A fresh Satisfactory server does nothing until a player claims it. This is done from inside the game, not from the panel, which is why it catches people out.
1
Start the server from the Console tab in the panel and wait for it to finish booting.
2
Note the IP and port from the panel — they are on the Network tab.
3
In Satisfactory, open Server Manager from the main menu and click Add Server.
4
Enter the address as ip:port.
5
The game will ask you to set an administrator password. This is created here, not in the panel — pick one and keep it.
6
Name the server, then either create a new game or upload a save (next block).
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Upload an existing factory
There are two ways to do this and the in-game one is far easier. Use the panel method only if the upload keeps failing.
1
Easy way: in Server Manager, select your server, open the Save Games tab and click Upload Save. Pick your .sav and the game handles the rest.
2
Panel way: stop the server first.
3
Find your save on your machine under %localappdata%\FactoryGame\Saved\SaveGames.
4
In Files, go to FactoryGame/Saved/SaveGames/server/ and upload the .sav.
5
Start the server, then load the save from Server Manager in-game.
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Let your friends help run it
You can give friends access to the Satisfactory 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.
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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.