Key takeaways
- Laravel Forge on a cloud server suits most business applications, with predictable costs and full control.
- Laravel Cloud removes server management entirely, at the cost of usage-based billing and less low-level control.
- Going straight to AWS makes sense for strict compliance needs or teams that already run AWS well.
- Whatever you choose, backups you have tested, monitoring and accounts in your own name matter more than the platform.
Where your Laravel application runs affects how much it costs, how well it copes with busy periods and how much work it takes to keep running. The good news is that the Laravel ecosystem now has excellent options for almost every situation. The challenge is picking the right one.
This guide compares the main choices we recommend to clients, and when each one makes sense.
Option 1: Laravel Forge and a cloud server
Laravel Forge is a server management service from the Laravel team. You connect it to a cloud provider such as DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Vultr, Akamai or AWS, and it sets up and manages servers configured for Laravel: PHP, Nginx, databases, queues, scheduled tasks, SSL certificates and deployments.
Good for: most business applications, SaaS products in their first few years, internal tools and marketing sites.
Strengths:
- Predictable monthly costs: a Forge subscription plus the servers you choose.
- Full control. It is your server, and you can install what you need.
- Simple deployments from Git, with zero-downtime options.
- A large community and plenty of experience to draw on.
Trade-offs:
- You are responsible for the servers. Operating system updates, PHP upgrades, monitoring and backups still need someone to look after them.
- Scaling beyond a few servers takes planning, such as load balancers, separate database servers and queue workers.
This site is deployed with Forge.
Option 2: Laravel Cloud
Laravel Cloud is a fully managed platform from the Laravel team, launched in 2025. You push your code, and Cloud runs it. There are no servers to manage, and it can scale up and down automatically, with managed databases, caches and object storage available alongside.
Good for: teams that do not want to manage servers at all, applications with spiky or unpredictable traffic, and new projects that want to move quickly.
Strengths:
- No servers to patch, monitor or upgrade.
- Automatic scaling, and options to reduce cost when traffic is low.
- Built specifically for Laravel, so queues, scheduling and deployments work as you expect.
Trade-offs:
- Usage-based pricing is harder to predict than a fixed server, so set budgets and alerts.
- Less low-level control than your own server, which matters if you need unusual software or system settings.
Option 3: Laravel Vapor and AWS Lambda
Laravel Vapor runs Laravel serverlessly on AWS Lambda, inside your own AWS account. It suits applications that need to absorb very large traffic spikes and teams that are already committed to AWS. It adds some constraints of its own, such as how files and long-running tasks are handled, so it is worth planning for those from the start.
Option 4: AWS or another cloud, directly
Some organisations run Laravel directly on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, using containers or virtual machines with their own tooling.
Good for: strict compliance or data residency requirements, organisations with an existing cloud team, and very large or complex systems.
Trade-offs: much more to set up and run. Without people who know the platform well, this is the easiest option to get expensive or insecure.
How to choose
A few questions usually settle it:
- Who will look after the servers? If nobody, choose Laravel Cloud, or Forge with a managed service on top.
- How predictable is your traffic? Steady traffic suits fixed servers. Large, sudden spikes suit Cloud or Vapor.
- Do you need a predictable bill? Fixed servers are easier to budget for.
- Do you have compliance requirements? Some contracts specify where data must be stored, or which certifications a provider must hold.
- What does your team already know? The best platform is often the one your team can run confidently.
For most of the UK businesses we work with, Forge on a well-sized cloud server, with a separate managed database for larger applications, is the best balance of cost, control and simplicity. Laravel Cloud is an increasingly strong choice for teams that never want to think about servers.
What matters more than the platform
Whichever option you choose, these make the biggest difference to how reliable your application is:
- Accounts in your name. Your hosting, domain, DNS and Git accounts should belong to your company, not your supplier.
- Backups that have been restored. Test restoring a backup at least every few months.
- Monitoring and alerts for uptime, errors and disk space.
- Patching. Operating systems, PHP and dependencies kept up to date.
- Staging. A copy of production where changes are tested first.
- Documentation, so someone else can take over if they need to.
Getting help
Our infrastructure planning service gives you a fixed-price hosting plan with costs, a backup and recovery plan and a migration path, and our managed infrastructure plans look after servers on Forge, Laravel Cloud or AWS each month, with the accounts always in your name.