In order to analyze the effect of strain on the magnetic properties of narrow-band manganites, temperatureand field-dependent susceptibilities of about 8.5-nm-thick epitaxial Pr 0.7 Ca 0.3 MnO 3 films, respectively, grown on ͑001͒ and ͑110͒ SrTiO 3 substrates, have been compared. For ultrathin samples grown on ͑001͒ SrTiO 3 , a bulklike cluster-glass magnetic behavior is found, indicative of the possible coexistence of antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic phases. On the contrary, ultrathin films grown on ͑110͒ substrates show a robust ferromagnetism with a strong spontaneous magnetization of about 3.4 B / Mn atom along the easy axis. On the base of high-resolution reciprocal space mapping analyses performed by x-ray diffraction, the different behaviors are discussed in terms of the crystallographic constraints imposed by the epitaxy of Pr 0.7 Ca 0.3 MnO 3 on SrTiO 3 . We suggest that for growth on ͑110͒ SrTiO 3 , the tensile strain on the film c axis, lying within the substrate plane, favors the ferromagnetic phase, possibly by allowing a mixed occupancy and hybridization of both in-plane and out-of-plane e g orbitals. Our data allow to shed some physics of inhomogeneous states in manganites and on the nature of their ferromagnetic insulating state.