How to Set Up CI/CD for a Laravel App in Under an Hour

Setting up CI/CD sounds intimidating, but for a standard Laravel app, a working pipeline can be running in well under an hour with the right approach.

Step 1: Automate your test suite on push

Configure your CI provider to run your PHPUnit or Pest test suite automatically on every push and pull request. This catches obvious regressions before they ever reach a reviewer, let alone production.

Step 2: Add linting and static analysis

Running PHP CodeSniffer or Laravel Pint alongside PHPStan in the same pipeline catches style and type issues automatically, keeping code review focused on logic rather than formatting debates.

Step 3: Automate the deployment step

Once tests pass on your main branch, trigger deployment automatically — running migrations, clearing and rebuilding caches, and restarting queue workers as part of a single, repeatable deploy script rather than manual steps.

Step 4: Add a health check post-deploy

A simple automated check hitting a health endpoint after deployment confirms the app actually started successfully, catching deployment failures immediately instead of discovering them from user reports.

The result

Every push to main now results in tested, linted code automatically deployed with verification, removing manual deployment steps that were previously a source of human error.