Comparison
A self-hosted Laravel Forge alternative
Laravel Forge, Ploi and RunCloud made deploying to a VPS pleasant — but they're monthly subscriptions whose control plane lives in someone else's cloud, and they're deployment tools, not full hosting panels. ShadowPanel gives you the same developer experience self-hosted, for a flat license, with email, DNS and white-label built in.
| ShadowPanel | Forge / Ploi / RunCloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Flat license, unlimited servers | Monthly subscription, often per server |
| Control plane | Runs on your own server | Hosted in the vendor cloud |
| Git deploy | Yes (signed webhooks) | Yes |
| Multi-PHP 5.6 → 8.4 | Yes | Yes |
| Docker | Yes | Partial / varies |
| Staging | Yes (Pro) | Varies |
| Email hosting | Built in | No |
| DNS management | Built in | No / limited |
| White-label & reseller | Yes (Agency) | No |
| Phone-home dependency | None | Requires the vendor service |
Why developers move off the subscription model
- No recurring per-server bill. Run as many of your own servers as you want on one license.
- No third-party dependency. If the SaaS goes down or changes pricing, your panel doesn't care — it's on your server.
- A full panel. Beyond deploys: email, DNS, backups, SSL and white-label for clients.
When Forge still wins
If you want zero server maintenance of the control plane itself and love the Forge ecosystem, the SaaS convenience is real. ShadowPanel is for teams who'd rather own the whole stack without a monthly bill.
Deploy on your own server — free to start
Up to 3 sites, no credit card. Git deploy, multi-PHP, Docker.
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