We Built an Open Source Alternative to Laravel Forge - Here's Why

#laravel #webdev #devops #opensource

If you have ever deployed a Laravel application to a VPS, you know the pain. SSH into the server, install Nginx, configure PHP-FPM, set up MySQL, generate SSL certificates, create deploy scripts... and then repeat the whole thing for the next project.

For the longest time, I relied on Laravel Forge. It's brilliant software, honestly. But at ~ $12 / month (and more for teams), the costs add up quickly when you're managing multiple servers for clients. RunCloud is a similar story.

So we decided to build our own. And then open source it.

Introducing SiteKit

SiteKit is a self-hosted server management platform that does pretty much everything Forge does:

Server Provisioning - Point it to any Ubuntu VPS, run one command, and it installs the full stack (Nginx, PHP 8.x, MySQL/MariaDB, Redis, Node.js, Supervisor)
Git Deployments - Connect GitHub/GitLab, push to deploy with zero downtime
SSL Certificates - Free Let's Encrypt with auto-renewal
Database Management - Create databases and users without touching the terminal
Team Access - Multi-tenant setup with proper role management

The difference? You host it yourself. No monthly fees. No vendor lock-in.

The Tech Stack

We went all-in on Laravel (obviously):

Laravel 12
Filament 3 (for the entire admin panel)
Livewire 3
Jetstream (auth + teams)
Tailwind CSS

The server agent is a small Go binary that runs on managed servers and executes jobs dispatched from Laravel. It's around 5MB and quite efficient.

What About Node.js?

This was actually a recent addition. We realised many developers (ourselves included) are deploying Next.js and Express apps alongside Laravel. So we added proper Node.js support:

Automatic Supervisor process management
Health check monitoring
Reverse proxy configuration
Support for npm, yarn, and pnpm

You can deploy a Next.js app just as easily as a Laravel one now.

Screenshots

Here's what the dashboard looks like:

https://sitekit.dev/

Server overview with real-time metrics

Is It Production Ready?

We have been using it internally for a few days now, managing around 15 servers. It's stable, but I won't claim it's as battle-tested as Forge, which has years of development behind it.

The codebase is clean, though. If you're comfortable with Laravel and Filament, you can easily extend it or fix issues yourself. That's the beauty of open source.

Try It Out

The project is on GitHub: https://github.com/avansaber/sitekit

Documentation is in the README. Basic setup is:

git clone https://github.com/avansaber/sitekit.git
cd sitekit
composer install
cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate
php artisan migrate
php artisan make:filament-user

If you do try it, I would genuinely appreciate feedback. Open an issue, start a discussion, or drop a comment here. We're actively developing this and community input helps prioritise features.

What's Next?

Currently working on: