Deploy Doory
Design posters, social posts and slides together in your browser.
Just deployed
/app/media
Just deployed
/var/lib/postgresql/data
Deploy and Host Doory on Railway
Doory is an open source browser-based design editor and a self-hosted alternative to Canva. Make posters, social posts, stories, slides, invitations, resumes, thumbnails and business cards from a template or a blank page, then export PNG, JPG, SVG, PDF, MP4 or GIF. It has layers, animations, music, brand kits, real-time co-editing, comments, share links and a presenter mode, with no paid plan and no locked features. Doory is released under the Attribution Assurance License, an OSI-approved license that asks you to credit its author, and has about 2,700 GitHub stars after launching in October 2026. This template runs Doory 0.2.0 with PostgreSQL on Railway, with fonts, audio and ten starter templates installed on first boot and an admin account created for you. Canva Pro costs about $120–180 a year per person. Doory on Railway costs about $10/month for your whole team.
What This Template Deploys
| Service | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Doory | ghcr.io/onepush-dev/doory:0.2.0, one container that runs Doory's API, real-time server, web app and an nginx front on port 8080 with a public domain. Health check on /api/v1/health/. Volume at /app/media for uploads, fonts, audio and exports. |
| Postgres | postgres-ssl:18, private only. Volume at /var/lib/postgresql/data holds accounts, designs, comments, version history and the shared cache. |
Upstream Doory runs api, realtime and web as separate containers sharing one media folder. Railway volumes attach to a single service, so this template runs them together in one container.
About Hosting Doory
Design tools for social media and marketing are mostly hosted subscriptions that charge per person and keep your brand assets on their servers. Doory gives a team the everyday design workflow on infrastructure you control, at a flat cost.
Editor. Tools sit in a rail on the left, with a context toolbar for whatever you select. Layers, groups, alignment guides, snapping, rulers and several pages per design, each with its own size.
Text and fonts. Headings, curved text, effects, font pairings and lists, with the 100 most popular open-licensed fonts installed and room for your own.
Photos. Crop, masks, filters, background removal that runs in your browser, and upscaling. Add an Unsplash or Pexels key for stock photo search.
Elements. Shapes, lines, arrows, emoji, stickers and QR codes, plus an optional library of about 27,500 icons and illustrations.
Motion and sound. Enter, exit and emphasis animations, page transitions, CC0 music loops and sound effects, and voiceover recording. Export as video or GIF, or present.
Together. Share links that let people view, comment or edit, with an optional password. Pinned comments, version history and live co-editing.
Brand kits. Save your colors, fonts and logos so every design stays on brand.
Guests welcome. Visitors can design without an account, with work saved in their browser; signing up moves it to the server.
Deploy Doory in Under 5 Minutes
- Click Deploy on Railway. The secret key, admin password and database password are generated for you.
- Wait for Postgres, then for Doory's first boot, which installs fonts, audio and templates.
- Copy
DOORY_ADMIN_PASSWORDfrom the Doory service's Variables tab. - Open the public domain and sign in as
admin@example.comwith that password, then change the email and password in your account settings. - Open a starter template, make an edit, and share an edit link with a teammate.
Common Use Cases
- Social media posts: make posts and stories in the right sizes with your brand kit.
- Marketing teams: keep templates and brand assets on your own server without per-seat fees.
- Presentations: build slides with animations and present with speaker notes.
- Print design: export posters, flyers and business cards as print PDFs with bleed and crop marks.
- Event invitations: design invitations and flyers from starter templates.
- YouTube thumbnails: produce thumbnails quickly from a reusable layout.
- Schools and nonprofits: give students or volunteers a free design tool with no ads.
- Resumes and documents: edit a resume or one-pager and export a clean PDF.
- Agencies: keep a brand kit per client and share comment links for approvals.
- Short animated clips: export animated posts as MP4 or GIF with music.
Configuration
| Variable | Required | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
SITE_URL | Auto-set | Railway domain | Public URL used in emails and share links |
DATABASE_URL | Auto-set | Postgres reference | Database connection |
DJANGO_SECRET_KEY | 🔐 Auto-generated | 64-char secret | Signs sessions; changing it signs everyone out |
DOORY_ADMIN_EMAIL | Optional | admin@example.com | Admin account created on first start |
DOORY_ADMIN_PASSWORD | 🔐 Auto-generated | 20-char secret | That admin's first password |
EMAIL_URL | Optional | consolemail:// | SMTP server; the default prints emails to the log |
DOORY_SYNC_FONTS | Optional | true | Installs the top 100 open-licensed fonts |
DOORY_SYNC_AUDIO | Optional | true | Installs CC0 music and sound effects |
DOORY_SYNC_ELEMENTS | Optional | false | Adds the icon and illustration library, about 130 MB |
DOORY_SEED_TEMPLATES | Optional | true | Adds the ten starter templates |
WEB_CONCURRENCY | Optional | 2 | API worker processes |
Email. Invites and password resets print to the log until you set EMAIL_URL, for example smtp://user:password@smtp.example.com:587.
Custom domain. Add it in Railway, then update SITE_URL, CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS and DJANGO_ALLOWED_HOSTS to include it and redeploy.
Stock photos. Add Unsplash or Pexels API keys, as described in Doory's stock media guide, to search free stock photos from the editor. A Freesound key adds sound effect search.
Single sign-on. Doory supports Google sign-in and generic OpenID Connect providers, so a team can sign in with its existing accounts.
Exports. Most downloads are made in the visitor's browser. The server also has a headless renderer for server-side image exports used by the API.
Memory. Doory runs several processes in one container. Two API workers fit a small team; raise WEB_CONCURRENCY and the service's memory as more people edit at once.
Credit the author. The license asks that the running app shows the credit to Doory's author and that you keep the license and notice files. Leave the built-in credit in place.
Upgrades. The template pins 0.2.0 while 0.3.1 is out with font weights, project backups and more. Back up Postgres and the media volume before changing the image.
Doory vs. Alternatives
| Feature | Doory on Railway | Canva Pro | Penpot | Adobe Express |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Self-hosted | Hosted SaaS | Self-hosted or cloud | Hosted SaaS |
| License | Attribution Assurance | Proprietary | MPL-2.0 | Proprietary |
| Social and print templates | ✅ small library | ✅ huge library | ❌ | ✅ |
| Animation and video export | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Real-time co-editing | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Brand kits | ✅ | ✅ | Libraries | ✅ |
| Price | About $10/month for the team | About $120–180/year per person | Free self-hosted | Subscription |
Canva has a far bigger template and stock library and polished mobile apps. Penpot is aimed at UI and product design. Doory covers everyday marketing design on your own server.
Dependencies for Doory Hosting
- A Railway account.
- Optional: an SMTP provider for invites and resets.
- Optional: Unsplash or Pexels API keys for stock photos.
Deployment Dependencies
- Doory on GitHub: source code, docs and releases
- Doory website: project home
Implementation Details
The cache is stored in Postgres, so no Redis service is needed with a single real-time worker. Doory also ships an MCP server at /mcp, off by default, that lets AI assistants such as Claude or Cursor create and edit designs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Doory? An open source browser design editor for posters, social posts, slides and more, released under the Attribution Assurance License.
How much does it cost to host Doory? About $10/month on Railway for Doory and Postgres, with no per-user fees.
What is the admin login?
admin@example.com with the DOORY_ADMIN_PASSWORD value from the Variables tab.
Can I use Doory for my business? Yes, including commercially, as long as the author credit stays visible in the app.
Why are emails not arriving?
EMAIL_URL defaults to printing emails in the log. Point it at your SMTP server and redeploy.
Where are my designs stored?
Signed-in designs live in Postgres and uploads on the /app/media volume; guest designs stay in the visitor's browser.
Why Deploy and Host Doory 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 Doory on Railway, you get a Canva-style design editor for your whole team, with brand kits, co-editing and exports, without per-seat subscriptions.
Template Content
