Self-hosted Laravel Forge alternative — Git deploy, multi-PHP, no monthly fee
Laravel Forge is great — but it's a monthly subscription and a layer on top of your servers. Here's how to get Git-push deploys, multi-PHP and staging on a server you fully own, with ShadowPanel.
If you deploy Laravel apps, you've probably used — or considered — Laravel Forge. It's a brilliant product. But it's a monthly subscription, and it's a service layer that lives outside your infrastructure. If you'd rather own the whole stack and drop the recurring fee, here's how ShadowPanel covers the same core workflow.
What Laravel Forge gets right
Let's be fair: Forge is excellent and Laravel-official. It provisions servers on your cloud, gives you push-to-deploy, free SSL, queue and scheduler management, and a deployment experience that's genuinely polished. If you live in the Laravel ecosystem and the subscription doesn't bother you, it's a fantastic tool — we're not going to pretend otherwise.
The catch
- It's a recurring subscription, billed monthly, indefinitely.
- It's an orchestration layer hosted by Forge. Your apps run on your servers, but the automation and dashboard live in Forge's cloud. Stop paying and you lose the management layer.
- It's deployment + provisioning, not a full hosting panel — no built-in email server, no DNS, none of the per-site hosting-business features you need if you host clients.
ShadowPanel: the same dev workflow, self-hosted, flat fee
| Capability | Laravel Forge | ShadowPanel |
|---|---|---|
| Model | SaaS that manages your cloud servers | Self-hosted panel on your own VPS |
| Git deploy | Yes (push-to-deploy) | Yes (signed webhook) |
| Multi-PHP | Yes | Yes (5.6–8.4) |
| Staging | Yes | Yes (Pro) |
| Free SSL | Yes | Yes (auto-renew) |
| Queues / scheduler | First-class | Via cron + your process manager |
| Email server | No | Yes |
| DNS | No | Yes |
| Encrypted S3 backups | Scripts / add-ons | Built-in (Pro) |
| White-label / reseller | No | Yes (Agency) |
| Pricing | Monthly subscription | Flat Pro/Agency, no per-server fee |
Honest note: Forge's queue and scheduler management, and its deployment-script ergonomics, are more Laravel-specific and more mature. ShadowPanel's Git deploy is deliberately simpler — clone/pull plus the build commands you define. If your workflow leans heavily on Forge-specific automation, weigh that up.
Deploy a Laravel app with ShadowPanel Git deploy
- Create the site and pick PHP 8.3.
- Site → Git: add your repository URL and branch. ShadowPanel generates a deploy key — add it to your repo's deploy keys.
- Set your build commands, for example:
composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
php artisan migrate --force
php artisan config:cache && php artisan route:cache
npm ci && npm run build
- Copy the signed webhook URL into your repository's webhook settings (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket).
git push— ShadowPanel verifies the webhook signature, pulls the branch, runs your build commands, and your app is live. Use a staging environment (Pro) to test a branch before promoting it.
What you also get — that Forge doesn't bundle
Because ShadowPanel is a full panel, the same server also gives you DNS, email (Postfix/Dovecot), free auto-renewing SSL, encrypted S3 backups, and a hardened firewall (UFW + Fail2ban + CrowdSec) — one panel, one server, one flat licence.
Honest caveat
ShadowPanel is young (2026) and it isn't Laravel-specific — it's a general hosting panel that happens to do Git deploy well. Forge has years of Laravel-focused refinement and a large community. If you want the most polished Laravel-native deployment experience and the subscription is fine, stay on Forge. If you want to own the stack, drop the monthly fee, and keep a clean git-push workflow, ShadowPanel covers it.
Try it
The Free tier runs 3 sites with no credit card, and you can install on any Ubuntu VPS in about ten minutes:
curl -fsSL https://shadowpanel.de/install.sh | bash