Recently I needed to configure a Digital Ocean (use this link and get $10 free credit) server with a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP). I could install and configure everything separately, use a image from Bitnami or use Laravel Forge or Serverpilot!
These services can configure your server by installing everything needed to run a website and it keeps your server up-to-date! So your unmanaged VPS will be managed by a service, additionally you can add extra services like New Relic or Papertail to monitor everything. After the configuration which is pretty simple you can manage your server from their website like a control panel as Plesk, Direct Admin or cPanel. But, less bloated and blazing fast! Here you can setup apps, choose PHP versions, configure SSL certificates easily, etc. But which one is the best? Compare it yourself!
Laravel Forge compared to Serverpilot
Laravel Forge
$ 12 - 39
Per month- Nginx
- Let’s Encrypt
- PHP 5.6 and higher
- Auto security updates
- Cronjob management
- One SSH user
- No statistics
- No log viewer
- SSH key management
- Auto deployments
- Redis preinstalled
- Supervisor + daemon management
- Fail2ban configured
- No documentation
- Basic support
- Load balancer server option
Serverpilot
$ 0 - 49
Per month per server- Nginx with Apache
- Let’s Encrypt (coach plan)
- PHP 5.4 and higher
- Auto security + package updates
- Manual cronjobs
- Multiple SSH users (coach plan)
- Server health stats (coach plan)
- Log viewer (business plan)
- No SSH key management
- No deployments
- No Redis
- No Supervisor
- No Fail2ban
- Excellent documentation
- Excellent support
- No load balancer server option
Is there something missing or incorrect? Please let me know!
How does it work?
There is an excellent screencast about Laravel Forge on Laracasts, for Serverpilot you’ve to figure it out yourself but it’s really easy and almost everything is documented in their docs. Beside, they’ve a free plan to test it out!
