Where Should I Host My Laravel Application in 2025? A Deep Dive into Laravel Forge, Envoyer, Vapor & Laravel Cloud

If you’re a Laravel developer gearing up for a fresh project in 2025, one of the first decisions you’ll make after finishing your initial commits is: “Where should I host this application?” And just like that, the whirlwind begins—Forge, Envoyer, Vapor, Laravel Cloud. They all sound promising, they’re all official, and they all promise to make your life easier. But are they interchangeable? No. Should one be your go-to default? That depends. In this blog post, we’ll take you through Laravel’s ecosystem of hosting and deployment tools, and give you a compass for choosing what’s best for your project in 2025.

The Laravel Hosting Landscape in 2025

In the early days of Laravel, picking a hosting solution typically meant spinning up a VPS or deploying on a shared host. But the ecosystem has evolved rapidly. Today, Laravel powers countless business-critical applications, and the surrounding toolset has grown to support developers at every stage of that journey. At the heart of this tooling are four Laravel-focused hosting solutions:

• Laravel Forge: A server provisioning and deployment tool for traditional server hosting.
• Laravel Envoyer: A zero-downtime deployment tool for existing servers.
• Laravel Vapor: A serverless deployment platform powered by AWS Lambda.
• Laravel Cloud: The latest player, offering containerized deployment with built-in CI/CD.

Forge — For the Server Admin Who Doesn’t Want to Be One

Forge has been a staple in the Laravel ecosystem for years. It automates the tedious and time-consuming tasks often involved in provisioning a server—think setting up Nginx, PHP, MySQL, deploying your code, setting up SSL, and more. Forge connects to services like DigitalOcean, Linode, Hetzner, and AWS to provision your servers in minutes, and handles things like firewall rules and routine maintenance without you having to log into the command line.

Forge is perfect if:

• You’re comfortable with (or want control over) your own server infrastructure
• You prefer traditional hosting and full root access
• You don’t mind managing scaling manually
• You’re deploying applications with limited and predictable traffic

In essence, Forge demystifies DevOps for the solo Laravel developer. It’s not serverless. It’s not autoscaling. But it’s battle-tested, affordable, and flexible.

Envoyer — Zero-Downtime Deployments Made Simple

Laravel Envoyer sits atop your existing server infrastructure—whether you’ve provisioned it via Forge or something else—and focuses on one thing: deployment. And not just any deployment, but smooth, bug-free, zero-downtime deployments.

Envoyer is best when paired with Forge but it also works independently. It connects to your Git repository, watches for changes, and allows you to deploy code to your servers without interruption. Before tools like Envoyer, deploying meant customers risking brief (or not-so-brief) downtimes.

Envoyer is perfect if:

• You already have your server stack set up
• You want reliable, zero-downtime deployments
• You prefer confidence over complexity during deploys

It’s not a hosting provider on its own—it’s a deploy tool. But it solves a crucial issue that many dev teams underestimate until they experience an embarrassing production crash.

Vapor — Laravel Embraces the Serverless Era

Here comes the big one: Laravel Vapor. The moment it launched, Vapor caused ripples across the Laravel world. At last, a fully managed, serverless deployment system tailor-made for Laravel. Powered by AWS Lambda and integrated with other powerful services like S3, RDS, CloudFront, and SQS, Vapor allows you to deploy scalable applications without ever thinking about a server.

The idea is this: you write code, push it, and Vapor handles the rest. Autoscaling is built-in. Outages due to overloaded servers are virtually non-existent. And because it uses Lambda, you only pay for what you use.

Vapor is perfect if:

• You want unlimited scalability without managing infrastructure
• You are comfortable working with AWS internals (VPCs, IAM roles, etc.)
• You want to focus solely on development and business logic

However, Vapor is not for everyone. Local testing mimicking AWS infrastructure can be tricky. CI/CD complexities can arise. And costs at scale can be unpredictable. Still, for many, it is the future.

Laravel Cloud — A New Direction for Container-Based Deployments

The latest addition to Laravel’s fleet is Laravel Cloud. Announced toward the end of 2024, Laravel Cloud embraces modern DevOps concepts like container-based deploys, Laravel YAML configurations, and built-in CI/CD, but without the fanfare of being fully serverless. It sits somewhere between the opinionated Forge model and AWS-native Vapor.

Imagine running your Laravel app in a container without caring much about Dockerfiles, Kubernetes, or ECS setups. Laravel Cloud abstracts away the hard parts while giving you flexibility and transparency. It supports zero-downtime deployments, horizontal scaling, rollbacks, and more.

Laravel Cloud is perfect if:

• You want fast deploys via containers, but don’t need Lambda-level scalability
• You’re building modern applications and want robust CI/CD
• You want something “middle ground” between Forge and Vapor

The technology behind Laravel Cloud is rooted in simplicity and abstraction. It’s how Taylor Otwell envisions Laravel deployment for the average team today—powerful, clear, but not overengineered.

Choosing the Right Tool for the Job

Instead of asking “which is best,” the better question to ask is “what does my application need?” Are you building something that might become the next unicorn startup? Are you developing a SaaS platform with unpredictable traffic? Or just a small business site with modest needs?

Each of Laravel's tools shines in a particular domain:

• Forge: Traditional servers, complete control, low cost.
• Envoyer: Smooth deployments, developer peace of mind.
• Vapor: Infinite scaling, serverless freedom, but strong AWS ties.
• Laravel Cloud: Modern deployments, simplicity via containers.

There’s no wrong answer, just misaligned expectations. Too often, developers jump on Vapor because “everyone’s doing it” only to realize their use case didn’t warrant AWS complexity. On the other hand, Forge users find themselves banging their heads against scaling limitations months down the line.

CI/CD, Docker, and the Modern Laravel Stack

One overarching theme in 2025 is that Laravel is fully embracing DevOps culture—without expecting you to get a DevOps certification. Whether through Laravel Cloud’s GitHub integration and deployment pipelines or Vapor’s automatic deployment triggers based on tags, CI/CD is now embedded into the Laravel development experience.

Containers are also front-and-center. Laravel Cloud, for example, abstracts the Docker complexity away. You define your stack in a configuration file—Laravel knows how to turn it into repeatable deploy environments. This means fewer config errors, faster rollbacks, and confidence in consistency across environments.

Final Thoughts — Laravel is Giving You Options

If there's a common theme across Laravel’s hosting products in 2025, it’s flexibility. Laravel doesn’t force you into a single paradigm. You can own your infrastructure, rent it manually, deploy it serverlessly, or abstract it behind containers. Each approach is a bet—not just on cost, but on developer experience, scalability, and operational complexity.

One thing is certain: Taylor Otwell and the Laravel team continue to refine the hosting experience to match real-world developer expectations. Whether you’re a solo hacker or leading a team of 50, there’s a Laravel hosting experience designed for you.

Happy deploying, and as always: ship it 🚀