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A clean box to babysit.

DigitalOcean Droplet alternative for PHP hosting

Q: Is fortrabbit more expensive than a Droplet?

A little - The smallest Droplet costs $4 a month for 512 MiB of RAM, and the web stack, MySQL and backups are extra work or extra cost. A fortrabbit app with MySQL starts at about €5 a month, patched and backed up.

Q: Who patches PHP on fortrabbit?

We do - DigitalOcean leaves the operating system and PHP on a Droplet to the customer. On fortrabbit, the PHP runtime and the infrastructure are ours to patch.

A Droplet is a $4 Linux server with a clean control panel. The web stack, PHP patches and backups are up to whoever runs it. Consider fortrabbit.

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About DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean was founded in 2012 and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Droplets are its virtual servers, from $4 a month for 512 MiB of RAM, in data centers in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. DNS hosting is free.

Why not a Droplet?

A Droplet is a plain Linux server. DigitalOcean's shared responsibility model leaves the operating system, access and the software on it to the customer: Nginx or Apache, PHP-FPM, MySQL, TLS, firewalls and the next PHP security release. Backups are an opt-in extra.

That is a fair trade with a sysadmin on the team. Without one, the $4 server costs hours every month, and the hours are not on the invoice.

Why fortrabbit

fortrabbit hosts PHP apps, not servers. Git push deploys, Composer and npm in the build, MySQL as a component, backups as a component, and cron jobs and workers as settings. We patch the PHP runtime and run the infrastructure on AWS.

DigitalOcean also sells App Platform, a PaaS of its own, compared on its own page.

Droplets and fortrabbit

Feature	DigitalOcean Droplet	fortrabbit
Unit	Server, root access	Managed app
Price	From $4	From about €5
Web stack	DIY	Managed
PHP patches	DIY	Managed
MySQL	DIY or Managed Database	Component
Backups	Opt-in	Component

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 more expensive than a Droplet?

A little

A little - The smallest Droplet costs $4 a month for 512 MiB of RAM, and the web stack, MySQL and backups are extra work or extra cost. A fortrabbit app with MySQL starts at about €5 a month, patched and backed up.

Who patches PHP on fortrabbit?

We do

We do - DigitalOcean leaves the operating system and PHP on a Droplet to the customer. On fortrabbit, the PHP runtime and the infrastructure are ours to patch.

Can root software run on fortrabbit?

No - fortrabbit has no root shell. A project that needs Redis, Elasticsearch or a custom daemon on the same box stays on a Droplet.

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