Benjamin Crozat The art of crafting web applications
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Laravel Forge: price, review, how-to and alternatives (2023)

Benjamin Crozat

Table of contents

What is Laravel Forge?

Laravel Forge is a service that automatically provisions optimized PHP servers using the cloud hosting provider of your choice.

Be ready to save a lot of time and focus on building!

Is Laravel Forge free?

No, Laravel Forge isn’t free.

Luckily, it offers a 5-day free trial for you to review it.

That said, you will still need to subscribe to a cloud hosting provider (and I hand-picked some of the best to help you).

Laravel Forge pricing

Laravel Forge pricing

Monthly

Plan Price
Hobby $12 per month
Growth $19 per month
Business $39 per month

The hobby plan has everything you can ask for.

Unless you need to use multiple servers, this is the way to go.

The only critical thing missing for me would be database backups, but you can set this up yourself with spatie/laravel-backup for instance.

The growth plan is the perfect balance of price and features because you can manage multiple servers, which is very useful when your web applications need to handle a lot of traffic.

The business plan is perfect if you’re actually running a business. $39 is nothing. Database backups can be set up via Forge’s UI and is compatible with pretty much anything (S3, DigitalOcean Spaces, etc.).

Annually

Plan Price
Hobby $120 per year
Growth $199 per year
Business $399 per year

Basically, the annual plans let you save 17%, which is a no brainer if your business depends on it.

Key features of Laravel Forge

What I like about Laravel Forge

What I dislike about Laravel Forge

How to get started with Laravel Forge

  1. Create an account and subscribe to the desired plan (you get a 7-day free trial no matter what);
  2. Subscribe to a cloud hosting provider (you will find my recommendations in this article, such as Vultr, my favorite);
  3. Connect your provider to Laravel Forge (this is where having root access over SSH comes in handy 👍);
  4. Deploy your application (the documentation will help you get started).
  5. If you’re still lost and prefer video tutorials, Laracasts also has a free course for Laravel Forge.

How to get started with Laravel Forge

Cloud hosting providers for Laravel Forge by price

Being cost-efficient is important. Here, I sorted every hosting provider by price.

Provider  Lowest monthly price
Vultr $2.50
Hostinger $3.49
DigitalOcean  $4
Cloudways $10
Kinsta $20

The best cloud hosting providers for Laravel Forge and its alternatives

Discover my top picks of cloud providers fit to be used along with Laravel Forge.

I also list alternative services to Laravel Forge, which could reduce your cost of operation.

  1. Vultr
  2. DigitalOcean
  3. Hostinger
  4. Cloudways
  5. Kinsta

Vultr

Vultr Benjamin Crozat
Benjamin Crozat's take on Vultr

Vultr is like the big guys you call when you need the work to be well-done and quickly. It offers a big range of products from basic VPS to powerful dedicated servers and even managed databases.
I can’t recommend it enough.

9 out of 10
Pricing From $2.50 to $14,000
Guarantee $200 of free credits
Try Vultr

Vultr is a cloud hosting company that offers a range of cloud hosting solutions to businesses and individuals.

Their services include high-performance cloud servers, scalable block storage, and advanced networking capabilities.

With their easy-to-use interface and straightforward pricing, Vultr makes it simple for anyone to get started with cloud hosting.

One of the standout features of Vultr is their global network of data centers. They have data centers located in strategic locations around the world, including North America, Europe, and Asia.

This allows businesses to host their applications and websites closer to their target audience, reducing latency and improving performance.

Vultr also offers flexible pricing options, including hourly and monthly billing. This allows businesses to only pay for the resources they need, when they need them.

And with their fast provisioning, businesses can deploy new cloud servers in just a few clicks, making it easy to scale up or down as needed.

In addition to their cloud hosting solutions, Vultr also offers a range of developer tools, including APIs and one-click app installations. This makes it easy for developers to build and deploy applications on the Vultr platform.

Vultr

Key features:

Here's what I love about Vultr… Benjamin Crozat

And what's not so good… Benjamin Crozat

Try Vultr

DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean Benjamin Crozat
Benjamin Crozat's take on DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean is one of the best cloud provider. Some of their products can be costly, but you’ll get what you pay for.

They’re also going all-in on serverless and have an app platform as well as managed databases.

9 out of 10
Pricing From $4 to +$2,000
Guarantee $100 of free credit
Try DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean is a cloud computing platform that provides developers with an easy-to-use, affordable way to deploy and scale their applications.

With data centers around the world, DigitalOcean offers high-performance cloud hosting solutions that are reliable and secure.

Whether you’re a startup, a small business, or an enterprise, DigitalOcean has the tools and resources you need to build, deploy, and manage your applications.

From web apps to databases to containers, DigitalOcean makes it easy to get your projects up and running quickly.

One of the best things about DigitalOcean is its simplicity.

With a straightforward user interface and intuitive tools, you can quickly create and configure virtual servers, load balancers, and other infrastructure components.

And with flexible pricing plans, you only pay for what you use, making DigitalOcean an affordable choice for developers on a budget.

So if you’re looking for a cloud computing platform that’s easy to use, affordable, and reliable, look no further than DigitalOcean.

DigitalOcean

Key features:

Here's what I love about DigitalOcean… Benjamin Crozat

And what's not so good… Benjamin Crozat

Try DigitalOcean

Hostinger

Hostinger Benjamin Crozat
Benjamin Crozat's take on Hostinger

Hostinger gets you everything you need to get your project off the ground. They offer substantial discounts if you pay for years upfront, which is interesting for people looking to save some money on web hosting.

7 out of 10
Pricing From $3.99 to $79.99
Annual discount Up to 70% off
Guarantee 30-day money back
Try Hostinger

Hostinger is a fantastic solution for those who want to run their websites smoothly and efficiently.

With VPS hosting, you get more power and flexibility than their shared plans, allowing you to customize your server to suit your specific needs.

Hostinger offers VPS hosting with high-performance servers, unlimited bandwidth, and full root access, which means you have complete control over your server environment.

You can install any software or application you need, and Hostinger’s 24/7 customer support team is always ready to help you with any questions or issues.

With Hostinger’s VPS hosting, you get all the benefits of dedicated hosting, without the high cost.

You can choose from a range of plans that suit your budget and requirements, and easily upgrade or downgrade as your business grows.

Hostinger

Key features:

Here's what I love about Hostinger… Benjamin Crozat

And what's not so good… Benjamin Crozat

Try Hostinger

Cloudways

Cloudways Benjamin Crozat
Benjamin Crozat's take on Cloudways

Cloudways is a modern managed web hosting platform that will save developers who build and ship tons of time. You will never have to deal with cloud providers and server provisionning.

And I even managed to get you the CROZAT“ promo code for 10% off for 3 months… 👀

9 out of 10
Pricing From $10 to +$3500
Guarantee 3-day free trial without credit card
Try Cloudways

Cloudways is a cloud hosting platform that offers managed hosting solutions for businesses of all sizes.

You can easily host your PHP web applications, and online stores on top cloud infrastructure providers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and DigitalOcean.

The platform offers a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to set up and manage your hosting environment.

Cloudways takes care of all the technical details, including server provisionning (server setup), security, backups, and updates, so you can focus on growing your business.

But one of the great things about Cloudways is its flexibility. You can choose from a variety of hosting plans and infrastructure providers, so you can find the perfect combination that meets your needs.

They also offer a range of advanced features, such as built-in caching, staging environments, and automated backups, which can help improve your website’s performance and security.

Cloudways

Key features:

Here's what I love about Cloudways… Benjamin Crozat

And what's not so good… Benjamin Crozat

Try Cloudways

Kinsta

Kinsta Benjamin Crozat
Benjamin Crozat's take on Kinsta

While the cost can quickly go up with Kinsta, it won’t be a problem for businesses that need to scale thanks to Google’s great infrastructure.

And the use of Dockerfile makes it easy for large teams to have similar local and production environments.

Kinsta is fresh and simple, I like it a lot!

8 out of 10
Pricing From $20 to anything you want
Guarantee $20 off your first invoice
Try Kinsta

Kinsta is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) hosting provider that offers fast, secure, and scalable web application hosting.

With over 55,000 developers and digital entrepreneurs, Kinsta offers 25 locations across five continents that offer the fastest Google C2 machines running on Google’s Premium Tier network.

They provides a developer-focused feature set with support for popular languages and frameworks.

Kinsta offers internal connections, dedicated databases, and a choice of data center locations for maximum speed.

Their dashboard provides an easy way to deploy and manage apps, with unlimited users and support for developers by developers.

The support staff is made up of experts, developers, and engineers that provide fast and multilingual support.

Kinsta offers resource-based pricing, so you only pay for what you use, making it simple, transparent, and predictable.

Kinsta

Key features:

Here's what I love about Kinsta… Benjamin Crozat

And what's not so good… Benjamin Crozat

Try Kinsta

Free alternatives to Laravel Forge: are there any?

Unfortunately, it seems there are no trustworthy free alternative to Forge.

Remember: if something that costs money to a company is free, it means that YOU are the product.

However, if you are ready to make compromises, you could host static websites (meaning it’s just HTML, CSS and JavaScript) for free on these awesome services:

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