Simplifying Hosting for 100+ Sites on same Laravel CMS - Multi-Tenant Strategy with Low-Maintenance Infrastructure?

We have around 100 websites that all run on the same simple Laravel-based CMS. Each site is a separate standalone instance with its own database. The websites are basic service business sites, averaging under 1,000 visitors/day each.

Current Setup:

Sites are distributed across 3 VPS servers.
Each has its own free SSL certificate, which requires manual renewal (a pain).
Sites send notification emails via SendGrid.
Weekly backups go to Amazon S3.
Akamai serves static snapshots of pages if the server is down - our last-resort failover layer.

This setup has become difficult to maintain - instability, performance inconsistency and high costs are ongoing issues.

Goals:

I want to simplify the entire setup while keeping costs reasonable and minimizing DevOps work. I’m a software engineer but relatively new to managing infrastructure at this scale. Here’s my rough plan:

Convert the CMS to support multi-tenancy with dynamic DB switching based on domain/subdomain.
Run a small number of CMS instances behind a load balancer.
Use a centralized Redis server for caching/session/queue.
Host all tenant databases on a dedicated DB server (e.g., MySQL/RDS).
Store media (logos, etc.) on S3 or similar.
Automate SSL cert renewal

Where I Need Help:

The big question is how to best implement this in a way that’s low-maintenance and cost-effective.

I’ve looked into solutions like Heroku, Laravel Vapor, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Kubernetes, etc., but none seem super clear or easy to adopt without a steep DevOps learning curve.

I’ve used ploi.io with DigitalOcean for personal projects and really like the simplicity. I noticed Ploi now offers features like Redis, load balancers and managed DBs.

Is there a plug-and-play platform or combination of tools you’d recommend for this kind of Laravel multi-tenant deployment - ideally with built-in support for SSL, backups and scaling without requiring a full-time DevOps engineer?

Thanks in advance!

Tray2

10 months ago

Level 73

Do they use a common web server, or do they each have their own?

How many request per second are we talking here, 100, 1K, 10K, 100K or more?

I would use a load balancer and depending on the number of requests determine the number of web servers needed.

I probably stick with a common database for all of them, and use the proper indexes and partitions where needed. This is of course if you have a common web server, if you store the apps on different web servers, I would probably go with dedicated database servers.

However running this on Laravel cloud would be quite easy, just spin up a new instance when needed.

https://cloud.laravel.com/

YevC

10 months ago

Level 1

@Tray2

Do they use a common web server, or do they each have their own?

100 websites distributed over 3 VPS servers (think standard hosting, WHM/cPanel).

How many request per second are we talking here, 100, 1K, 10K, 100K or more?

Depending on the service area, each website can receive up to 1000 visitors a day - so maybe all combined I can't imagine they receive much more than 100 per second.

I would use a load balancer and depending on the number of requests determine the number of web servers needed.

All of the businesses are US based, so I figured getting 3 in different locations across the country would be perfect (for example, with DO there is New York, San Francisco, Atlanta).

I probably stick with a common database for all of them, and use the proper indexes and partitions where needed. This is of course if you have a common web server, if you store the apps on different web servers, I would probably go with dedicated database servers.

I'm not crazy about the idea of putting everything into a single database. I think having a dedicated database server with 100 databases would be better.

However running this on Laravel cloud would be quite easy, just spin up a new instance when needed.

I hear some people are surprised by how expensive it is. Any other suggestions for similar somewhat-plug-and-play solutions?

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