What Is Ely.by and What Servers Can I Join With an Ely.by or Offline Account in PineconeMC?

Ely.by is an account and skin system built to replace the official Minecraft account system, and PineconeMC (formerly ElyPrismLauncher) is a Prism Launcher fork that adds integrated support for it. With either an Ely.by account or an offline account, you can join servers running with online-mode=false. If a server enforces online-mode authentication, neither account type will get you in.

What Ely.by actually is

According to the PineconeMC site, Ely.by is "an account and skin system which aims to replace official Minecraft's one." In practice that means:

• You log in with a username and password through Ely.by rather than a Microsoft account.
• Skins are served through Ely.by instead of the official Mojang/Microsoft skin system.
• PineconeMC uses secure OAuth2 authentication for both Microsoft (MSA) and Ely.by accounts, so the login flow is not just a raw password prompt.

One limitation the site calls out directly: Ely.by does not support capes, while the official system does. If you want a cape, you have to use mods — there is no built-in path for it.

For anything beyond this summary, the site points you to Ely.by's own website and FAQ rather than re-documenting the service.

Which servers you can join

The rule given on the PineconeMC page is short and unambiguous:

Servers with online-mode=false.

That is the whole condition. An Ely.by account and an offline account fall into the same bucket here — both work on servers that have disabled Mojang/Microsoft authentication.

What this means in practice

Most public servers leave online-mode at its default (true) to prevent impersonation, so a large share of well-known servers will reject both account types. Servers that set online-mode=false are typically ones that run their own auth plugin, are private/friend servers, or are explicitly built around non-Microsoft accounts.

If you are unsure about a specific server, the deciding factor is that one setting — not the launcher, and not which of the two account types you picked.

Why PineconeMC is relevant to this

PineconeMC's stated reason for existing is that other forks "simply add a login-password prompt and authlib-injector download," while this one goes further. From the comparison table on the site, the relevant rows for this question are:

• Offline mode without a Microsoft account: Yes (also Yes for Freesm, Shattered Prism, and PolyMC; No for Fjord Launcher)
• Ely.by accounts: Yes (Freesm also Yes; Fjord, Shattered Prism, and PolyMC list "Custom accounts")
• Skins support: "Everywhere using official patches" for PineconeMC and Freesm, versus "Singleplayer & LAN only" for Fjord, Shattered Prism, and PolyMC
• Secure OAuth2 authentication: MSA + Ely.by for PineconeMC and Freesm; MSA only for the others

So if skin visibility on multiplayer servers matters to you alongside Ely.by login, PineconeMC and Freesm Launcher are the two options in that table that claim it.

Common snags

• Demo version on launch: the site says this happens when you have not created an account yet. Create either an Ely.by account or an offline one and the demo mode should stop.
• Downloads stuck at a random percentage: your country or ISP may be blocking the needed download servers; the suggested workaround is a VPN.
• Moving the launcher to another disk: use the portable build, which bundles dependencies and instances into one folder you can relocate.
• Minimum Windows version: Windows 10. On anything older, the site suggests looking at Legacy Launcher instead.

Where to get it safely

The site lists these as the official sources, and notes you can also review and build the source yourself:

• pineconemc.ru
• elyprismlauncher.github.io
• The ElyPrismLauncher/Launcher repository

It also asks explicitly that you do not post questions about this launcher in the official Prism Launcher GitHub or Discord — those channels are not for this fork.