Deploy and Host Activepieces on Railway

Activepieces is an open-source no-code automation platform — a self-hosted Zapier or Make alternative. You build flows in a visual editor, connect hundreds of pieces (HTTP, Gmail, Slack, Postgres, OpenAI and more), and run them on triggers, schedules or webhooks. This template deploys it with the administrator account already created, because on a stock deploy the first stranger who opens the URL becomes the platform owner.

About Hosting Activepieces

This template runs Activepieces 0.82.0 as three services: the application, PostgreSQL for flows, runs and users, and Redis for the job queue. Both datastores keep a persistent volume, and Redis runs with a password and an append-only file. The administrator is seeded on an internal port that Railway's edge does not route, and only once that account exists is the public port opened — so the sign-up window a stock deploy leaves open never exists here. The credential is re-applied on every boot, so a redeploy is a working password reset. The container refuses to start on an empty or too-short admin password, and every setting a deployer should not have to know — the frontend URL, the Postgres connection, the execution mode — is derived at boot or baked into the image, so the deploy form asks for nothing.

Why Deploy Activepieces 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 Activepieces 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.

Nobody else can claim your instance — on a stock deploy POST /api/v1/authentication/sign-up creates a platform ADMIN for whoever calls it first, even with sign-ups disabled, and the deployer's own later attempt is refused with INVITATION_ONLY_SIGN_UP. There is no password-reset route in the community edition, so that loss is permanent. Here the account is seeded before the URL ever answers, and an anonymous sign-up is refused.
Password reset by redeploy — the credential is re-applied from the template variable on every boot, which is the only recovery path a deployment with no SMTP account has.
Your automations survive a restart — Postgres and Redis both run on volumes, with Redis password-protected and persisting its append-only file.
Pinned and prebuilt — a fixed upstream version on an app that migrates its schema forward on boot, pulled as an image rather than rebuilt on your build minutes.

Common Use Cases

Internal automations — move data between your CRM, spreadsheets, database and chat without writing glue services.
Webhook plumbing — receive a webhook, transform the payload, and fan it out to the systems that need it.
AI workflows — chain an LLM call into approvals, storage and notifications on a schedule or a trigger.

Dependencies for Activepieces Hosting

PostgreSQL (included in this template) for flows, runs, users and files.
Redis (included in this template) for the worker queue.

Deployment Dependencies

Activepieces — the upstream project (MIT / EE-licensed pieces)
bon5co/activepieces-railway — the Railway wrapper image this template deploys

Implementation Details

Sign in at your deployment's URL with AP_ADMIN_EMAIL and the generated AP_ADMIN_PASSWORD from the service variables. To rotate the password, change AP_ADMIN_PASSWORD and redeploy; the new value is applied during boot.

Keep AP_ENCRYPTION_KEY and AP_JWT_SECRET stable — changing the first makes stored connection credentials undecryptable, and changing the second invalidates every session.