It is important to choose the right Laravel host, whether you are a startup, a new company, a young developer or a freelancer.

Choose a provider who can handle large workloads, such as Cloudways.

If you are running a small project, select the most cost-effective provider (such as Hoster).

What is the best Laravel host?

Cloudways 

Cloudways powers over 75,000+ companies. It is a simple-to-use hosting solution for those who are looking to save time and money on DevOps.

Get the most recent and greatest PHP and Laravel ecosystems with minimal effort.

Cloudways, unlike Laravel Forge, does not require that you have an account with DigitalOcean or Vultr. They take care of everything.

Pros:

  • 24/7/365 support;
  • SSD-based storage;
  • Backups automatically;
  • Ready-to-use Redis;
  • PHP 8.x, MySQL 8.x
  • Free SSL Certificate with just one click
  • They guarantee a 99.9% uptime for all their hosting providers;
  • Cloudways has 60+ global server locations (Cloudways aggregates all of their hosting providers).
  • Cloudways takes care of everything, unlike Laravel Forge.
  • Reliable. They use only the best cloud providers such as AWS DigitalOcean GCP Linode Vultr Vultr, Linode and more.

Cons:

  • If you remove your server during the trial period, it will be canceled.
  • No root access. Cloudways is managed to host, so it should be fine.

Hostinger 

Hostinger offers shared hosting as well as VPS hosting and WordPress hosting. These are great for small businesses and beginners who want to save money.

Although the other hosts mentioned in this article are expensive, I wanted to have a cheap alternative for Laravel or WordPress projects.

Pros:

  • Amazingly cheap
  • Root Access on VPS
  • Back-ups and snapshots
  • 99.9% uptime guarantee;
  • Scale up your VPS easily;
  • Support for NFS (Network File System). Support for NFS (Network File System).

Cons:

  • 100 Mb/s networks;
  • There are only a few locations in the world;
  • Low-performance hardware (enough for small and medium projects);

Vultr 

Vultr is a cloud management platform that manages more than 45 million instances of cloud servers deployed by thousands of clients. They have a great UI/UX and are cheaper than DigitalOcean. Their customer service is also excellent.

This is the ideal hosting solution for Laravel Forge. It supports Vultr right out of the gate.

Pros:

  • Reliable;
  • Prices are good;
  • DDoS protection
  • Backups automatically;
  • Amazing UI and UX
  • Great customer service;
  • PHP 8.x, MySQL 8.x
  • NVMe SSD-based hosting
  • 27+ global server locations;
  • You can pay using Bitcoin. I think it’s pretty awesome, haha!

Cons:

  • Globally, high-end plans are less common (but they’re not necessary unless your business is really large);
  • It’s nice to have a DDoS protector, but they can be easily overwhelmed. As your business grows, you should switch to a more robust solution.

Kinsta 

Kinsta offers application hosting. It is similar to Cloudways but simpler. It’s very clean. Click to deploy your GitHub repository and link to it.

Pros:

  • Easy-to-use dashboard;
  • Automatic deployment on Git push
  • Battle-tested infrastructure;
  • Google’s premium hardware;
  • You can easily scale up or down the services you offer.
  • Use your Dockerfile to deploy your app;
  • Temporary URL while you use your domain name.
  • Dashboard for managing environment variables
  • Unlimited team members are available for free. It’s great for large teams.
  • Cloudflare will protect you from DDoS attacks.
  • Developers are available to provide 24/7 support in English (including Spanish), French, Italian and Portuguese.

Cons:

  • It is possible to quickly rack up a large bill by using only one hosting service and database per app.

GreenGeeks 

GreenGeeks can host your website without causing any harm to the environment. They have servers located in Europe, Canada and the United States.

Pros:

  • 99.9% uptime;
  • Backups are made daily;
  • Domain name for free
  • SSD-based hosting;
  • Free SSL certificate
  • Environment-friendly;
  • Support for good reactive action;
  • 30-day money-back guarantee;

Cons:

  • There are not enough global locations
  • VPS hardware configurations have limitations.

DigitalOcean 

DigitalOcean offers a user-friendly interface that is both simple and intuitive. They offer a wide range of services for any PHP or Laravel project at an affordable price.

Laravel Forge allows you to link your DigitalOcean Account in just a few clicks.

Pros:

  • PHP 8x
  • SSD-based hosting;
  • PHP 8.x, MySQL 8.x
  • 14+ global server locations;
  • Users with advanced skills can still manage their VPS.
  • Reliable. I don’t remember a time when my servers went down.
  • Deploy Laravel, or any other PHP app instead of managing servers through their App Platform.

Cons:

  • There are not enough global locations. For example, I cannot set up a VPS location in Paris.

What are the characteristics of a good provider of web hosting?

Reliability plays a major role. A good host will be able to deliver the best possible service with minimum downtime. If your website is not reachable, it could lead to customers switching to competitors. You should look for hosts with a minimum of 99.9% uptime. This rate allows your website to be down for up to an hour per year.

It is important to consider speed. Fast loading times are essential for SEO and a good user experience. Google requires that your website load within 2 seconds. What makes a server fast?

  • Location. Location. The closer your web server is to the visitors of your site, the quicker your website will load. The loading time is longer if your server in the US is located in Europe and your visitors are in Europe. It is fine to use multiple hosts based on their location if you have an audience from around the world.
  • Network bandwidth Your website will load faster if your server has more bandwidth. If you have a moderate amount of traffic, then 100Mbps bandwidth is enough. If cost isn’t an issue, you can go with at least 1Gbps.
  • Hardware. Hardware. The faster your website loads, the more powerful your server (CPU and RAM) is.

What is the best Laravel for shared hosting?

Laravel is compatible with shared hosting, but it’s not the ideal environment for getting the most from this framework.

If you want to avoid the hassle of maintaining a server, I recommend using Cloudways. If budget is a concern, hosting may be the answer.

What is the best database 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+

All the hosting providers I mention in this article support them.