How to Make a Project Zomboid Server: Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Start a Free Trial

Go to the Zeros Host free trial page and choose Project Zomboid. No credit card is required for the 24-hour trial. The setup wizard asks you to pick Survival or Sandbox before the server installs — the server is live within a couple of minutes.

Step 2: Choose Survival or Sandbox

Survival is the standard apocalypse: zombie population ramps up over time on a fixed difficulty curve, and it plays the way the game was designed around. Sandbox starts from the same base but every rule is adjustable — zombie count, speed, loot rarity, weather, and more, all from the panel's Sandbox Configuration editor rather than editing an INI file by hand.

If you're not sure which to pick, Survival is the safer default for a first server. You can still tune individual sandbox values afterward — you just start from the standard preset rather than a blank one.

Step 3: Set Your Server Name and Password

Open the Server Config Editor in your panel and set servertest.ini fields directly: server name (what shows up in the in-game server browser), a password if you want a private server, max players, and PVP on or off. No raw file editing needed.

Step 4: Tune Sandbox Settings (Optional)

If you picked Sandbox mode, the panel gives you a structured editor for zombie speed, strength, population and cognition, loot rarity and respawn timers, water and electricity shutoff days, and XP multipliers, hunger, thirst, and infection rules. Changes are serialised back into valid Lua automatically — you never touch the underlying sandboxvars.lua file yourself.

Water and electricity shutoff timing changes the whole rhythm of a long-running server — decide early whether you want that pressure or a more relaxed base-building game.

Step 5: Install Workshop Mods (Optional)

Open the Workshop Mods section in your panel. For a few mods, enter each one's Workshop ID and Mod ID directly (the panel makes a best-effort attempt to fill in the Mod ID for you). For several at once, paste a Steam Workshop Collection URL instead and the panel resolves every mod in it automatically. Click Save Changes, then the server downloads everything on the next restart — no manual file transfers.

Check any mod you're installing is updated for Build 42 before adding it — a mod built for B41 will not load on a B42 server. See our Build 42 mod compatibility guide for what to look for.

Step 6: Restart and Connect

Restart the server from the panel to apply your sandbox settings and any mods you added. Once it comes back online, your server IP and port are shown in the panel dashboard — open Project Zomboid, choose Join, and enter that IP and port, or add it as a favorite server for next time.

Step 7: Invite Your Group and Set Up Backups

Share the IP and port with your players — that's all they need, no invite system to configure. World saves are backed up automatically on a schedule, with integrity checks on every backup, so a corrupted save or a bad mod interaction is recoverable rather than a lost world.

Check the Save Browser in your panel occasionally — it shows every stored world save with size and last-modified time, useful for confirming backups are actually landing.