CakePHP
Hosting
Install CakePHP in one click on our fast, reliable UK web hosting. Fully managed with free SSL, daily backups, and dedicated expert support.
What is CakePHP?
CakePHP is a free, open-source PHP framework, MIT-licensed and first released in 2005, aimed at developers building web applications, REST APIs, and admin tools. It follows the Model-View-Controller pattern and a convention-over-configuration philosophy that reduces boilerplate compared with hand-rolled PHP.
The framework ships with an ORM, a request-response stack, validation, form helpers, authentication and authorization plugins, console tooling via the bake command, and built-in protection against SQL injection, XSS, and CSRF. Modern releases (CakePHP 5.x as of 2024) require PHP 8.1 or higher, support PSR standards, and integrate with Composer for dependency management.
CakePHP runs on a standard LAMP or LEMP stack with PHP, a database (MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, or SQLite), and Composer. The framework is widely used for internal business applications, B2B platforms, and custom tools where developers want structure without the runtime overhead of a heavier framework.
365i’s editorial review of CakePHP
CakePHP sits in a slightly awkward place in 2026. Laravel has captured the lion's share of new PHP developer mindshare, Symfony owns the enterprise end, and CakePHP is the framework I associate with developers who started building production PHP apps in the 2010s, settled on Cake, and have never had a reason to switch. That is a perfectly reasonable position to be in, and it is most of the CakePHP customers we host.
I am not going to pretend Cake is the framework I would pick for a brand-new project today. Laravel's documentation, package community, and hiring pool are all stronger. But for the people who already have a substantial CakePHP codebase, the question is not "which framework should I start with" but "where do I host the app I already have", and the honest answer for most UK-based studios and small product teams is: somewhere with proper PHP version control, Composer, SSH, cron, and a host who will not throw their hands up when you mention bake commands or migrations. That is what we do.
"CakePHP is the framework I host for studios who already know they are using it. I would not lobby a green-field project away from Laravel, but if you have a Cake codebase that earns its keep, we are a sensible place to put it."
Mark McNeece, Founder, 365i Hosting
Where Cake works well in our environment: PHP ' . PHP_VERSION_LATEST . ' on every plan means CakePHP 5.x runs without surprises. Composer is installed system-wide, SSH is enabled by default with key auth, and cron is available for queue workers, cache warming, and scheduled bake tasks. We have a couple of customers running CakePHP B2B portals on our standard web hosting plan with a few hundred logged-in users at peak, and they have not had to think about hosting in years.
Where you might hit limits: if your app uses heavy queue workers (real-time notifications, image processing, scheduled email blasts at scale), shared hosting will start to feel constrained because the queue worker competes with HTTP requests for PHP processes. That is the cue to step up to a small managed cloud server where you get dedicated CPU and a separate worker process. For most CakePHP business applications, that point arrives later than developers expect.
If you have a working CakePHP codebase, particularly one upgraded to 4.x or 5.x in the last couple of years, our web hosting plan is a sensible home for it. If you are evaluating frameworks for a new project, I would not steer you away from Cake, but I would also not steer you away from Laravel, and the latter has a deeper hiring pool in 2026.
Why Host CakePHP with 365i?
Our web hosting is built for PHP applications like CakePHP. Every plan includes everything you need to launch and grow.
One-Click Installation
Install CakePHP with a single click from your control panel. No manual configuration, no FTP uploads, no database setup.
Free SSL Certificate
Every site gets a free SSL certificate, automatically configured and renewed. Keep your CakePHP installation secure from day one.
99.9%+ Uptime Track Record
Enterprise-grade data centres in the UK, US & Asia with redundant power, cooling, and network connectivity. Shared hosting runs on autoscaling cloud infrastructure with a 99.9%+ historical uptime record; Managed Cloud Servers target 99.99% uptime; our VPS products carry a contractual 99.99% network availability SLA with service credits.
Daily Backups
Automatic daily backups with easy one-click restore. Your CakePHP data is always safe and recoverable.
7-Day Expert Support
UK-based hosting specialists available 7 days a week including evenings, weekends, and bank holidays. Real people, real help.
SSD Storage
All plans run on fast SSD storage for snappy page loads and responsive admin panels. CakePHP performs at its best.
Where CakePHP Fits
Best for
PHP studios and small product teams maintaining existing CakePHP 4.x or 5.x applications, particularly business apps, B2B portals, and internal admin tools with up to a few hundred concurrent users. Strong fit when you want SSH, Composer, PHP 8.5, and cron on a single web hosting plan rather than managing a VPS. Runs comfortably on our standard plan; step up to a small managed cloud server when queue workers start competing with HTTP traffic.
Watch for
CakePHP has lost developer mindshare to Laravel since 2018, so hiring contractors familiar with the framework is harder than it used to be, particularly for the older 3.x and 4.x branches. The package community is smaller than Laravel's, so check that any niche integration you need has an actively maintained Cake plugin. Heavy queue-worker workloads outgrow shared hosting earlier than typical request-response apps, which is a managed cloud server conversation rather than a Cake limitation.
Web Hosting for CakePHP
Get CakePHP up and running in minutes with our fast, reliable web hosting. Every plan includes one-click installation, free SSL, UK, US & Asia data centres, and dedicated expert support.
- 1 website
- 10 GB SSD storage
- Free SSL certificate
- 80+ 1-click installs
- Unlimited LVE resources
- Autoscaling cloud platform
- UK, US & Asia data centres
- 5 websites
- Unlimited SSD storage
- Free SSL certificate
- 80+ 1-click installs
- CDN included
- Unlimited LVE resources
- Autoscaling cloud platform
- UK, US & Asia data centres
- 10 websites
- Unlimited SSD storage
- Free SSL certificate
- 80+ 1-click installs
- CDN included
- Timeline Backup/Restore
- Unlimited LVE resources
- Autoscaling cloud platform
- UK, US & Asia data centres
All prices exclude VAT. No contract, cancel any time.
Need More Power for CakePHP?
For high-traffic sites, large catalogues, or mission-critical deployments, our fully managed cloud servers give CakePHP dedicated resources and enterprise-grade performance.
- Dedicated CPU, RAM & SSD storage
- 99.99% uptime
- Fully managed by our team
- Choose 365i, AWS, or Google Cloud
Servers
Servers
Servers
A CakePHP case from our books
A small West Yorkshire design and development studio runs a custom CakePHP 5.x application for one of their long-standing B2B clients (a regional plumbing-supplies merchant with around 1,400 trade accounts). The app handles trade pricing, account-specific catalogues, and integrates with the merchant's Sage backend nightly via cron. They came to us in late 2025 after their previous host moved them to a "PHP-friendly" plan that turned out to disable SSH and pin PHP at 7.4, breaking their CakePHP 5 deployment.
We migrated them to our standard web hosting plan at £5.99 a month, restored SSH and Composer access, set PHP to 8.3, and put their nightly Sage sync cron back on a one-minute schedule. The studio runs deployments via git pull plus composer install over SSH, exactly as they had been before the previous host's policy change. Average page response time dropped from around 480 ms to around 190 ms, and the nightly sync now finishes in 11 minutes against the old 28.
What we would tell anyone in the same spot: when a host advertises "PHP support" but disables SSH, you are not on PHP hosting in any useful sense. CakePHP, Laravel, and Symfony all need a console.
Anonymised at the client's request. Industry, scale, and timeline preserved.
What we look for in php frameworks hosting
Hosting a PHP framework well is mostly about the things people forget to check until something breaks: SSH access, Composer, cron, environment variable handling, and a sane document-root setup that points at the framework's public/ subdirectory rather than the project root. We give all of that on every plan with PHP 8.5, modern extensions, and a real shell, so framework deployments behave the way framework documentation expects.
CakePHP Hosting FAQ
Common questions we hear from people running CakePHP on our hosting.
CakePHP 5.x needs PHP 8.1 or higher with the mbstring, intl, and simplexml extensions, plus a PDO driver for your database (mysql, pgsql, or sqlite). Composer is needed to pull dependencies. We host every plan on PHP 8.5 by default with all of those extensions enabled and Composer available via SSH, so you can clone a repo, run composer install, and have a CakePHP app running in a few minutes.
You have two routes. For quick deployments, upload your project via SFTP, then SSH in and run composer install --no-dev. For repeatable workflows, we support Git deployment: push to your repo, pull on the server via SSH, and run composer install plus your migration command (bin/cake migrations migrate). Point the document root at the /webroot subdirectory, set the APP_NAME and database credentials in config/.env, and the application is live.
Yes, on every web hosting plan. SSH access is enabled by default with a key-based login, and Composer is installed system-wide. You can run composer install, composer update, bake commands, migrations, and any other CLI tooling your project needs. We also support cron jobs for scheduled tasks like queue workers and cache warming, which most production CakePHP apps end up using.
Our support covers the hosting platform: PHP version, extensions, Composer, SSH, cron, database, SSL, and deployment workflows. For CakePHP-specific work like writing controllers, debugging plugin conflicts, or migrating between major versions, we will help you understand log output and we will fix anything genuinely platform-side, but we do not act as your application developer. Most of the issues developers raise with us are environment or configuration questions, and those we resolve directly.
Yes, and we will do it for you free of charge on any of our hosting plans. We move the application files, the database, environment configuration, and any cron jobs. Most CakePHP migrations finish within a working day, and we test the application on a staging URL with a copy of the live database before pointing the domain across. If your previous host used unusual deployment workflows (Capistrano, Deployer, Forge), we adapt to whatever you currently use.
From a hosting perspective they are broadly similar: PHP 8.x, Composer, a database, cron, and SSH. CakePHP tends to be slightly lighter at runtime than Laravel for equivalent applications and slightly heavier than Symfony depending on what bundles are loaded. All three run well on our standard web hosting plan for typical business workloads. For developers, the choice is mostly about ergonomics and team familiarity rather than hosting cost or performance.
Ready to Host CakePHP?
Get started with CakePHP on our fast UK web hosting. One-click installation, free SSL, and dedicated expert support included.