Deploy Documenso v2 Document Signing

Deploy and Host Documenso with Railway

Documenso is an open-source document signing platform: upload a PDF or Word file, place fields, send it to signers, and receive a digitally sealed PDF with a full audit trail. This community template runs Documenso v2 on Railway with Postgres, a Redis job queue, DOCX conversion and its own signing certificate.

About Hosting Documenso

Documenso is a single Node.js web app that needs Postgres, a background job system for e-mails, sealing and webhooks, file storage for documents, and an X.509 certificate to seal completed PDFs. The certificate is the step most self-hosters get stuck on. This template creates a unique self-signed certificate on a volume at first boot, runs migrations as a pre-deploy step, uses BullMQ on Redis for jobs, stores documents in a Railway Bucket, adds Gotenberg so .docx uploads work, and creates your first admin account so you can sign in before any e-mail provider is set up.

Common Use Cases

• Sending contracts, NDAs and offer letters for signature without per-envelope fees
• Internal approvals and policy acknowledgements with a tamper-evident audit log
• Embedding signing flows into your own product through Documenso's API and webhooks
• Keeping signed documents and signer data in infrastructure you control

Dependencies for Documenso Hosting

• Documenso (documenso/documenso:v2.20.0 plus a thin Railway layer)
• PostgreSQL (Railway Postgres 18)
• Redis (BullMQ job queue)
• Gotenberg 8 with LibreOffice (DOCX to PDF)
• S3-compatible storage (Railway Bucket)
• Optional: a Resend account (or SMTP on Railway Pro) for e-mails

Deployment Dependencies

• Documenso self-hosting docs: https://docs.documenso.com/docs/self-hosting
• Signing certificate guide: https://docs.documenso.com/docs/self-hosting/configuration/signing-certificate
• Documenso source and releases: https://github.com/documenso/documenso
• Gotenberg: https://gotenberg.dev
• Resend (e-mail API): https://resend.com
• Railway Buckets: https://docs.railway.com/storage-buckets

Implementation Details

First login: enter your e-mail in DOCUMENSO_ADMIN_EMAIL when deploying. After the first boot, sign in at https://{your-domain} with that address and the generated DOCUMENSO_ADMIN_PASSWORD from the Documenso service variables, then change the password in your profile. The account is verified and has admin rights.

E-mail: set NEXT_PRIVATE_RESEND_API_KEY and NEXT_PRIVATE_SMTP_FROM_ADDRESS (an address on a domain verified in Resend) and redeploy; the template switches to Resend automatically. Resend is an HTTP API and works on every Railway plan; SMTP works only on Railway Pro. Without e-mail you can still send by copying each recipient's signing link.

Certificate: the self-signed certificate is created once and kept on the volume, protected by NEXT_PRIVATE_SIGNING_PASSPHRASE. Do not change the passphrase afterwards. To use a CA-issued certificate, provide it as a base64 .p12 in NEXT_PRIVATE_SIGNING_LOCAL_FILE_CONTENTS with its passphrase.

Scaling: scale the Documenso service vertically; Redis-backed jobs keep work durable across restarts. Gotenberg can be given more memory for large Word files.

Versions: change DOCUMENSO_VERSION in services/documenso/Dockerfile and redeploy; migrations run in the pre-deploy step, and a failed migration leaves the running version untouched.

Why Deploy Documenso on Railway?

Railway runs the app, database, queue, converter and storage as one project on a private network, with managed volumes and usage-based billing. You get a complete, production-shaped e-signature service, including a working signing certificate, without running servers or hand-building PKCS#12 files.