Preparing to Deploy - Cloudways vs Forge vs InmotionHosting
I have an InmotionHosting.com account, and I'm hosting several sites on it. I could host my Laravel site there as well, for no additional cost. It's just another domain.
However, I don't have Laravel set up on it, and I'm not really sure I want to deal with that. So, I'm looking around, and I find Forge and Cloudways. They look really nice! The problem is, there are too many options. ha!
I'm sure Forge and Cloudways are probably very very similar. What would make me choose one over the other? Or should I forge ahead on my own InmotionHosting VPS? X)
One more thing! I currently have a repo of my site at BitBucket, so I'll want to pull from there for easy site updates.
Forge is the way to go. It is build to deploy Laravel projects (but you can deploy other stuff as well), you'll set up a Laravel project within 5 minutes. I always use the DigitalOcean / Forge combo and I couldn't be happier. Bare in mind one Forge account can host many different servers and sites, so with a single account you can manage it all.
Cloudways server stack is based on Nginx, Varnish, Apache, PHP-FPM, MemCached and MySQL which we called a ThunderStack. You will get user friendly platform to handle your application. Their are many other benefits you can get on Cloudways:
Launch your server with Laravel on 1-click
Install free let's encrypt SSL on 1-click with Auto-Renew
Redis & Elasticsearch can be installed on 1-click
Easily manage server services.
1-click HTTP/2
24/7 Support
1-free migration
Team Calibration on all packages.
Deploy your project using Git on 1-click
Cloudways Bot which keeps an eye your server and application. And keep you updated about all information related to them.
Pay as you go
Manage your server and application through Cloudways API with your custom apps.
Forge is the best choice. Cloudways posts fake recommendations and uses click bait. If you don't mind using an unethical company then use them. As @nate.a.johnson mentioned, Cloudways takes random twitter pics and matches them with the words they choose according to a few people in our community.