Laravel Forge pricing/features and scalability

I don't think so forge pricing don't include digital ocean, you have to pay for digital ocean hosting also.

Forge is a server management tool only

Really? The laravel forge home page shows a page snippet where you can create a server and allocate RAM etc.

yes , but you've to pay for Digital Oceans

Ok, weird. Thanks.

Doesnt look like it s worth the price tag. There is a free service called ServerPilot and the linked tutorial replicates Forge for the most part? With the letsencrypt module ssl doesnt look to be much of a pain either. So what does make Forge worth it?

https://www.reddit.com/r/laravel/comments/6bv3h6/digitalocean_one_click_apps_or_distribution_image/

One thing in Forge's favour is it belongs to the same community as laravel seen as how it is Taylor Otwells.

not that there would be many changes like this but any changes to laravels structure/setup are likely to be reflected/supported on forge quicker than other server management tools.

At the end of the day other server management software exists but forge is built on laravel for laravel by laravels creator.

Sounds like justified appreciation. However, appreciation doesnt answer above questions. Pricing details are still vague. Im not sure what Im getting if I choose for example the 19 euro deal.

The difference between the plans is here: https://forge.laravel.com/auth/register

The more expensive plan gives priority support as well as sharing configs with team members (regular plan is individual).

No plan comes with the hardware, that's separate and makes sense since Forge would have to purchase individual services on your behalf from the vendor which would be a lot more complex (you'd have to make policies for Forge to be able to do this via AWS, for example). Building the hardware infrastructure is up to you, managing/provisioning it is up to Forge. Horizontally scaling is a pretty easy by adding new servers and tying them together using the private IPs. Vertically scaling is up to you by just increasing the capacity of your current hardware instances via AWS/Linode/DO or whoever you go with for hardware.

Not sure what else to say that isn't covered on the Features page.

I'm sure there are better/cheaper solutions out there. I happen to like that the Forge provisioned servers are basically the same environment that Homestead uses... So if you use Homestead and Forge, your development environment basically is the same as production except things like firewall and more security settings on the Forge server for production. I also like how easy deployments are. Just push your code to whatever git branch you have set up in Forge, and Forge will push it automatically to the Forge server(s). It's a basic deployment scheme, but works well for my purpose. As deployments get more complex, I'll probably look at Envoyer.

Here's some good info Matt Stauffer wrote up on Forge awhile ago that might help explain a bit more: https://mattstauffer.co/blog/series/laravel-forge

@Cronix

Thanks for the elaborate answer and confirmation.

Being new to Laravel and Laravel Forge it is just not that clear what Forge has to offer. The home page of Laravel Forge does show an image where you can select and create a Digital Ocean Server and allocate RAM. But maybe thats me misinterpreting the information. At the same time if you google Laravel Forge the pricing looks to have been a bit different in the past.

I appreciate so much the work of Taylor Otwell. But can I pay a month, configure all and then don't pay no more?. For an Argentinian it is so expensive

@enzonotario I'm pretty sure you can (even during the free trial period). However, automatic deployments obviously won't work, and either will the Forge control panel to control the server/alter it. You'd have to ssh in and administer the server and do everything manually.

I use Cloudways and find it awesome. They charge an affordable fee that includes hosting where you want it to be: AWS, DO , etc. Everything at a click of a button. Really a dream for me.

No the cost for Digital Ocean is not included. However, I have been using Laravel Forge since 2016, and I am delighted: great features and good support, and I have not felt the need to look elsewhere. Especially, if you combine with F-Bar https://laravel-forge-menubar.com ;-)