for a service nobody pays for is not something we can justify, so the Backups tab will not help you. The only copy of your world that exists is the one you download. Do this before any big change.

1

Stop the server from the Console tab in the panel. Archiving files while the server is writing to them is how you end up with a corrupt copy.

2

Open the Files tab and tick the box next to your save folder.

3

Click Archive. The panel packs the folder into a single file in the server root.

4

Click that archive and choose Download. For a large world, pull it over SFTP instead — browser downloads of multi-gigabyte files have a habit of failing near the end.

5

Delete the archive off the server once you have it, so it is not eating your disk space.

6

Keep the file somewhere safe. A server nobody plays on for seven days is removed, and your download is the only thing that survives that.

Server Setup Help