Alternatives to Laravel Forge and Digital Ocean (Non US based)

I have several clients hosted on Laravel Forge/Digital Ocean that I am looking to move to new hosting that is not US-based.

This move is in response to Trump’s tariffs.

What services similar to either of these companies do you recommend that are not based in the USA?

Hetzner is my go-to VPS host these days. Cheap and cheerful. EU-based with reasonable support.

Charlie said:
Hetzner is my go-to VPS host these days. Cheap and cheerful. EU-based with reasonable support.

I bought an ARM VPS from them. It’s been great so far.

Charlie said:
Hetzner is my go-to VPS host these days. Cheap and cheerful. EU-based with reasonable support.

Thanks, will check it out.

Ben said:

Charlie said:
Hetzner is my go-to VPS host these days. Cheap and cheerful. EU-based with reasonable support.

Thanks, will check it out.

Missed my chance here: I have a referral link. Let me know if you want it :wink:

@Charlie
Sure, DM if it’s against the rules to share referral links.

Charlie said:
Hetzner is my go-to VPS host these days. Cheap and cheerful. EU-based with reasonable support.

What is your process for making a strong deployment to a VPS? I mean things like monitoring, CI/CD, and such.

@Charlie
Why not just use Sentry for APM, uptime, and cronjob monitoring? Why three tools when you can have one view?

Bran said:
@Charlie
Why not just use Sentry for APM, uptime, and cronjob monitoring? Why three tools when you can have one view?

A number of reasons really:

  • Redundancy: Having different providers for different services means that if one is down, I’m still able to monitor aspects of my service.

  • Cost: I run a lot of servers as hobby projects. As such, being able to combine free tiers of various services saves me a lot of money. I then use some of those services for work, as I’m familiar with them.

  • Lack of knowledge: I didn’t know Sentry does cronjob monitoring. Do you have a link?

@Charlie
Ahh interesting

  • Redundancy - in my experience all of Sentry rarely goes down.
  • Cost - there’s a 100% free tier, and the paid plan starts at $30 a month, which is cheaper than 2 burritos these days :sweat_smile:
  • Cron monitoring - here’s what I found in their docs: https://docs.sentry.io/product/crons/

@Bran

Redundancy - in my experience all of Sentry rarely goes down.

The same can be said about my services :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

There’s a 100% free tier and the paid plan starts at $30 a month, which is cheaper than 2 burritos these days :sweat_smile:

Yes, but if I had to choose between 2 burritos or monitors, I know what I’ll choose :grin:

Thanks for the Sentry link. Will definitely look into it!

@Charlie
DeployHQ for the win! Also, we will release a backup feature soon enough: https://changelog.deployhq.com/p/allow-website-backups-on-deployhq-dashboard

You can use Ploi instead of Forge.

Lex said:
You can use Ploi instead of Forge.

Ploi has served me well.

For hosting, I would say OVH, but the UI is a nightmare.

For deployment, I would go with ploi.io.

There’s civo.com. They’re UK-based. I know the CEO and CTO, and they’re a great team. They do have US staff.

Parker said:
There’s civo.com. They’re UK-based. I know the CEO and CTO, and they’re a great team. They do have US staff.

Thanks, looking into it.

GitLab Runners (Ukraine) for CI/CD

Hetzner for cloud (no managed database).

Noor said:
GitLab Runners (Ukraine) for CI/CD

Hetzner for cloud (no managed database).

Thank you, will look at both.

Is this just a political decision?

Because you know we’re served by AWS EMEA Sarl in Europe right? There will be no direct price rises or tariffs for cloud computing in Europe. Sure, chip exports, etc., may bump up prices, but I’d be shocked if intra-company purchases for US companies and their global subsidiaries are affected.

No judgment either way, just curious whether you may be misinformed and trying to jump ship for a non-valid reason (tariffs pricing) or a valid reason (tariffs meaning).