Laravel hosting is a process of deploying a Laravel framework written on Php language with MVC architecture. The hosting comes with the deployment of the database, Php-fpm and web service with other required configurations in the Php.ini file for Php and my.cnf file for MySQL to run the application globally using the domain name smoothly. 

The hosting provider offers automatic deployment of the PHP Laravel Framework and other required services and packages on the hosting server, with many additional features to manage the laravel hosting server.

Managed Laravel Hosting is the best solution because it provides complete features from website migration to performance enhancement and then management and monitoring of the website.

To save time and peace of mind, you should go for Managed Cloud Hosting. In a few clicks, you can install the Laravel application on a dedicated cloud server with a staging URL to test the application after migration. It also provides free website migration with 24/7 support.

Unfortunately, no hosting provider offers free Laravel hosting. With Devrims, you can host your Laravel application for FREE in a 6 Days Free trial with no feature restrictions or payment details, so you may test our services and migrate your application. If our platform satisfies your expectations, you can switch your trial account to a paid account by adding payment details.

To host Laravel application, you need a server with storage and desired network from the hardware side. The size of hardware resources - RAM, CPU, Storage and Bandwidth Speed depend entirely on the traffic load, the amount of processing required by your applications, and so on.

Laravel supports Nginx or Apache as a web service, MySQL or MariaDB as a Database, and Php as a backend language. Any operating system that supports these software services can be used; most users use a Linux distribution.

You must ensure that your server meets the following specifications:

• PHP >= 7.1.3
• OpenSSL PHP Extension
• PDO PHP Extension
• Mbstring PHP Extension
• Tokenizer PHP Extension
• XML PHP Extension
• Ctype PHP Extension
• JSON PHP Extension

Well, it depends on how you have developed the Laravel application, the architecture of your application, and the website traffic. We recommend hosting the Laravel app on a 1vCPU and 2GB RAM server with a choice of Apache or Nginx web server.

1. Create a zip, tar, tar.gz compressed file of your Laravel project folder.
2. Log in to your cPanel to deploy the Laravel 8 project on shared hosting.
3. Click on File Manager > public_html > Upload
4. Select the compressed file to upload inside the public_html root directory
5. Extract the compressed file inside the public_html folder
6. Open and update the existing php file with the below code:

require __DIR__.'/../bootstrap/autoload.php';
$app = require_once __DIR__.'/../bootstrap/app.php';
to:
require __DIR__.'/bootstrap/autoload.php';
$app = require_once __DIR__.'/bootstrap/app.php';

7. Go back to the main cPanel page and click on MySQL Database Wizard.
8. Follow the ongoing instructions to create the database user and assign them privileges.
9. Go back to the main cPanel page and click on phpMyAdmin.
10. Click on the newly created database name from the left panel of phpMyAdmin.
11. Click on the Import option and Browse your computer to import the .sql file.
12. Go to the public_html folder and edit the .env file to connect the imported database with the following details:

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=type your database name
DB_USERNAME=type your database username
DB_PASSWORD=type your database password

13. Go to cPanel again and click on Cron Jobs to create the Storage Link

Note: Add a cron job as per your requirement with the script to as mentioned below for an example:

ln -s /home/laravel_project_name /storage/app/public /home/laravel_project_name/public_html/storage

14. The last step is to protect .htaccess and .env files from direct access. Right-click on the .htaccess file and add the below mentioned code:

#disable directory browsing
Options -Indexes

#PROTECT ENV FILE
<Files .env>
order allow,deny
Deny from all
</Files>

#PROTECT ENV FILE
<Files .htaccess>
order allow,deny
Deny from all
</Files>

There are a few possible reasons for 500 errors:

• Check if you have assigned proper file and folder permissions.
• Check for the Environment variables.
• Create the .env file if not found inside the root directory.
• Install Php extensions that are needed for your Laravel project.
• Check the Database credentials and assign proper privileges.

The main disadvantages of hosting Laravel on shared hosting are security and performance because the security vulnerability of one website can affect the other website on the same server. Shared hosting hosts multiple websites on a single server resulting the poor performance, security issues, availability issues, and no customization with limited features. Also does not meet the minimum requirements to deploy Laravel apps such as Php versions, OpenSSL Php Extension, use of Composer, SSH Terminal, etc.

It is highly recommended for the Laravel project to use Managed Laravel Cloud Hosting because you do not have to worry about managing the servers and have complete freedom over services and features.