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Cloudy with a chance of Craft.

Craft Cloud alternative for Craft CMS hosting

Q: Is fortrabbit cheaper than Craft Cloud?

For most sites - Craft Cloud starts at $120 a month per project with a Craft Team license included. On fortrabbit a small Craft site with a database starts at about €5 a month, plus a license from Pixel & Tonic if the site needs one. Craft Solo is free.

Q: Does fortrabbit offer SSH and SFTP for Craft CMS?

Yes - On every plan. Run craft console commands, tunnel into the database, rsync files, read logs. Craft Cloud has no SSH; commands run from a screen in its dashboard.

Q: Do I need my own Craft license on fortrabbit?

Yes - Craft Cloud includes the license in its plans. On fortrabbit the license is bought from Pixel & Tonic as a one-time purchase, and it stays with the site if the site ever changes hosts.

Craft Cloud is the official host: serverless, from $120 a month and without a shell. fortrabbit hosts Craft the classic way, for less.

Try for free See Craft CMS guides

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About Craft Cloud

Craft Cloud is a relatively new hosting service by the creators of Craft CMS, Pixel & Tonic. It launched in 2024, is specialized in Craft CMS, has some fancy features and is a bit more pricey: $120 or $240 a month per project, with the Craft license included. Craft runs serverless on AWS Lambda.

We like Pixel & Tonic a lot.

Why not Craft Cloud?

You may not want to put all your eggs in one basket. With Craft Cloud the CMS, the license and the hosting sit on one roadmap and one price sheet. If that sheet changes, where does the site go?

Serverless also means no SSH and no disk. Commands run from a screen in the dashboard, files go to object storage. Anyone who ever fixed a Craft site late at night with ./craft, a log file and rsync knows what that costs.

Why fortrabbit

fortrabbit is more standard, yet modern, and more flexible. The service is more open to different workflows and other software. We have been doing Craft CMS hosting for a long time and know the nuts and bolts. Every app has SSH, SFTP and persistent storage, and our free Craft plugin syncs databases in either direction. A Laravel app or a WordPress blog for the same client? Same account, same bill.

fortrabbit is also more affordable. Give it a spin. See what works for you.

Craft Cloud and fortrabbit

Feature	Craft Cloud	fortrabbit
Made by	Pixel & Tonic	Independent
Runs	Craft CMS only	Any PHP
Architecture	Serverless, Lambda	Persistent storage
SSH / SFTP	No	All plans
Craft license	Included	Bring your own
Pricing	$120–$240 per project	Per component, arrears

# Different by design

Pay in arrears

Daily prorated, post-paid billing. No upfront payment, no yearly commitment.

Modular pricing

Pay per component and scale each one from xs to 2xl on its own.

No dark patterns

No vendor lock-in, no upselling, no misleading messages.

Humans in support

Eye-level developer chat over the support bubble. No sales calls.

Developer-first

Git-push deploy, SSH access, bring your own code. No 1-click bloat.

Managed platform

A hardened, service-oriented PHP stack. Deploy code, skip the server admin.

# Frequently asked

Is fortrabbit cheaper than Craft Cloud?

For most sites

For most sites - Craft Cloud starts at $120 a month per project with a Craft Team license included. On fortrabbit a small Craft site with a database starts at about €5 a month, plus a license from Pixel & Tonic if the site needs one. Craft Solo is free.

Does fortrabbit offer SSH and SFTP for Craft CMS?

Yes

Yes - On every plan. Run craft console commands, tunnel into the database, rsync files, read logs. Craft Cloud has no SSH; commands run from a screen in its dashboard.

Do I need my own Craft license on fortrabbit?

Yes

Yes - Craft Cloud includes the license in its plans. On fortrabbit the license is bought from Pixel & Tonic as a one-time purchase, and it stays with the site if the site ever changes hosts.

# What customers say

Having fortrabbit is like having a dedicated DevOps engineer on the team, taking care of the infrastructure so we can focus on writing code. We've used many PaaS providers, but none come close to fortrabbit's mix of features, reliability, predictable and fair pricing, and fast, genuinely helpful support. Their service has been rock solid, giving us the confidence that our apps are in good hands.

Len van Essen

CTO at Fitwinkel

2026 — Direct feedback

Unmatched performances and ease-of-configure. I really like what fortrabbit is doing for the modern PHP hosting ecosystem, and I'd suggest anyone to have a try with them.

Federico Magnani

CTO at glueglue