Deploy and Host Ackee - Complete Setup on Railway

Ackee - Complete Setup is a self-hosted analytics stack for tracking website traffic without relying on third-party analytics platforms. It includes Ackee for privacy-friendly website analytics, MongoDB for persistent analytics storage, and Mongo Express for simple database inspection and administration.

About Hosting Ackee - Complete Setup

This template deploys a complete Ackee analytics environment with MongoDB and Mongo Express. Ackee handles the web dashboard and tracking script, MongoDB stores analytics data persistently using Railway volume storage, and Mongo Express provides a lightweight web interface for inspecting the MongoDB database when needed.

After deployment, you can log in to Ackee, create a domain, copy the tracking script, and add it to your website. Once installed, Ackee starts collecting page views, referrers, device information, browser information, operating system data, language, screen size, and custom events depending on your tracking setup.

Common Use Cases

Self-host website analytics for blogs, landing pages, SaaS apps, documentation sites, and portfolio websites
Track page views and basic visitor statistics without using Google Analytics
Monitor multiple websites from one analytics dashboard
Store analytics data in your own MongoDB database
Inspect or troubleshoot stored analytics records using Mongo Express
Track custom events such as button clicks, form submissions, signup actions, and outbound link clicks

Dependencies for Ackee - Complete Setup Hosting

Ackee
MongoDB
Mongo Express
Railway volume storage for persistent MongoDB data

Deployment Dependencies

Useful references:

Implementation Details

This template is designed as a complete analytics stack:

Ackee

Ackee is the analytics application. It provides the dashboard, domain management, tracking script, and analytics interface. Use it to create a new domain for your website and copy the generated tracking script into your site.

Typical flow:

Open the deployed Ackee service URL.
Log in to the Ackee dashboard.
Create a new domain for your website.
Copy the generated tracking script.
Paste the script into your website before the closing `` tag or inside your frontend layout.
Visit your website and check the Ackee dashboard for incoming analytics data.

Example tracking snippet structure:

Use the actual script generated from your Ackee dashboard.

MongoDB

MongoDB is used as the storage layer for Ackee. Analytics records, domains, views, events, and related data are stored in MongoDB.

This template uses persistent storage through Railway volume storage, so MongoDB data is not lost when the service restarts or redeploys. This is important because analytics data must survive container rebuilds, service updates, and normal restart cycles.

Mongo Express

Mongo Express is included as an optional database administration interface. It lets you inspect MongoDB collections from a browser.

Use Mongo Express for:

Checking whether Ackee data is being written correctly
Inspecting collections created by Ackee
Debugging storage or connection issues
Reviewing database structure during development or testing

Mongo Express should be treated as an admin tool, not as the primary analytics dashboard. For normal analytics usage, use the Ackee dashboard.

How to Use Ackee After Deployment

After the template is deployed:

Open the Ackee public URL.
Log in using the configured Ackee credentials.
Create a new domain in the Ackee dashboard.
Copy the tracking script generated by Ackee.
Add the tracking script to your website.
Deploy or refresh your website.
Open your website in a browser.
Return to Ackee and confirm that visits are being recorded.

For static websites, place the script in the main HTML layout.

For React, Next.js, Vue, Nuxt, Astro, or similar frameworks, place the script in the global layout, app shell, or document template so it loads across your pages.

Why Use Mongo Express with Ackee?

Ackee already provides the analytics dashboard, but Mongo Express gives you direct visibility into the database layer.

This is useful when you want to confirm that:

MongoDB is storing data persistently
Ackee is writing analytics records correctly
Collections are created successfully
Data still exists after restart or redeploy
The database connection is working as expected

In short: Ackee is for analytics. Mongo Express is for database visibility.

Why Deploy Ackee - Complete Setup on Railway?

Railway is a singular platform to deploy your infrastructure stack. Railway will host your infrastructure so you don't have to deal with configuration, while allowing you to vertically and horizontally scale it.

By deploying Ackee - Complete Setup on Railway, you are one step closer to supporting a complete full-stack application with minimal burden. Host your servers, databases, AI agents, and more on Railway.