Cheap Laravel Hosting for Less Than $3/Month with Database and Redis

Laravel is often described as a VPS workload, but many small Laravel applications only need a managed PHP runtime, Composer, a database, HTTPS, and a reliable deployment path. A company website, booking form, small dashboard, blog, or early-stage SaaS can start on shared hosting from $2.99/month.

HostRight combines PHP version control, MariaDB databases, Redis, SSL, email, SSH, Git, cron jobs, backups, and a conventional hosting control panel. That keeps the first deployment inexpensive while leaving a clear path to a larger plan when the application grows.

What you get for the starting price

• A managed PHP application environment
• Composer support for Laravel dependencies
• MariaDB database hosting
• SSL certificate and domain management
• SSH, Git, SFTP, and cron jobs
• Redis for cache and sessions
• Daily backups on eligible plans

The Starter plan is intended for one site and one database with shared CPU and memory. Review the current plan limits before deploying a busy application, large media library, or worker-heavy workload.

Deploy Laravel privately

Keep the Laravel project outside the domain's public directory, then point the domain's document root to Laravel's public directory:

apps/example-laravel/
├── app/
├── bootstrap/
├── config/
├── database/
├── public/
├── resources/
├── routes/
├── storage/
├── composer.json
└── .env

Never expose .env, storage, or the project root directly to the web. Only Laravel's public directory should be publicly served.

Install and configure

Use SSH or Git to deploy the code, then install production dependencies:

cd ~/apps/example-laravel
composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
php artisan storage:link
php artisan config:cache
php artisan route:cache

Create the database from Account Manager → Databases, copy the exact connection details, and set them in the application's environment. Generate an application key with php artisan key:generate during the initial setup, then keep the resulting secret private.

Run migrations carefully:

php artisan migrate --force

Take a backup before schema changes and test the application in a non-production environment when possible.

Add SSL, Redis, and scheduled tasks

Request the domain certificate after DNS points to HostRight, then test the application over https://. Enable Redis from the control panel for cache or session data, and use the socket or connection details shown by HostRight.

For Laravel's scheduler, create a cron job that runs once per minute:

php ~/apps/example-laravel/artisan schedule:run

Keep the cron command scoped to the correct account and application. Queue workers and long-running daemons may require a VPS or another worker service, depending on the workload.

When to move beyond shared hosting

The $2.99 starting tier is a useful launch point for a small Laravel application. Consider a VPS or dedicated application platform when you need Docker, root access, persistent queue workers, custom services, high sustained CPU, private networking, or unrestricted ports.

For the framework-specific PHP workflow, see Host PHP applications on HostRight. For encrypted deployment, use Deploy files with SFTP.