DigitalOcean Functions
Created
Reviewedbyfl
🌊
Native PHP functions on the ocean.
DigitalOcean Functions runs PHP natively as a function-as-a-service. fortrabbit is an alternative when the project is a full application, not a handful of handlers.
About DigitalOcean Functions
DigitalOcean Functions is a function-as-a-service platform built on Apache OpenWhisk. It has the thing most serverless platforms lack for PHP: a native runtime, sitting next to Node, Python, and Go, with Composer support. So a PHP handler runs with no Bref-style layer bolted onto Lambda.
It scales to zero and bills per use. Good for small event handlers, webhooks, an API endpoint or two. The function rules still bite, though. Handlers are stateless and short-lived, so anything that has to outlive a call lives in a managed database or storage service, never on local disk.
Why fortrabbit
DigitalOcean Functions fits isolated bits of logic that fire now and then. A full PHP site is not that. A framework front controller, a filesystem that stays put, background workers, none of it maps cleanly onto stateless functions.
fortrabbit hosts the whole thing. Git-push deploys, a MySQL component, persistent storage for uploads and generated files, always-on execution. For a Laravel, Symfony, or Craft CMS project, that is the model the framework already assumes.