Name: Deploy House Planner 2D 3D Home Design
Availability: InStock
Author: onepush

Deploy and Host self hosted House Planner (2D and 3D Home Design) on Railway

This template deploys House Planner, an open-source house planner, as one self-hosted Railway service with a 2D plan editor, 3D preview, map overlay, utility layers and a bill of materials.

About Hosting House Planner open-source software on Railway (self hosted House Planner template)

On Railway, the plan, saved versions, named snapshots and config file live on a volume mounted at /var/lib/house-planner, so the data stays with your deployment.

Why Deploy House Planner, the open-source house planner on Railway (Railway Free Trial)

Sweet Home 3D is a capable desktop tool, but its plans stay on one machine with no shared browser access.

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 House Planner 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.

Railway vs Other Hosting Providers and VPS for House Planner self hosting

House Planner runs as one PHP and Apache container with JSON file storage, so the host choice depends on how much server work you want.

Provider	What You Get with Railway	What You Get with the Other Provider
DigitalOcean	A one-click template that builds the container and attaches the volume.	A Droplet where you install Docker, manage the volume and set up HTTPS yourself.
AWS	The same template, with no networking or IAM setup to get running.	Wide control over EC2 and storage, but more services to wire together first.
Hetzner	Managed deploys with volume and variables handled.	Low-cost servers where you handle the OS, Docker, backups and reverse proxy.

Railway trades some low-level control for a faster first deploy.

Common Use Cases for hosted House Planner

True-scale floor planning: Draw walls, doors and windows in millimetres on a 2D plan and keep one private copy on your Railway URL, viewable read-only on a phone.
Browser 3D previews: Switch between the Model and Materials looks and use low-wall modes to check room flow, without installing desktop CAD.
Satellite overlays: Place the plan over satellite imagery using the origin coordinates and rotation, and load a site boundary from GeoJSON to see how the footprint sits on your plot.
Utility layout reference checks: Review the sewer, electrical, water and underfloor heating layers as reference drawings, using calculated lengths as a starting point for talks with licensed installers.
Materials estimates from your own price catalog: Replace the sample catalog with local supplier prices to turn plan quantities into a bill of materials you can export to CSV.

Dependencies for House Planner Docker hosted on Railway

This template runs as one service that serves the React editor and PHP API from a single Apache container.

Deployment Dependencies for Managed House Planner Service (one React/PHP/Apache container with file-based JSON storage, no database; /var/lib/house-planner volume)

The service uses the image ghcr.io/onepush-dev/house-planner:5c91280-r1 and listens on port 8080. HOUSE_PASSWORD is applied only on first boot. HOUSE_SETUP_KEY is a generated installer guard that protects the setup endpoint from being run by strangers.

Implementation Details for House Planner (onepush-dev/house-planner:5c91280-r1 preserves upstream Dockerfile build and adds single prefork Apache MPM fix)

The image is built from the unmodified upstream Dockerfile at commit 5c91280, with a small wrapper that keeps only the mpm_prefork Apache module loaded.

How does House Planner compare against other tools

House Planner vs Sweet Home 3D (Sweet Home 3D Alternative)

Where it runs: House Planner is a browser app you host yourself, so the same plan opens from any device. Sweet Home 3D is desktop-only.
Utility layers: House Planner includes sewer, electrical, water and underfloor-heating layers with calculations. Sweet Home 3D focuses on furniture and rooms.
Where Sweet Home 3D wins: It is a mature desktop tool with a large furniture library and community.

House Planner vs SketchUp (SketchUp Alternative)

Scope: House Planner works from a true-scale millimetre floor plan and generates a bill of materials. SketchUp is a general 3D modeller.
Hosting: House Planner keeps plans as JSON on your server behind one password. SketchUp files live on your disk or its cloud.
Where SketchUp wins: It offers far more freeform modelling and a large extension ecosystem.

House Planner vs Floorplanner (Floorplanner Alternative)

Ownership: House Planner is MIT-licensed and self-hosted. Floorplanner is hosted.
Estimates: House Planner prices quantities from a replaceable JSON catalog. Floorplanner has no comparable priced bill of materials.
Where Floorplanner wins: It needs no server setup and works immediately in a browser.

House Planner with PHP hosting vs Railway (PHP Hosting Alternative)

Setup: Shared PHP hosting needs PHP 8.1+, Apache or LiteSpeed with mod_rewrite, and a file upload. Railway deploys the container with its volume.
Storage: Both options use file-based JSON storage with no database.
Where PHP hosting wins: A shared plan you already own may be enough if you are comfortable managing files yourself.

House Planner output is not licensed engineering advice or construction-ready approval. Calculations are reference checks, and construction requires review by a licensed professional. The example catalog prices become stale, so replace them with your own.

How to use House Planner on Railway?

Open the house-planner service on Railway, go to the Variables tab, and copy the value of HOUSE_PASSWORD. It was generated for you at deploy time and is applied only on first boot.
Open your Railway public URL and log in with that password. Opening the root URL alone does not prove you are logged in, because / is only a health check.
Create or edit a plan in the 2D editor, then switch to the 3D view and check the walls and openings from a few cameras before you trust the layout.
Replace the example prices in the material catalog with your own supplier prices, since the bundled catalog is only a sample and will go stale.
Use named snapshots before large changes so you can restore an earlier plan. Every save also creates a numbered version.

Access checks from the deployment handoff: /api/setup.php returns 403 and the plan API returns 401 without a login. The health check on / only confirms the service is up and does not prove you are logged in.

GET /api/setup.php   -> 403 Forbidden
GET /api/plan.php    -> 401 Unauthorized (no session)

How to self host House Planner on other VPS Services (House Planner self hosting guide)

Clone the Repository

Clone the upstream project and move into its folder.

git clone https://github.com/egmalt/house-planner.git
cd house-planner

Install Dependencies

Docker with the Compose plugin is enough for the container route, since the image build pulls in everything else. The server needs no database and no Node.js.

npm ci
npm run build

Run the build on your own machine. It produces a static dist folder.

Configure Environment Variables

Set HOUSE_PASSWORD before the first start, because it is applied only to empty storage. HOUSE_PORT changes the published port, which defaults to 8080.

HOUSE_PASSWORD='your-long-password' HOUSE_PORT=8080 docker compose up -d --build

Keep plan data in the house-data volume so it survives rebuilds. If you skip the variable, open /api/setup.php once and set the password in the wizard. The setup endpoint should stay private, since the upstream wizard is intended for first-time setup only.

Start the House Planner Application

Start the stack with Compose, then open the editor on port 8080. Put HTTPS in front of the app with a reverse proxy or your host's certificate.

Official Pricing of House Planner (House Planner pricing)

House Planner is MIT-licensed open-source software, so you can self-host it for free. No official paid plan is listed for the project.

House Planner hosted vs self hosted comparison (Pricing, features, costs, and more)

The public demo at app.homedesignsai.pro is a shared, loginless copy that resets hourly, so it suits trying the editor only.

Monthly cost of self hosting House Planner on Railway

Railway bills by usage, so cost depends on RAM, CPU, volume size and other services.

System Requirements for Hosting House Planner on a VPS

House Planner needs PHP 8.1 or newer with the curl extension, plus Apache or LiteSpeed with mod_rewrite, or Docker.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What login do I use after deploying?

Open the service's Variables tab, copy the generated HOUSE_PASSWORD value, and enter it on your Railway URL to log in.

What if I change HOUSE_PASSWORD later?

HOUSE_PASSWORD is applied on first boot only, so editing it later does nothing. Follow the upstream password-reset guide in the House Planner documentation instead.

Does House Planner need a database?

No.

Can I edit plans from my phone?

Phones get a read-only view. Make changes from a desktop browser, then check the result on your phone.

Are the material prices real?

The prices in the bundled catalog are sample values from one region and date, and they go stale quickly. Replace them with your own supplier prices.

Does this replace an engineer?

No. Lengths, loads and code checks are reference only. Construction requires review by a licensed professional engineer or designer.