Palworld

Palworld dedicated server hosting built for families. Your kids get a world that is still there tomorrow, whether or not anyone's PC is on. You get a private panel that shows who is playing and for how long, closes the server at bedtime, and messages you when someone joins.

Most Palworld hosting solves the first half. This solves both.

Underneath it is a dedicated server that stays up at a fixed address your kids' friends can save once, with the world and everyone's bases on backed-up storage rather than a desktop that has to stay switched on. It is the same private-panel-for-parents idea we run for Minecraft and Terraria, built by parents who host these at home.

Get a 7-day trial of ElfHosted Palworld!

Can I see who is playing on my Palworld server?

Yes. Every server here comes with a private web panel at https://your-username-palworld.elfhosted.com showing who is on right now and how long each of them has been playing this session.

It signs in with your ElfHosted account, so it is yours alone. Nobody who plays on the server can open it, and they do not need to.

Can I limit how long my kids play Palworld?

Yes, in two ways.

The panel records how long each player has been on, today and across the past week, so you can see at a glance whether "I only played for a bit" is true. And bedtime closes the server on a schedule, so the limit enforces itself.

How do I set a bedtime on a Palworld server?

Open your panel, choose Bedtime, and set the hours the server is closed. You can set different hours for school nights and for Friday and Saturday.

While it is closed, anyone still playing is sent home, and anyone who tries to join is removed again within moments. Players get a warning in the game ten minutes and one minute beforehand, so nobody is dropped mid-fight without notice.

If you want to make an exception, open it from the panel and it stays open until the end of that night. Tomorrow's bedtime still happens, so one late night does not quietly switch the whole thing off.

There is also a Close it now button, for the times when asking twice has not worked.

Will I know when someone joins?

Yes, and it needs no setup. If you have added ElfHosted to your phone's home screen and allowed notifications, join and leave alerts arrive there automatically.

Several kids arriving at once become one message rather than four, and a reconnect after a dropped connection is not reported as leaving. Repeats replace each other on your lock screen instead of stacking up.

You can mute game alerts on their own from ElfBot, without losing the ones that matter more, like a failed backup.

Can I send them somewhere other than my phone?

Yes. Set PARENT_NOTIFY_URLS with ElfBot to one or more Apprise URLs and alerts also go to a family Discord, Telegram, ntfy, Pushover, or an email address. That is the way to get them to the other parent, or to a phone that never installed anything.

Both run at once, so you can have alerts on your phone and in a household chat.

Can I see what my kids build, or read their chat?

No, and that is deliberate. The panel shows you who is on and for how long, and lets you close the server. It is a way to run the household rule you already have, not a way to watch over their shoulder.

We do not read chat, moderate players, or vet who joins. You decide who gets the password.

How do I invite my kids' friends?

Open Invite someone in the panel. It gives you a ready-made message with the address, the port and the password already filled in, plus how to join in Palworld. Copy it, or send it straight from your mail app.

Only send it to people you are happy to have on the server. If it gets passed around, change the password in the panel and send the new one.

How do I connect?

The panel is for you. Players connect from the game itself, not a browser, and at a different address.

In Palworld: Join Multiplayer Game, then use the box at the very bottom of the screen to type your server's address, your-username-palworld.direct.elfhosted.com, followed by a colon and your port.

Where do I find my port?

Your port is in your welcome email, and on your account page in the store. It is assigned to you and does not change, so once your friends have saved the address and port they never need to change either.

Where is my server password?

Your server is password protected, because it is reachable from the internet at an address anyone could guess. Your password is generated when your server is built and is unique to you, so there is no shared default to change in a hurry.

Find it in your panel under Server password, along with an Invite someone block you can copy straight into a message. That block has the address, the port and the password already filled in, plus how to join in Palworld.

Can I use my own domain name?

Prefer palworld.example.com to the address above? Point a CNAME at it from any domain you own:

palworld.example.com.  CNAME  yourname-palworld.direct.elfhosted.com.

(substituting your own ElfHosted username for yourname)

Then your friends connect to palworld.example.com on the same port. There is nothing to buy or configure on our side, because Palworld speaks raw UDP with no certificates involved, so a plain DNS record is all it takes.

How long before we can play?

The first time your server starts, it downloads the Palworld dedicated server from Steam, which is several gigabytes and takes a few minutes. It is not reachable until that finishes. Later restarts skip the download and start in seconds.

How do I name the server, or change its settings?

Your server starts out named after your username, and you can rename it by setting SERVER_NAME with ElfBot. World and gameplay settings (difficulty, rates, and the rest of Palworld's long list) are set the same way, as environment variables. Palworld reads them when it starts, so the server restarts to pick them up.

Is my world backed up?

Your world and everyone's bases are on backed-up storage. If something goes catastrophically wrong, the save can be restored like any other file in your storage. Palworld saves are worth guarding: a corrupted world is a bad afternoon, so a backup you can roll back to is the point of hosting it here rather than on a PC.

Do my kids need to install anything?

No. This runs the standard Palworld dedicated server, so everyone joins with an ordinary, unmodified Palworld client. Nobody installs a mod or a launcher.

What happens if a player changes their character name?

They show up in the panel as a new person. The panel goes by the character name each player chose in Palworld, and nothing stops them choosing a new one, so the playtime log is an honest record of a cooperative household rather than evidence.

Bedtime is unaffected by this: it closes the whole server, whatever anyone is called.

Can they just play somewhere else at bedtime?

Of course. This closes your server, not the internet. What it does is take you out of the argument: the server is shut, and it was shut before anyone asked.

Palworld also works with

• Minecraft

• Terraria

• FoundryVTT

How do I get support for Palworld?

1. For general use of Palworld, refer to the official site or to one of the links in the resources section below.

2. For specific support re your ElfHosted configuration / account, see the ElfHosted support options!

Palworld resources

• Palworld (official site)

• Palworld Palworld Dedicated Server Docs

• Palworld Server Docker Image

What users say..

We're rocking some excellent TrustPilot Reviews, and here's what some of our usersfriends say..

I am new here, but today I learned realized that Elfhosted is one of the best free and open source software communities I've seen, and FOSS communities have been at the center of my life since the 90s (Perl, PHP, Symfony, Drupal, Ethereum, etc.). Great open software built by great people who care = great community, and that is something special.

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@skwah (Discord)

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/u/jatguy. (Reddit)

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@seapound (Discord)

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@hashmelters (Discord)

(responding to a discussion re the cost of ElfHosted vs mainstream streaming / self-hosting):

I didn't know that the goal of this project was to compete with large companies running/renting entire DCs. I was under the impression that the goal of this project was to manage the updating of almost selfhosted applications on a shared platform with other users. Basically, be my sysadmin for me.

That being said, paying for services is the 'easy button'. There is a real world cost incurred for the time saved. Time is money. Time is the most valuable currency that exists. Once time is spent, it's forever lost, one cannot retrieve it again (yet). In my mind, there are 3 options for use of time with respect to: mainstream, selfhosting, elfhosted.

• mainstream - my time is valuable and I don't want curated content and I don't care what content that I have the ability to consume. I only like what's popular.

• elfhosted - my time is valuable, I want my own curated content without being forced to browse past the same damn entry 500 times just to find out that I can't watch the movie I want because it's not available in my current location or was removed last week from mainstream providers.

• selfhost - I care about costs and I have nothing but time to waste or I want to learn about the backend of the systems involved. I'll pay for my own VPS/homelab, electricity, manage the OS, manage app updates, figure out how to make the apps talk nice to each other, create my own beautiful frontend.

I know how much my time is worth, does that reddit poster know how much their time is worth? Without knowing what you are worth, you can't make effective capital expenditures with respect to the time it will take to recoup the capital.

I know I don't need elfhosted at all for my use case. I choose to stay with elfhosted because it's my 'easy button'. It's an efficient capital expense for the amount of time it saves me managing my own hardware, apps and saves me electricity costs. I'm also in a situation where I don't have upload bandwidth from my home to serve HD content to myself remotely. If I lived back in a city, I would still be here. My time is worth $$/hr.

@cobra2 (Discord)

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@Fingers91 (Discord)

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Zestyclose_Teacher20 (Reddit)

"thanks for the help and must say this is the best host I every had for my server 🙂 10/10 🙂 All other places I have try have I got a lot buff etc. Your host can even give me full power on a 4K Remux on 200GB big movie file . That's damn awesome 😄"

@tjelite (Discord)

"What an amazing support system these guys have Chris and Layzee i think it was! Both are very patient with me even though I am a newbie at all this. Very thorough and explained everything step by step with me

I couldn’t ask for anything better than the service I have received by these guys! Happy happy client❤️"

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"Absolutely Amazed with the patience and professionalism of all Elf-Venger Staff including bossman penguin❤️"

@dead.potahto (Discord)

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@.mxrcy (Discord)