My "Ship Factory" for 12 SaaS products in 12 months (Laravel Octane + Traefik on VPS). Overkill?

Devopness · 2026-01-02T12:29:38+00:00

> Frontend: Nuxt 4 SSR

Why do you need SSR (Server Side Rendering) if you already have a Laravel backend for your app?
* So you're keeping a web server to dynamically process the requests to your Laravel app and also dynamically processing the routes of your frontend app

Isn't SSG (Static Site Generator) what you really need, to pre-build your frontend pages into a SPA (Single Page Application)?

* This way the web server would consume less server resources and only serve static pages already built

* Also, with this approach, if needed you can offload the server by publishing your frontend app to a CDN (AWS Cloufront, etc) and not having to use servers to deal with your frontend traffic.

Devopness · 2026-01-02T12:23:45+00:00

> I skipped Vercel/Forge and built this on a $10 OVH VPS:

This part I think you did well!
Skipping Vercel is a good decision, as you have more control and freedom to move to other cloud providers if you need to save money or meet customer specific requirements over time.

> CI/CD: GitHub Actions.

Think about the cost (your time) to maintain your YAML files, update Node.js versions, update actions to latest releases, etc

Disclaimer: I published a video with a simpler alternative to Laravel Forge/Envoyer/Vercel/Heroku with a free forever plan. See here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrVh4Zq8yLg

Devopness · 2026-01-02T12:16:43+00:00

> DO NOT be tempted to touch AWS.

What are your reasons for not touching AWS?

Devopness · 2026-01-02T12:15:03+00:00

Overkill and hipster!
You're taking ownership on customising/managing Traefik where most platforms can deploy and manage their own web servers/reverse proxy (using NGINX for example, which is more popular).

* if you're deploying to a PaaS, they will manage web server for you
* if you're deploying to VPS/cloud providers using automation SaaS tools, they will configure NGINX for you

Unless you're making millions of dollars with a single one of your apps (which I doubt, otherwise why would you bother building 11 others? :D) getting to this level of customization just consume time that could be allocated to talk to more users, improve your products, do marketing/sales, ... and get return of the time of your life and your youth spent on building your products.

Also, the further you move away from most popular and consolidated tools, the more expensive it becomes for you when you need to delegate and hire other people to help you grow your products.

Devopness · 2025-12-14T18:19:07+00:00

Honest question: wouldn't this problem be solved using Laravel's native Eloquent: API Resources without the need to install any of the extra packages mentioned in the article?

The problematic code showed in the article:

return Inertia::render('Users/Show', [
  'user' => $user  // Whoops, includes password hash, tokens, etc.
]);

Would then become:

return Inertia::render('Users/Show', [
  'user' => UserResource($user) // assuming `UserResource` is an API Resource
]);

Devopness · 2025-12-14T10:04:12+00:00

Nice one. Tested and looks promising. Ability to "crop" is my immediate feature request, hehe

Devopness · 2025-12-14T09:43:23+00:00

> doable with the right tools but that’s one of the problems I would rather some other folks solve (and I pay them)

Agree! I pay when I see a tool is opinionated in the direction that I want. There are so many details to care about when deploying or migrating to another cloud, that I prefer pay someone/some tool that has done that before and has an opinion about what great looks like, than having to learn everything again every time I need to setup a new application.

Devopness · 2025-12-13T15:05:30+00:00

> I probably want something that abstracts a bit more so I don't have to worry as much about the details

I built Devopness for this, and it works on any cloud provider: it provisions the infra and deploy apps for you. No vendor lock: stop using Devopness any time and your infra and app remains and up and running.

Devopness · 2025-12-13T15:02:13+00:00

Devopness supports any stack (JS, Python, Docker, etc), has a free forever plan and you can use it to deploy to a server or to serverless services on AWS, Azure, GCP, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, etc

* for example: you can get free credits from Azure or AWS and use Devopness to automate setup and deployment for you

It has an MCP server, so you can deploy directly from Cursor/VSCode/Claude, etc, if you like

Devopness · 2025-12-13T14:49:44+00:00

Devopness (it combines the good parts of Vercel + Coolify + Heroku + Terraform, etc): it's managed, supports any stack with or without Docker (Python, Node.js, PHP, Java, Ruby, C#) nothing to install, has free forever plan, you can invite your team mates, and you can use it to deploy to most famous clouds (AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, etc).

It has MCP server so you can deploy directly from an AI tool if you use Cursor/Claude/VSCode, etc

Devopness · 2025-12-13T14:41:15+00:00

Devopness: has free forever plan and you can use it to deploy to free tier on AWS, GCP, Azure, etc and it has MCP server that your prof might love to see you and your mates using AI to deploy :-)

Devopness · 2025-12-13T14:11:13+00:00

Well done! Keep it going, keep it simple!

Devopness · 2025-12-13T13:43:53+00:00

Congrats for starting an ambitious project!

Remember: you will need to be really passionate about the problems you are trying to solve, to keep working on it for - at least - 5 (five) years, week over week.

If you feel that's you passion, go for it and take all feedback as constructive and keep going.

Turn the haters into your main fuel to keep improving, and you're gonna win!

Devopness · 2025-12-13T13:39:15+00:00

Just use Laravel framework for server side code and not all the ecosystem around it.

Example: Build a REST API using Laravel, that's solid/productive, and consume your API from any client app you want (using Vue or React or Next.js or Svelte, etc)

For good or for bad, frontend code has never been easier to generate (coding yourself or using Gen AI), so as long as you don't rely on Laravel for anything belong the server side nature of PHP, you're safe.

Devopness · 2025-12-13T11:28:59+00:00

I'm happy to help you get your application live (in any cloud, on VMs, on container orchestrators, on Kubernetes, wherever you want).

> if there is a solution that does not require a DevOps Engineer to do the job.

Yes, there is https://www.devopness.com/ Disclaimer: I created this product, as I'm an experienced DevOps/SRE and I built Devopness to do everything (and more) that one could achieve with "Forge + Envoyer + Vapor + Vercel + Heroku + Terraform + SSH" and with a FREE FOREVER plan for those that are just getting started on their business.

No vendor lock, you can leave Devopness at any time and you still own your infra. No secrets. No hidden tricks. We automate it for you, but everything is under your control. If you keep seeing value on the automation that saves you time, good, keep using Devopness. If you think you don't need us anymore, good as well, just stop using and your infra remains up and running.

FREEDOM, that's our belief!

Devopness · 2025-12-13T11:23:36+00:00

This video I recorded has a step by step with Laravel on Azure, getting the code from GitHub, might be what you need https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrVh4Zq8yLg

Devopness · 2025-12-13T11:19:34+00:00

Could you give an example of task you would like to do that would need these tools?

Or even better ... could you give an example of what you're finding hard to achieve in a Lravel app using an AI powered IDE, such as Cursor or VSCode?

Devopness · 2025-08-25T07:39:10+00:00

I also published a video showing a simple way to self-host n8n in any cloud provider. From cheap ones such as Hetzner and DigitalOcean to big cloud providers such as AWS, Azure and GCP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U5lA7J8ioI

If you get free credits/free tier from cloud providers this method is still useful.

Disclaimer: this method uses Devopness, my own product, that has a free forever plan.

Devopness · 2025-08-25T07:19:32+00:00

I published a video showing how to deploy n8n to any cloud. From cheap ones such as Hetzner and DigitalOcean to big cloud providers such as AWS, Azure and GCP:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U5lA7J8ioI

If you get free credits/free tier from cloud providers this method is still useful.

Disclaimer: this method uses Devopness, my own product, that has free forever plan.

Devopness · 2025-08-04T11:36:47+00:00

> Trade-offs of managing containers directly vs using PaaS-style services

Consider your team size, your urgency/time to market, your performance requirements, your traffic variation (do you need to scale up and down depending on amount of requests?), and ... your company budget, cause PaaS is convenient but that convenience doesn't come for free. :-)

Devopness · 2025-08-04T11:36:25+00:00

> CI/CD workflows you’ve used for Laravel in production

About GitHub actions

It works pretty well, but a few things to keep in mind:

It might take some time for you to get your YAMLs right and stable, might take days or weeks, depends on your experience and your team experience
Each new GitHub action workflow comes with a cost of maintenance. It is code, yaaaaaayyy, but it needs to be maintained as every other piece of code. Each one of your YAML files will consume external actions and from time to time you will need to upgrade each action/package with newest versions, replace the deprecated ones, and the costs will be on you and your team:
1. GitHub actions is great if you can afford the "price per build minute"
2. GitHub actions is great if your team can afford the ongoing maintenance costs

Other CI/CD platform to consider

Devopness can replace "Forge + Envoyer + Vapor" and can integrate very well with GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket using webhooks ... so you can achieve most of what you would achieve with GitHub actions and still have a single dashboard to manage your deployments, servers and other cloud resources.

I believe it can help you achieve most of what you want, as it can also be used to deploy to Azure, GCP, AWS (server or serverless or PaaS or kubernetes ... <you choose>)

[Disclaimer] I'm the creator of Devopness
It has a FREE forever plan for one server (host server or build server), so it doesn't require upfront payment as Laravel Forge or Envoyer or Vapor or similar tools
It can be used to deploy directly to Linux/VMs (AWS EC2 or similar) to deploy dockerized applications and also to deploy apps in Python, Ruby/Rails, Next.js, etc, any popular stack is supported

Devopness · 2025-08-04T11:35:42+00:00

> Experiences with Azure Container Apps vs AWS Fargate/App Runner> CI/CD workflows you’ve used for Laravel in production

Suggestion: add "Google Cloud Run" to your comparison analysis.

These services have the same goals and ultimately they can be quite similar, once they are working.

However, keep in mind that: you will still need to manage network, security, permissions, scalability and ... pricing.

Do you know which of those criteria are the most important for your company and your product?

Short answer: make your app work in a container orchestrator service in the cloud provider you are most familiar with. If you are more familiar with AWS, in your position I would deploy a dev environment to AWS ECS using Fargate (instead of EC2 launch type) and start analyzing the results.

Once your app and your containers are working fine on one cloud provider, then migrate to another cloud provider will be slightly less painful, as you will be able to focus on the infrastructure differences as your container images will be already validated in another provider and shouldn't require many changes, if any.

If your application has really high traffic then some tweaks might be needed for performance improvements or cost savings on a specific platform.

Devopness · 2025-08-01T08:53:38+00:00

I am currently using 2 AWS S3 buckets and 2 Cloudflare configurations:
* One used as a CDN just for static assets (icons, images, videos)
* One used just for the code files

CI/CD:
During the deployment we built and upload the changed files to the S3 buckets.
It's also important to invalidate Cloudflare cache for the updated files.

React app, in runtime:
Since the React app is an SPA already cached in user browser's cache, they can continue to use the cached version.

Once an error happens in the application (e.g.: API breaking changes caused the cached SPA version to fail) we have a fall back page that tell the user that an error occurred with a button "REFRESH PAGE AND TRY AGAIN", that once clicked forces a page reload that will then download the new code from S3.

* This button is not the fanciest solution, but it's working pretty well for our users

Devopness · 2025-08-01T08:39:34+00:00

Fair. It's not about the technology stack, I updated the post description.
My goal is to learn from repos that have good docs, contributors guidelines, etc and apply best practices to my repo here.

Devopness

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