Laravel Forge is a server management platform, a web service that installs and configures servers and deploys applications to them, so that developers do not have to do this by hand over SSH. It is built by the Laravel team, the makers of the Laravel PHP framework, but it also supports plain PHP, WordPress, Statamic, Node.js, Nuxt and Next.js apps.
A developer either creates a Laravel VPS (a virtual private server that Forge provisions itself in seconds) or connects an account at a cloud provider such as DigitalOcean, AWS or Hetzner. Forge installs Nginx, PHP, MySQL or Postgres, Redis and other essentials, and the developer keeps root access. Forge connects to GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket and deploys the code from the repository with a deployment script, with zero-downtime deployment on one server. It also issues free SSL certificates, runs and supervises queue workers, schedules cron jobs, backs up and monitors databases, and gives teams a shared web terminal.
It is a hosted service with flat-rate monthly or annual plans; the cloud provider bills the servers separately.