The How to Fish hosting market is still extremely early
The game released on 20 August 2026 and now has 14,107 English Steam reviews with 95% positive. Patch 1.0.4 raised lobby support from four to eight players, while Patch 1.0.10 is the current official release. Despite that demand, only one fully live managed Driftwood host and one preorder product were verifiable in our latest market sweep.
- ✓ Fully deployable now, not a preorder
- ✓ Driftwood installed and managed for you
- ✓ Automatic backups with validated restore
- ✓ Save-only file manager plus full FTP access
- ✓ Move datacenter later and keep the same world
Best fit for groups that want a persistent island without leaving one player’s PC online. No London node yet, so Germany or France are the closest current choices for UK players.
Visit Survival Servers →- • Lower announced monthly price
- • Monthly and lifetime server options
- • Driftwood integration advertised
- • Still explicitly marked preorder in checkout
We do not treat this as a real #2 recommendation until a normal customer can provision it. Availability beats advertised features.
Read preorder analysis ↓How to Fish server hosting compared
We separate deployable products from preorders. A cheaper announced server cannot beat a live host if you cannot actually provision it today.
| Provider | Status | Plan shown | Price | Closest UK | Framework | Backups | Save access | Our take | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Survival Servers | Live | 4 slots regular 8 slots: £8.82 ($11.95) | £7.34 ($9.95) | Germany / France | Driftwood | Automatic + validated restore | FTP + file manager | Only fully live managed option verified | Visit → |
| ZAP-Hosting | Preorder | Slot-configured | from £4.32 ($5.85) | Choose in configurator | Driftwood | Advertised | FTP advertised | Interesting, but not deployable yet | Details ↓ |
GBP conversions use 1 USD = £0.738144 on 30 August 2026. We use regular Survival Servers pricing rather than the current first-payment promotion. ZAP remains a preorder until its checkout no longer says setup is unavailable.
How we researched How to Fish server hosting
This is not a normal hosting comparison because Dazed Games has not released a first-party dedicated-server tool. A provider can create a landing page for the keyword without having a working persistent server product. Our first test was therefore availability: can a customer actually deploy a managed Driftwood server today?
We searched the 24 providers in our main GSH comparison plus 16 external competitors, then separately verified Survival Servers and ZAP-Hosting. Exact-title searches, public catalogues, product pages, checkout states, setup documentation and Driftwood references were used to separate a real product from unrelated fishing content and generic VPS hosting.
Can the product provision now? Preorder and generic VPS pages do not count as live hosting.
Who actually installs or manages the community server stack and explains the player join flow?
Backups, restore, save downloads and update recovery matter because the game and framework are changing fast.
Only after compatibility did we compare regular pricing, nearby locations, capacity and admin tooling.
We completed a live product and implementation audit, not a fabricated latency benchmark. We have not yet rented a How to Fish instance and therefore do not claim first-hand ping, uptime, provisioning-time or restore results. The reviews below state exactly what we verified and include the hands-on protocol we will run when we buy the live service.
The providers with actual How to Fish products
There is only one live managed host today and one preorder. Rather than inventing eight more reviews, we go deeper on the two products that actually exist and publish the full 42-provider coverage immediately afterwards.
Survival Servers
Survival Servers is not #1 simply because it is the only live option. It is also the company that built Driftwood, the open-source framework currently making persistent How to Fish worlds possible. The game normally uses a player-hosted Steam session; with Driftwood the world stays online after everyone disconnects and players connect through the free companion launcher using the server address.
The current four-slot plan is $9.95 per month at the regular rate, about £7.34, while eight slots cost $11.95, about £8.82. Germany and France are the closest current locations for UK groups.
The control panel exposes world name, friendly fire, scheduled restarts, player status, automatic backups, validated restore, a save-only file manager and FTP. You can also move datacenter later and take the world with you.
What we verified ourselves: We followed the live How to Fish product from public plan selection through the current order choices, checked 4-slot and 8-slot regular pricing, verified the Germany/France options, then traced the post-order workflow through Survival Servers’ current panel documentation and Driftwood self-hosting guide. We specifically checked how players join, where saves live, what the backup flow exposes, how restore is described, how a datacenter move affects the world and what happens when the game updates.
The important finding: this is not a generic Windows VPS with a game shortcut. Survival Servers owns the Driftwood implementation and documents the awkward parts that matter: every player needs Driftwood, the server runs the retail game files rather than a separate Steam server app, the world stays outside the game directory, and the supervisor can pin builds so a silent Steam update does not replace the server underneath an active save.
What we have not claimed: we have not yet purchased a retail How to Fish instance for a timed provisioning, latency or restore benchmark. Until we do, hardware, instant-setup and performance statements remain provider-verified.
- ✓ Only fully live managed host verified
- ✓ Built Driftwood
- ✓ Automatic backups with validated restore
- ✓ FTP and save access
- ✓ Up to 8 players
- ✗ No London location
- ✗ Community solution, not official Dazed Games server software
- ✗ Every player needs Driftwood
ZAP-Hosting
ZAP-Hosting is the only other commercial How to Fish product we could verify, but it should not be presented as a normal #2 recommendation yet. The landing page advertises Driftwood hosting from $5.85 per month, about £4.32, with FTP, backups, web controls, DDoS protection and configurable resources.
The checkout is the deciding evidence: it still says the game is a preorder and that preorders cannot be set up immediately. Until that message disappears and a normal customer can provision the service, the lower headline price is not comparable with a live Survival Servers deployment.
What we checked: the current How to Fish landing page, cloud-game-server configurator and lifetime-server configurator. Driftwood is named directly, resource upgrades and FTP are exposed, and the normal monthly starting price is visible.
What stopped the recommendation: checkout explicitly labels How to Fish as preorder and says the server cannot be set up immediately. We therefore treat every other advertised feature as a future product promise until deployment goes live.
Next step: once ZAP changes to live, we will add it to the deployable ranking and run the same persistence, backup, restore, update and support tests described below.
- ✓ Lower announced price
- ✓ Driftwood explicitly supported
- ✓ FTP and backups advertised
- ✓ Monthly and lifetime pricing
- ✗ Still preorder
- ✗ Cannot provision immediately
- ✗ No GSH hands-on deployment test yet
What we will test on every live How to Fish host
This test plan is designed around Driftwood failure points rather than synthetic specs.
All 42 How to Fish hosting providers we checked
This table documents who we searched so readers can tell the difference between not ranked and not checked. A provider marked no verified product may still add How to Fish later.
Current result: Survival Servers is live. ZAP-Hosting is preorder. The 40 providers below had no verified public managed How to Fish product. Generic VPS hosting does not count.
| Provider | Set | Status | Confidence | Research note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indifferent Broccoli | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| LOW.MS | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified. Priority adoption watch. |
| Host Havoc | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified. Priority adoption watch. |
| DatHost | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified. Priority adoption watch. |
| Kinetic Hosting | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified. Priority adoption watch. |
| GTX Gaming | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| Hostinger | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| Apex Hosting | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| Sparked Host | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| Shockbyte | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified. Priority adoption watch. |
| AleForge | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| G-Portal | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| Gaming Deluxe | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| GGServers | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| Nitrado | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| ScalaCube | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| Godlike Host | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| Wabbanode | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified. Priority adoption watch. |
| GameServers.com | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| 4NetPlayers | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| Aim2Game | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| Epic Hosts | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| Grid Hosting | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| LevelUp Hosting | GSH 24 | No verified product | Medium | Provider previously identified as no longer operating. Not a viable How to Fish option. |
| BisectHosting | External | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| Gravel Host | External | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| XGamingServer | External | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| Pine Hosting | External | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| BerryByte | External | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| Nodecraft | External | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| PebbleHost | External | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| IcedHost | External | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| Cybrancee | External | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| RespawnHost | External | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| Game Host Bros | External | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| PingPerfect | External | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| ServerBlend | External | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| Citadel Servers | External | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| LogicServers | External | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
| HostKey | External | No verified product | Medium | No public How to Fish managed product verified in our current exact-title and catalogue checks. |
How How to Fish dedicated servers actually work
How to Fish normally runs through Steam peer-to-peer hosting. The island exists on one player’s PC and closes when that player leaves. Driftwood changes that by running the retail game on a separate Windows machine under a supervisor, keeping the world online even when no players are connected.
There is no separate Steam dedicated-server App ID. The game itself is App ID 4001890, and the server needs its own copy of the retail game files. Driftwood is free and open source, but every player still needs a purchased Steam copy.
Patch 1.0.4 expanded lobbies from four to eight. The Steam store description has not fully caught up.
The game has no normal dedicated-server browser or IP field. Each player adds the address in Driftwood.
Driftwood keeps saves, logs and backups outside the copied game folder so replacing game files does not overwrite the world.
How to Fish is patching fast, so recovery matters
Dazed Games shipped multiple updates in the first week. Patch 1.0.9 included another corrupted-save fix, while Patch 1.0.10 changed persistence so up to 64 dropped ground items can now be saved between sessions. For a persistent world, those are exactly the kinds of changes that make a real backup and restore workflow valuable.
Driftwood’s reference setup intentionally separates the world from the game installation and includes build-pinning logic. That lets a managed host update deliberately instead of allowing Steam to silently change the game files underneath an active server.
Can you self-host a How to Fish dedicated server?
Yes. DriftwoodServer is open source and its current reference setup targets 64-bit Windows 10, Windows 11 or Windows Server. You copy your own How to Fish installation into a separate server directory, add the Driftwood server overlay, build the .NET supervisor, create the configuration file and forward the required ports.
How to Fish\
Saves\
host-state\
Backups\
bin\
appsettings.json
The reference setup uses one UDP gameplay port plus the TCP port directly above it. For example, UDP 22003 and TCP 22004. Managed hosts can assign different ports.
A dedicated server solves a specific How to Fish problem
If the same friend always hosts and everyone only plays together, the normal Steam lobby is free and simpler. Renting starts to make sense when different players want to progress at different times, the host PC cannot stay on, or the group wants automatic backups and remote recovery rather than tying the island to one person’s computer.
How to Fish server hosting FAQ
Survival Servers
The only fully live managed Driftwood host we verified across 42 providers.
Visit Survival Servers →Affiliate disclosure: we may earn a commission from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. Rankings are editorial. Product and market availability checked 30 August 2026.
