Deploying Laravel on AWS Elastic Beanstalk

When it comes to hosting Laravel applications, AWS Elastic Beanstalk stands out as a reliable, scalable, and fully managed deployment service. It eliminates the complexity of infrastructure management, allowing developers to focus on building their applications instead of worrying about servers.

In this blog, you’ll learn how to deploy a Laravel application on AWS Elastic Beanstalk, understand best practices, and discover how to optimize it for performance and cost efficiency.

Why Choose AWS Elastic Beanstalk for Laravel Deployment

Deploying Laravel on Elastic Beanstalk offers a blend of flexibility and automation. It handles provisioning, load balancing, scaling, and monitoring automatically, allowing you to deploy complex applications without deep infrastructure expertise.

Key Benefits

• Ease of deployment: Deploy your Laravel app using a simple zip file or through the AWS CLI.

• Scalability: Automatically adjusts resources based on your application’s demand.

• Built-in load balancing: Ensures even traffic distribution across multiple servers.

• Integration with AWS services: Works seamlessly with RDS, S3, CloudFront, and more.

• Cost efficiency: You only pay for the resources you use.

For developers who want enterprise-level hosting without managing servers, Elastic Beanstalk is one of the best choices.

Prerequisites

Before getting started, make sure you have the following:

• An AWS account

• Composer and PHP 8.2+ installed locally

• The AWS CLI configured with your credentials

• A working Laravel project ready for deployment

Step 1: Preparing Your Laravel Application

Before deployment, your Laravel project must be production-ready.

a. Environment Configuration

Update your .env file with production values. You’ll later set environment variables directly in Elastic Beanstalk for better security.

b. Application Optimization

Run Laravel’s built-in optimization commands to enhance performance:

php artisan config:cache  
php artisan route:cache  
php artisan view:cache  

These commands compile configuration and route files, reducing load time in production.

c. File Permissions

Ensure that the storage and bootstrap/cache directories are writable. This is essential for Laravel to function correctly on AWS.

Step 2: Creating an AWS Elastic Beanstalk Environment

Once your application is ready, it’s time to set up an environment in AWS.

a. Create an Application

1. Log in to your AWS Management Console.

2. Navigate to Elastic Beanstalk.

3. Click Create Application.

4. Give it a name (e.g., laravel-app).

b. Choose a Platform

Select PHP as your platform. Elastic Beanstalk will automatically detect and configure the appropriate runtime environment.

c. Configure Environment

Elastic Beanstalk allows you to choose between Web Server Environment (for Laravel apps) and Worker Environment (for background jobs).
Choose Web Server Environment for your primary app deployment.

You can either launch a new EC2 instance or use existing resources.

Step 3: Packaging Your Laravel Application

Elastic Beanstalk requires a deployable ZIP package of your Laravel project.

Exclude unnecessary files such as:

• node_modules

• .git folder

• tests directory (optional)

Create a zip of your application containing all necessary files and folders, ensuring the index.php inside the public folder is accessible as the entry point.

Step 4: Configuring the Document Root

By default, Elastic Beanstalk expects the application’s root directory to contain the main index.php file. However, Laravel’s entry point is located inside the public directory.

To fix this, create a file named .ebextensions/laravel.config in your project root with the following configuration:

option_settings:
  aws:elasticbeanstalk:container:php:phpini:
    document_root: /public

This ensures Elastic Beanstalk serves your Laravel application from the correct folder.

Step 5: Deploying Your Application

There are two main ways to deploy your Laravel app: via the AWS Management Console or the AWS CLI.

a. Deploy Using AWS Console

1. Go to your Elastic Beanstalk Application Dashboard.

2. Click Upload and Deploy.

3. Choose your zip file and click Deploy.

Elastic Beanstalk will automatically provision EC2 instances, load balancers, and storage based on your configuration.

b. Deploy Using AWS CLI

If you prefer command-line deployment, navigate to your project folder and run:

eb init
eb create laravel-env
eb deploy

This method is faster for future updates and integrates well with CI/CD pipelines.

Step 6: Setting Environment Variables

Instead of hardcoding credentials in your .env file, set them securely in Elastic Beanstalk.

1. Open your Elastic Beanstalk Environment Dashboard.

2. Go to Configuration → Software.

3. Add environment variables like:

   • APP_ENV=production

   • APP_KEY=your-app-key

   • DB_HOST=your-database-endpoint

   • DB_DATABASE=your-database-name

   • DB_USERNAME=your-username

   • DB_PASSWORD=your-password

This keeps your credentials safe and allows easy configuration changes.

Step 7: Connecting to a Database (RDS Integration)

AWS RDS (Relational Database Service) is ideal for hosting Laravel’s MySQL or PostgreSQL databases.

a. Create an RDS Instance

1. Navigate to RDS in AWS Console.

2. Create a new database (MySQL or PostgreSQL).

3. Choose the same region as your Elastic Beanstalk app.

4. Configure username, password, and database name.

b. Link RDS to Your Application

Update your Elastic Beanstalk environment variables with RDS credentials. Laravel will automatically connect to the RDS database via the .env values.

Step 8: Managing Storage and File Uploads

Laravel applications often require file uploads (e.g., images, PDFs). Instead of storing them locally on EC2, use Amazon S3.

a. Configure S3 Disk

In your config/filesystems.php, set the default disk to S3 and provide credentials in your environment variables.

This ensures all uploads go directly to S3, improving scalability and reliability.

Step 9: Enabling HTTPS with AWS Certificate Manager

Security is a priority in production environments. To enable HTTPS:

1. Go to AWS Certificate Manager (ACM).

2. Request a new SSL certificate for your domain.

3. Attach the certificate to your Elastic Beanstalk load balancer.

Now your Laravel application will be accessible securely over HTTPS.

Step 10: Monitoring and Scaling

Elastic Beanstalk includes built-in monitoring and scaling tools.

a. Monitoring

You can view metrics like CPU usage, latency, and request counts directly from the AWS console.

b. Auto Scaling

Elastic Beanstalk automatically scales your application based on traffic. You can configure minimum and maximum instance counts to control cost and performance.

Step 11: Managing Logs and Errors

Logs are essential for debugging. Elastic Beanstalk provides access to application and server logs directly from the console.

You can also integrate CloudWatch Logs for advanced monitoring and automated alerts.

Best Practices for Laravel on Elastic Beanstalk

• Use queues: Offload heavy background jobs to SQS workers.

• Cache aggressively: Utilize Redis or Memcached for caching sessions and queries.

• Optimize database queries: Avoid N+1 problems using Eloquent’s eager loading.

• Regular backups: Schedule automated RDS backups.

• Use environment variables: Never store credentials directly in your code.

Common Deployment Issues and Fixes

1. White Screen or 500 Error

Usually caused by incorrect document root or missing .env configuration. Double-check the document_root setting and ensure your .env is correctly loaded.

2. Storage Permission Denied

Set proper permissions for storage and bootstrap/cache directories before zipping your project.

3. Missing PHP Extensions

Elastic Beanstalk’s default PHP platform includes common extensions, but if you need more, you can install them using .ebextensions.

Conclusion

Deploying Laravel on AWS Elastic Beanstalk offers an elegant mix of automation, scalability, and reliability. You can go from a local Laravel project to a globally accessible, production-ready application in a matter of minutes — without managing complex infrastructure.

By following these steps and best practices, your Laravel app will be optimized, secure, and ready to scale as your user base grows.

If you’re looking for a deployment solution that balances simplicity with power, AWS Elastic Beanstalk is the perfect fit for modern Laravel applications.