Compare the services and workflows your projects need.
Both offer server management, deployment, database operations and team access. Check the engines, backup workflow and plan requirements against your project. A feature both provide is not a reason by itself to migrate.
What you get on the servers you already own.
PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, Valkey, ClickHouse and Meilisearch. Database, cache and search are distinct server roles, so provisioning one sets up the service, the firewall and private-network access in a single pass — and search gets its own machine sizing instead of competing with the app for memory.
Six of those engines plus your project files, on a schedule, to S3, Cloudflare R2, any S3-compatible endpoint, SFTP, FTP or the server's own disk. Retention prunes old runs, exclusion rules keep node_modules out, and each run records its size and checksum. Restore is available in the Console. Forge also offers scheduled database backups and restoration on its Business plan.
Promote a second server to a replica and Depfloy configures the replication slot, tracks lag in both bytes and seconds, and shows which node is primary. PgBouncer is installed and its pool settings edited from the same place.
A load balancer server carries a pool, its backends, one of three algorithms — round robin, least connections or IP hash — and its own SSL domains. Adding a second app node is a configuration change rather than a project.
Five roles, and on top of them per-resource scoping — a member can be limited to specific servers or specific projects. A client's developer can be scoped to their project. Forge also supports teams with access limited to selected resources.
Laravel, Next.js, Nuxt, Remix, React Router, Astro, WordPress, Symfony, Statamic and plain PHP. Node projects get real process supervision, with the server started so the process manager tracks the actual process rather than a shell wrapper.
Checked against their own pages.
Only the points we could cite. Every row links to where the Laravel Forge side came from, with the date it was read — pricing and features move, and an undated claim about someone else's product ages badly.
| DIMENSION | DEPFLOY | LARAVEL FORGE |
|---|---|---|
| Non-PHP applications | Next.js, Nuxt, Remix and React Router are first-class project types with their own build and process handling. | Forge's FAQ states non-PHP apps are supported manually today, and natively in the future. Checked Sep 5, 2026 → |
| Zero-downtime deployments | Zero-downtime releases for supported project types. Deployments target the server assigned to each project. | Included with new subscriptions for a single server; multi-server deploys are described as an Envoyer capability. Checked Sep 5, 2026 → |
| Database backup restoration | Scheduled backups and Console restore for six data engines and project files, from Pro. | Scheduled database backups and restore are available on Business. Checked Sep 5, 2026 → |
| Team resource access | Five roles with member scopes for selected servers or projects, on Business. | Business teams can be granted access to selected servers or resources. Checked Sep 5, 2026 → |
| Uptime monitoring | Health checks that request a URL on an interval you set — as fast as every five minutes on Starter, every 60 seconds from Pro up — and heartbeats on scheduled jobs and background workers. Three consecutive failures before an outage is reported, and no status page. | Heartbeats that alert when a scheduled job is delayed, and health checks that ping an app after a deployment to verify it is live. Checked Aug 28, 2026 → |
Start with the operations your next project needs. Compare their configuration and plan requirements, then test one project on a separate server before deciding whether a migration is worth the work.
Common questions
If I only deploy Laravel, is there a reason to switch? + −
Which Laravel operations does Depfloy cover? + −
Can I run both while I move? + −
Other comparisons
Try it on one server.
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