Routes defined in api.php have api prefix defined automatically

Change this

Route::get('/api/mail/send', 'MailController@index');

to this

Route::get('/mail/send', 'MailController@index');

I considered that as well but I still get the 404 when I do this: http://api.mywebsite.com/api/api/mail/send

Even when I created a new route: Route::get('/mailer', 'MailController@index'); and did this I got a 404: http://api.mywebsite.com/mailer

So not sure what I am doing wrong?

If you have your nginx configured correctly for api subdomain (I am not very experienced in nginx) you need to access:

http://api.mywebsite.com/api/mailer

if you have this route inside api.php

Route::get('/mailer', 'MailController@index');

Hmm yeah thats exactly what I have and tried, so I feel it must me my nginx setup which I also do not have experience (first time deploying my laravel api to production). Maybe someone here hass some experience

ah found the problem maybe: root /mywebsite/api/public; should have been root /root/mywebsite/api/public;

But when I do this I new get a 403?

laravel lives in /public whether you use api or not , try mywebsite/public