🚀 How to Automate Laravel Deployments to Shared Hosting Using GitHub Actions + FTP

Deploying Laravel projects to shared hosting manually — via tools like FileZilla — can be time-consuming, error-prone, and inefficient. I recently faced this challenge while managing multiple Laravel projects (including a school management system) and decided to finally automate the process.

In this post, I’ll share how I automated my deployment pipeline using GitHub Actions + FTP, even on a shared hosting environment (like cPanel or DirectAdmin) — no SSH access needed!

🧱 The Problem
Manually deploying files via FileZilla was:

Slow (uploading file-by-file)
Risky (easy to miss files or overwrite the wrong thing)
Time-consuming (especially during multiple updates per day)

✅ The Goal
I wanted a solution where:

Code is automatically deployed when I push to main
I can avoid uploading node_modules/, vendor/, or .env
No SSH is required
It's easy to set up and secure

🔧 The Stack
Laravel (PHP framework)
GitHub for source control
GitHub Actions for automation
FTP access (via DirectAdmin or cPanel)

🚀 The Solution: GitHub Actions + ftp-deploy Action

Step 1: Set FTP Credentials as GitHub Secrets
In your GitHub repo:

Go to Settings > Secrets > Actions

Add:

FTP_HOST = ftp.yourdomain.com
FTP_USERNAME = your FTP username
FTP_PASSWORD = your FTP password
FTP_TARGET_DIR = /public_html/your-laravel-folder/ (dont't forget the / at the end of your path)

Step 2: Create Your GitHub Action Workflow

In .github/workflows/ftp-deploy.yml:

name: 🚀 FTP Deploy Laravel App

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  ftp-deploy:
    name: Deploy via FTP
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: 📥 Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: 🔒 FTP Deploy
        uses: SamKirkland/FTP-Deploy-Action@v4.3.4
        with:
          server: ${{ secrets.FTP_HOST }}
          username: ${{ secrets.FTP_USERNAME }}
          password: ${{ secrets.FTP_PASSWORD }}
          local-dir: ./
          server-dir: ${{ secrets.FTP_TARGET_DIR }}
          exclude: |
            **/.git*
            **/.env
            **/node_modules/**
            **/vendor/**
            **/tests/**
            storage/
          dry-run: false

💬 Conclusion

This solution saved me hours of manual work. Now, I simply push to main, and the code is live. If you're stuck using shared hosting without SSH, GitHub Actions + FTP is a reliable and modern way to automate your Laravel deployments.

Let me know if you try it or need help setting it up!