The complete guide · 8 min read
Aloft Server Hosting Explained: A Crew Guide
A practical guide to running Aloft on a rented server during Early Access and into 1.0: why a dedicated server helps, which RAM tier to choose, how to handle patches and backups, and what we can and cannot confirm about Workshop content.
By Matthew Griffin, Owner, Gaming DeluxePublished · Updated
In this guide
- Why Put Your Aloft World on a Dedicated Server
- Sky Islands, Ships and a Shared Sea of Clouds
- Early Access, Discovery & Ancestry and the Road to 1.0
- Choosing a RAM Tier When Every Plan Has 8 Slots
- Keeping the Server in Step With Patches
- Backups, Rollbacks and Recovering From a Bad Storm
- Workshop Content, Server Files and What We Can Confirm
- Picking a Location for a Spread-Out Crew
- What to Check Before You Rent an Aloft Server
- Aloft Server Glossary
- Aloft Server Help and Next Steps
Why Put Your Aloft World on a Dedicated Server
Aloft lets a group of up to 8 friends share one sky, through private joins or public lobbies. When one player hosts from their own game, though, the world belongs to that PC. If the host goes to bed, loses connection or simply wants to play something else, the islands go dark for everybody. Schedules rarely line up across a crew, so progress tends to bunch up around one person's free evenings.
A dedicated server breaks that link. Astrolabe confirmed on the Steam forums that servers can be run for free on your own hardware without keeping the game open, and the server program ships inside the game folder rather than as a separate Steam tool. Running it at home still means a machine left on day and night, and your home upload shared by every player. A rented server does the same job from a data centre, with a fixed address, steady bandwidth, DDoS filtering and a support team that answers tickets around the clock.
There is a quieter benefit too. With the world on a server, nobody's own PC carries the extra load of hosting while they play, and the person who set the world up is no longer the only one who can open it. Any member of the crew can sign in at a time that suits them, and the panel lets you share the admin work rather than leaving it all to one person.
Sky Islands, Ships and a Shared Sea of Clouds
Aloft is a survival sandbox set across floating islands. Crews build bases on islands and on ships, sail between them, ride out hurricanes and work to heal the Life Trees that hold the ecosystem together. Progress is shared, which is exactly what makes an always-on world worth having: a teammate can farm Arcadium Flowers, scout a far island or extend the ship while the rest of the group is offline, and everyone benefits the next time they log in.
That shared progress also explains why the world grows heavier over time. Every new structure, ship and settled island is something the server has to track. A world in its first week is light; a world six months in, with a fleet moored around a sprawling home island, asks a lot more of the machine. Plan your hardware around where the world is heading, not only where it is today.
Early Access, Discovery & Ancestry and the Road to 1.0
Aloft entered Early Access on 15 January 2025. The biggest change since then is Discovery & Ancestry, version 0.3.6.44, released on 26 August 2026. Astrolabe called it the final Early Access update before the upcoming 1.0 launch, but has not announced a date for 1.0. Until a date is official, treat any release talk you see elsewhere as rumour.
- Unity 6: the game moved to a newer engine version.
- Open world: sectors and linear paths are gone, so crews choose their own route across the sky.
- New islands and events: including new Fresco islands, plus hazards such as fog banks, tornadoes and asteroid fields.
- Survival conditions: hunger, thirst and tiredness now matter, and each can be adjusted or switched off in the options.
- Wind Spirit and Ancestral Memories: a companion that can shift the wind, and a new progression path reached through the Life Tree.
- Gliders: deploying a glider now needs open space beneath you, and a legacy glider option remains.
For server owners, one line in the notes matters more than the rest: older worlds still load, but they are unstable, and a new world is needed to get the full benefit of the update. The sensible approach is to keep a backup of the old world, start a fresh one for the open world, and hold on to the old save in case you want to revisit it.
Choosing a RAM Tier When Every Plan Has 8 Slots
Most game servers are sold by player count. Aloft is different: the session size is 8, so every plan we sell carries 8 slots and the decision you make at checkout is about memory. The plan cards cover three tiers, 10GB, 12GB and 16GB, and the order form also lists 14GB, 20GB, 24GB and 32GB.
We could not find an official memory figure for the Aloft dedicated server, so our advice is based on our own sizing. A fresh world with a crew still finding its feet sits comfortably on 10GB. Once the group plays most evenings and the home island fills up, 12GB gives you margin. Crews who keep several ships, spread bases over many islands or run one world for months are better served by 16GB, and the larger tiers are there for the biggest skies.
Hardware beyond memory is the same on every plan: a 5.0GHz processor, NVMe storage at 7,500MB/s and 100GB of disk. If your world becomes very large, the order form also offers faster 5.2GHz+ and 5.6GHz+ processors, CPU priority, 14,000MB/s drives and up to 200GB of disk, so you can strengthen the part that is actually holding the server back.
You do not have to guess right on day one. The panel shows how much memory the server is using; if it runs close to the allocation during your busiest sessions, upgrade from the client area. The world stays on the server while you do.
Keeping the Server in Step With Patches
Early Access games update often, and Aloft is no exception. After Discovery & Ancestry came patch 0.3.6.47 on 28 August 2026, 0.3.6.48 on 4 September, 0.3.6.50 on 11 September and 0.3.6.51 on 1 October, the latest at the time of writing. One of those, 0.3.6.48, fixed the dedicated server console being spammed with errors about missing sectors, a reminder that the server side gets attention in patches too.
- Read the patch notes on the Aloft Steam news page.
- Take a snapshot with the Backup Manager.
- Run Steam Update in the panel to fetch the new build.
- Restart the server and check the Log Viewer for errors before the crew joins.
When players update their game before the server is updated, they may be unable to connect until both sides match. Making Steam Update part of your routine after each patch avoids that, and Scheduled Tasks can take care of the restart for you.
Backups, Rollbacks and Recovering From a Bad Storm
Things go wrong in survival games. A hurricane wrecks a half-finished ship, an experiment with a build goes badly, or an update changes how a save behaves. On a hosted server you have two safety nets. The first is the offsite backup we keep for the last 7 days, held away from the server itself. The second is the Backup Manager, which takes a snapshot whenever you ask and restores it from the panel.
Good habits make both nets more useful. Take a manual snapshot before every patch, before starting a new world and before any large change you are unsure about. Schedule regular backups in the quiet hours, and tell the crew when you restore one so nobody is confused about missing progress. If a restore does not look right, open a ticket: our team has been hosting game servers since 2004 and can help work out what happened.
Workshop Content, Server Files and What We Can Confirm
The Steam store lists Steam Workshop as an Aloft feature. What we have not been able to confirm from official sources is how Workshop items behave on a dedicated server, whether they need to be installed on the server, on each player's PC, or both. The official Aloft wiki would be the natural place to check, but it was not loading when we wrote this guide, so we have left those details out rather than guess.
What you do get is full access to the server's files. The File Manager handles quick edits in the browser, and SFTP is better for larger transfers. We do not offer a Mod Manager or one-click Workshop installer for Aloft. If there is a particular Workshop item your crew wants to use, open a ticket and we will look at it with you, and always take a snapshot before adding anything new.
Picking a Location for a Spread-Out Crew
Gliding between islands and steering a ship through bad weather both feel better with low latency. We offer 9 locations: the UK, France and Germany in Europe, five US cities (New York Buffalo, Dallas, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami) and Sydney in Australia. The price is identical in all of them, so the only question is distance.
Ask everyone to run the ping test on this page from the PC they actually play on, not from a phone. Pick the location with the best result for the largest part of the crew. For a group split between Europe and North America, a site on the US east coast or in the UK often lands in the middle; compare the numbers and choose the one that is fair to most people.
If the crew changes over time, you are not locked into your first choice. Open a ticket and our team will talk you through the options before you make a move.
What to Check Before You Rent an Aloft Server
With every Aloft plan capped at the same 8 player session, offers differ in the details. These are worth checking.
- Memory for the priceSlot counts are the same everywhere for Aloft, so compare how much RAM each price includes and what bigger tiers cost.
- How fast you can patchEarly Access means frequent updates. Check that you can update the server yourself without waiting on a ticket.
- Backups you controlLook for snapshots you can take and restore yourself, plus offsite copies kept for several days.
- A location near your crewRun a ping test against the data centres on offer before you buy, since latency affects every flight.
- File accessSFTP and a file manager matter if you ever want to work with save files or Workshop content.
- Hardware headroomCheck CPU speed, storage type and whether upgrades are available as the world grows.
- Billing termsCompare monthly and longer cycles, and check for setup fees and minimum terms.
Aloft Server Glossary
- Dedicated server
- A program that keeps an Aloft world running without anyone playing on the host machine.
- Session
- One shared Aloft game, open to a group of up to 8 players.
- Slots
- The number of players who can be online on the server at once; 8 for Aloft.
- Early Access
- Steam's label for a game still in development. Aloft has been in Early Access since 15 January 2025.
- Discovery & Ancestry
- The August 2026 update that opened up the world, described as the last Early Access update before 1.0.
- Life Tree
- A great tree you heal by clearing the chains that anchor it; its orb opens Ancestral Memories.
- Wind Spirit
- A companion that follows you once it trusts you, can change the wind and helps restore Life Tree islands.
- Ancestral Memories
- A progression path reached through the Life Tree, with choices such as a second hotbar or a glider compass.
- Fresco
- Island landmarks that teach the next technology when you visit them, in any order.
- Arcadium Flowers
- Farmable flowers that give Arcadium Essence, which you can trade with the Wind Spirit for Insight.
- Steam Workshop
- Steam's hub for player-made content, listed as a feature on the Aloft store page.
Aloft Server Help and Next Steps
Pages worth bookmarking while you run your world.
- Aloft on SteamFeatures, system requirements and Workshop.
- Aloft news and patch notesRead these before each server update.
- Astrolabe on running your own serverThe developer's Steam discussion post about dedicated servers.
- Gaming Deluxe control panelWhat each tool does and how to sign in.
- Our server locations
- Contact support24/7 help with setup, updates and backups.
How we put this guide together: facts come from the Aloft Steam store page, the official patch notes and the developer's own Steam forum post; the text was written with AI assistance, every plan, price and location was checked against our live order form, and Matthew Griffin reviewed it before publishing. Something changed since? Tell us.
