The best Laravel hosting providers reviewed (2023)

It’s 2022 2023. The internet is full of people ready to use your Laravel applications.

Whether you are a company, a fresh new startup, a freelancer, or a young developer, choosing the right Laravel hosting provider is crucial.

From cheapest to most expensive

Being cost-efficient is important. Here, I sorted every Laravel hosting provider from the cheapest to the most expensive.

The top Laravel dedicated and VPS hosting providers

1. Cloudways (read the review)
2. Hostinger (read the review)
3. Vultr (read the review)
4. Kinsta (read the review)
5. GreenGeeks (read the review)
6. DigitalOcean (read the review)

Cloudways

Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting service for PHP developers who want to save cost and time on DevOps matters. It powers more than 75,000 businesses.

Unlike Laravel Forge, Cloudways doesn’t require you to subscribe to an hosting provider such as DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, etc.

They handle everything.

Pros:

• 24/7/365 support;
• SSD-based storage;
• Automatic backups;
• Ready-to-use Redis;
• PHP 8.x and MySQL 8.x;
• 1-click free SSL certificate;
• SSH access to the web server right from interface;
• All their hosting providers have guaranteed +99.9% uptime;
• 60+ global server locations (Cloudways cumulates from all their hosting providers);
• No need for you to have an account for each provider, Cloudways handles everything unlike Laravel Forge;
• Reliable. They use the best cloud hosting providers on the market such as AWS, DigitalOcean, GCP, Linode, Vultr and more.

Cons:

• Server settings take a few seconds to be updated;
• Don’t remove your server in the trial period or it’ll be cancelled;
• No root access. But Cloudways is a managed hosting service, so I guess it’s fine!
• The database manager does the job, but looks horribly outdated. Like if someone tried to modernize phpMyAdmin… 😬
• Web servers run PHP 7.4 by default. But you can manually switch to the latest version of PHP. I don’t understand why.

Get 10% off for 3 months with promo code CROZAT when you switch to a paid plan.

Get started for free without a credit card

Hostinger

Hostinger is a web hosting company that offers shared hosting, VPS hosting (Virtual Private Server), WordPress hosting, and dedicated web servers. They’re a great choice for beginners and small businesses that want to be cost effective.

Pros:

• Quite cheap;
• Backups and snapshots;
• 99.9% uptime guarantee;
• PHP 8.x and MySQL 8.x;
• Easy to scale your VPS up;
• NFS (Network File System) support. Great for working directly on your web server;
• Root access over SSH on virtual private servers and dedicated servers.

Cons:

• 100 Mb/s networks;
• Two few global locations;
• Low performance hardware (which is enough for small to medium projects, though);

Get started for $3.49/month with 2 months free and 30-day money-back guarantee

Vultr

Vultr’s Cloud Compute service allows you to quickly and easily launch virtual servers in locations around the world.

With a simple and intuitive user interface, you can choose from a variety of server configurations, operating systems, and add-ons to customize your experience.

Pros:

• DDoS protection;
• Automatic backups;
• Awesome UI and UX;
• Great customer service;
• PHP 8.x and MySQL 8.x;
• NVMe SSD-based hosting:
• 27+ global server locations;
• Great integration into Laravel Forge;
• Good prices considering the quality of this service;
• 100% uptime (you get free credits when this promise isn’t fulfilled).

Cons:

• High-end plans are less available globally (but you don’t need high-end plans unless you’re really big);
• There’s a DDoS protection, which is nice to have, but it can easily be overwhelmed. Switch to a better solution as your business scales up.

Get started for $6/month with $100 of credit

Kinsta

Kinsta now proposes applications hosting. This is a service similar to Cloudways, but even simpler. I really like how clean it is. Link to your GitHub repository, click to deploy, and you’re ready!

Pros:

• Easy-to-use dashboard;
• Auto-deploy on Git push;
• Battle-tested infrastructure;
• Premium hardware from Google;
• Easily scale up or down your services;
• Use your Dockerfile to deploy your app;
• Temporary URL until you start using your own domain;
• Environment variables management from the dashboard;
• Free and unlimited team members. Great for large teams;
• Backed with Cloudflare, so you won’t have to fear DDoS attacks;
• 24/7 support in English, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese from competent developers.

Cons:

• One hosting service and one database for each app, which can quickly make salty invoices.

Get started for $20/month with $20 off your first invoice

GreenGeeks

People who care about the environment will love GreenGeeks!

They’re committed to providing environmentally-friendly hosting, with 300% renewable energy offsetting for all servers and operations.

Their VPS hosting plans are optimized for performance and scalability. You will be able to resize the amount of resources you use depending on your needs.

Another great thing about them: DDoS protection is built-in all their plans.

And by the way, if you already have a site hosted elsewhere, GreenGeeks will help you transfer it for free.

Pros:

• 99.9% uptime;
• Daily backups;
• DDoS protection;
• Free domain name;
• SSD-based hosting;
• Free SSL certificate;
• Good reactive support;
• 30-day money back guarantee;
• Powered by renewable energy;
• Free website transfer service for users switching from other hosting providers.

Cons:

• Not enough global locations;
• VPS hardware configurations are limited.

Get started for $39.95/month with 30-day money-back guarantee

DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean sell what they call: Droplets.

Those are virtual machines that provide a simple and scalable way to run your applications.

With a few clicks, you can create a fully-configured and powerful server that is capable of handling even the most demanding workloads. Each Droplet is built on top of their high-performance infrastructure.

With a range of sizes and options to choose from, you can find the perfect Droplet for your needs, whether you’re running a small personal blog or a large e-commerce platform.

Enjoy easy scaling (up and down), automatic backups, and customizable firewall rules.

Pros:

• SSD-based hosting;
• PHP 8.x and MySQL 8.x;
• 14+ global server locations;
• Advanced users can still manage their own VPS;
• Reliable. I can’t recall a time where my servers were down;
• Deploy Laravel or any kind of PHP apps instead of managing servers with their App Platform.

Cons:

• Can’t scale down from a VPS with a bigger storage;
• Not enough global locations. I can’t set up a VPS in Paris for example.

Get started for $6/month with $200 of credit

What makes a good web hosting provider?

Reliability is key. A good host should be able to deliver the best service with minimal downtime. When your website isn’t reachable, you risk loosing customers to your competitors. Aim for hosts that have at least a 99.9% uptime rate. Such a rate means your website can potentially be down for an hour per year, which is acceptable.

Speed is also important. A good host must provide fast loading times, which is essential for a better user experience and SEO (Google requires your website to load in under 2 seconds). But what makes a fast server?

• Location. The closer your server is to your visitors, the faster your website will load. If your server is in the US and your visitors are in Europe, the loading time will be longer. Of course, when you have an international audience, you should set up load balancers to dispatch your traffic all over the world and tapping into multiple hosts depending on the locations they provide is perfectly fine;
• Network bandwidth. The more bandwidth your server has, the faster your website will load. You can manage on servers with 100Mbps bandwidth given a moderate traffic. But if cost is not an issue, go for at least 1Gbps; 👍
• Hardware. The more powerful your server is (CPU, RAM and SSD storage), the faster your website will load.

Is Laravel good for shared hosting?

While Laravel can totally be used on shared hosting with a few tricks, this isn’t the best kind of environment to get the most out of this framework.

My recommendation is that if you don’t want the hassle of managing a server, use Cloudways, which combines the pros of shared hosting and the flexibility of Virtual Private Servers.

And if budget is an issue and you don’t mind DevOps stuff, Hostinger gives you incredible price cuts if you pay for the long run.

Which database is best for Laravel?

Laravel provides support for five different databases:

• MariaDB 10.3+
• MySQL 5.7+
• PostgreSQL 10.0+
• SQLite 3.8.8+
• SQL Server 2017+

Your choice will depend of the specificities of your project. Each database has its pros and cons.

Every hosting provider I recommend in this article supports them.

You can:

• Install the database on the VPS or dedicated server you chose
• Create a managed database that is vertically and horizontally scalable with a few clicks