Your ARK servers run. Z-ARK keeps watch.
Demo
Z-ARK is a Windows server manager for ARK: Survival Ascended. Start, update, back up, restart at night, give players back what they lost (with the Z-Death plugin): one dashboard, in your browser on your computer and on your phone. When a server goes down, Z-ARK brings it back and tells you.
Free — the essentials, with no server limit
- Start, stop and schedule — one click per server or for the whole cluster, nightly restarts that warn players
- Install new servers with a guided wizard (SteamCMD, AsaApi loader, ports, Windows firewall)
- Switch from another manager without stopping anything: observer mode (Z-ARK watches without touching anything while your old manager stays in charge), then import your existing servers — map, ports, mods, cluster — read from their folders and launch scripts. From ASA Manager, its profiles, restart window, backups and global settings are taken over too
- Backups and automatic restart after a crash
- ARK and mod updates
- Guided RCON console: pick a command, Z-ARK asks for the player or tribe among those online — with command history
- Players, admins and bans, events and seasons (2x weekends, season wipes that keep your settings)
- Alerts on Discord (public bot) and on your phone (Telegram)
- Remote access from any browser, phone included
- Built-in support, straight from Z-ARK
- Four languages: English, French, Spanish, German
- Up to 3 accounts
Z-ARK licence — €3 / 3 months or €10 / year
The advanced features, for real clusters with a team:
- ARK updates tried on a test server with all your plugins before your players get them
- Warn, kick and ban from a player's page
- Backups copied to another disk
- Admin and ban lists published on the Internet
- phpMyAdmin and taking over existing databases
- Unlimited accounts
Pricing and purchase: https://z-ark.fr/en/#pricing
Paid plugins (optional, sold separately)
- Z-Death — every death recorded (cause, place, creature, inventory) and what was lost given back, never twice
- Z-Clean — the buildings that slow the server down (decaying, ownerless, spam), found on the map and cleaned up with your approval
Download
Z-ARK is downloaded from your free Z-ARK account: create it on z-ark.fr, the personal download link arrives by e-mail. Your account also carries your licence, support and updates.
Requirements: Windows 10 or 11, or Windows Server, 64-bit.
Compatibility
ARK: Survival Ascended dedicated servers on Windows. Z-ARK installs and updates AsaApi itself; our plugins are built and tested against AsaApi 2.03.
External connections and data
Z-ARK runs on your machine: your worlds, backups, configuration files and logs stay there. What leaves it, and where:
- Z-ARK's own service (z-ark.fr). Once a day for the licence: your licence token, the Z-ARK version, a fingerprint of your machine, the number of servers and maps, and the paid plugins in use with their number of servers. Once a day, a presence signal: a randomly drawn installation id, the mark of the downloaded archive (it identifies the account that obtained it), the Z-ARK version, the installation language and the Windows version. While the installation is linked to an account, a permanent connection carrying your licence token: the public Discord bots' traffic (status boards, alerts, Z-Death messages, chat between the game and Discord, so player names and messages), support requests (every 5 minutes), mod update checks (mod ids, every 30 minutes), the daily licence file of each paid plugin, and the Z-ARK update check.
- Anonymous usage statistics (versions, counts in ranges, crashes, hardware in ranges, features used), with no identifier, at most once a day. On by default; turn them off in Settings > Privacy.
- Details of your fleet (server names, maps, state, ARK version, player counts, plugins and versions; the machine's hardware), only if you agree. Never a player name, tribe, password, address or file path.
- Diagnostics, only when you ask for help: each attachment can be read and removed before sending.
- Third-party services, which see your machine's IP address: api.github.com (AsaApi versions, every 6 hours), ark-server-api.com (pages of the installed plugins, about every hour), Steam/Valve (ARK versions and downloads, through SteamCMD), CurseForge directly only if you set your own key, ports.yougetsignal.com (United States) only when you run the "from the Internet" port test (your public address and the tested port). Only if you use them: cdn.pelayori.com (canary server test), your own Discord bot, Telegram, and the official download sites of the components you install (for example MariaDB, PHP, phpMyAdmin, Microsoft runtimes).
- Payment for a licence takes place at Stripe.
- Full details, retention and your rights: privacy policy.
What it changes on your machine
- Starts, stops, updates and backs up your ARK servers, and edits their configuration files; installs SteamCMD and AsaApi.
- Can add Windows Firewall rules (the game port of each server it installs, a port you choose to open, access to the dashboard restricted to one IP address) and a Windows scheduled task that starts Z-ARK automatically.
- Keeps some of our plugins' lists up to date for you (for example the Z-Colour donor list, the Z-Messages linked accounts, the Discord links read by Z-Bridge).
Dependencies and limitations
- Download, licence, support and updates go through a free Z-ARK account.
- Paid features and plugins need the licence: when it ends, only those features close; your servers keep running.
Built with AI, knowingly
Z-ARK and its plugins were written with an artificial intelligence. We would rather say it plainly. This is not code thrown together at random: behind it is someone from the trade — software development, server operations, community management — who decides every feature, reviews it and puts it to the test on a real cluster, with real players, before it reaches you.
Website: https://z-ark.fr/en/ — Contact: [email protected]
A tour in four pictures
