Keeping Your Free Server Active: The Reclaim Policy
How Kerit Cloud handles inactive free servers, what keeps yours safe, how you're warned, and how to back up your bot so you never lose work.
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Free hosting runs on real hardware that someone pays for. To keep that capacity available for people actively using it, most free hosts eventually clean up servers that have been abandoned. This article explains how Kerit Cloud approaches it, what keeps your server safe, and how to protect your work regardless.
The short version
Active servers stay forever. A free server that’s running your bot isn’t going anywhere — there’s no trial period and no expiry date.
We only reclaim free servers that have been stopped and untouched for an extended period, and we warn you on Discord before anything is removed.
That’s the whole policy. It exists so that abandoned servers from people who tried the platform once and moved on don’t tie up resources that active users need.
Why reclaiming exists at all
Every free server uses storage and occupies a slot on a node, even when it’s stopped. Over time, a free platform accumulates thousands of servers that nobody will ever start again — test projects, duplicates, bots whose owners moved on. Without cleanup, that dead weight crowds out the people actually running bots, and the free tier becomes less sustainable for everyone.
Reclaiming only servers that are both stopped and untouched targets exactly those abandoned projects, while leaving anything in use alone.
What keeps your server safe
The simplest protection is the obvious one: keep your bot running. A server that’s running is active by definition, so a bot doing its job 24/7 is never at risk.
A few other good habits:
- Stay in the Kerit Cloud Discord. Warnings are sent there. If you leave the server or block messages, you might miss one.
- Don’t create servers you won’t use. One running server is better than several forgotten ones.
- Delete test servers yourself when you’re done with them, so the servers that remain are the ones that matter.
If you need to pause your bot
Sometimes you stop a bot on purpose — you’re rewriting it, taking a break, or it’s seasonal. That’s fine for a while. If you expect it to stay stopped for a long time:
- Download your files — code, config, SQLite databases and anything else you’d miss.
- Export your database (instructions below).
- Keep your code in a git repository, so recreating the server later is a matter of minutes.
With those three in place, even if a long-idle server is eventually reclaimed, you’ve lost nothing but a few minutes of setup.
How to back up a free server
The free plan doesn’t include automatic backups, so it’s worth making your own occasionally — whatever happens to the server. It protects you against your own mistakes too, like a bad command that deletes data.
Files
Use the panel’s file manager to download individual files or archive a folder, or connect with an SFTP client like FileZilla or WinSCP and copy everything down. Stop the bot first if it writes to files, so you don’t copy a database mid-write. See uploading files with SFTP — downloading works the same way.
MySQL database
From your own computer, with the connection details shown in the panel:
mysqldump --single-transaction -h HOST -P PORT -u USER -p DATABASE > backup-$(date +%F).sql
Restoring is the reverse:
mysql -h HOST -P PORT -u USER -p DATABASE < backup-2026-06-01.sql
More options are in migrating a database with mysqldump and pg_dump.
SQLite
Copy the .db file while the bot is stopped, or use SQLite’s online backup from a running bot:
import sqlite3
src = sqlite3.connect("data.db")
dst = sqlite3.connect("backup.db")
src.backup(dst)
dst.close(); src.close()
Code
If your code lives in a git repository on GitHub, it’s already backed up. If it only lives on the server, push it to a private repository today. It’s the single best habit for any developer.
How this differs from paid plans
Paid plans aren’t subject to the free-tier reclaim policy; they follow normal billing. Under the Terms of Service, services unpaid past their due date are suspended after 3 days and deleted after 7 days, so keep payment details current if you rely on a paid server.
Paid plans also include automatic backups — from 2 on the Basic Discord plan up to unlimited on Elite, and daily backups on Telegram Starter and above — so you don’t have to do all of the above by hand. If you’re keeping a bot you care about on the free plan, it might be worth it for that reason alone; see when to upgrade from free to a paid plan.
Frequently asked questions
Will my server be deleted if my bot crashes? No. A crashed bot is restarted automatically by the watchdog. Reclaiming is about servers that have been deliberately stopped and left untouched for a long time.
Will I get a warning? Yes — on Discord, before anything is removed.
Is there a limit on how long a running free server lasts? No. Active servers stay forever.
Can I get a reclaimed server back? Don’t count on it; once removed, data may not be recoverable. That’s why backing up files, database and code before a long pause matters.
Summary
Kerit Cloud’s free servers have no expiry: active servers stay forever. Only servers that are stopped and untouched for an extended period are reclaimed, and you’re warned on Discord first. Keep your bot running, stay in the Discord, and — whatever plan you’re on — keep your code in git and back up your files and database so a lost server never means lost work.