Ranaviruses (RV, family Iridoviridae) infect fish, amphibians, and reptiles, raising considerable ecological and commercial concerns due to the escalating infection prevalence and the resulting die-offs of wild and aquacultural species. Notably, ranaviruses exhibit uncanny capacities to cross host species barriers, likely owing to their potent immune evasion mechanisms. In turn, the species infected by these pathogens possess immune systems that are less well understood than those of mammals and often encode unique antiviral genes or multiple orthologs of single hallmark mammalian immune factors. Thus, garnering insight into ranavirus infection strategies is largely contingent on gaining greater understanding of host immune barriers faced by these emerging infectious agents. Accordingly, here we coalesce and update the current state of understanding of the distinct facets of ectothermic vertebrate immune responses to ranaviral infections and underline the most current perspectives of the evasion strategies by which these pathogens circumvent host defenses.