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Hello guys, newbie here, I want to hear your opinions about your recommended development server for laravel 12, I browsed about herd and sail and I still cant decide. If it helps this is my planned tech stack for the project online school voting system: Laravel 12, Breeze for auth, Spatie for roles, Mysql, React, Tailwind css.
I also have plans to deploy it for testing and presentation. If you also have some tips and tricks I'll highly appreciate it. Thank you!!!!
If you're on macOS, go with Herd - you’ll love the speed and simplicity.
If you’re on Windows/Linux, or plan to work with teams across OSes, Sail is a solid choice and worth the slight learning curve.
For Deployment & Presentation use Laravel Forge or Ploi to deploy easily - especially for presentations.
For testing/staging, services like Laravel Vapor, Render, or DigitalOcean App Platform also work well.
I definitely think Sail is the best option and getting some basic docker-skills out of it is just a bargain!
Like @addwebcontribution said, there's a little learning curve at first, but the skills you learn are valuable in getting to grips with working in docker-environments, which is an excellent skill to have.
Great stack choice! For Laravel 12, Herd is super beginner-friendly and blazing fast on macOS. Sail is great if you want Docker-based consistency across environments. Since you're deploying later, Sail might better simulate production. Breeze + Spatie + React + Tailwind is solid. Good luck on your voting system!
Just so you know, Herd works on Windows as well.
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