---
title: "Deploy Easy!Appointments"
description: "Appointment scheduler with a public booking page for your business"
category: "Other"
url: https://railway.com/deploy/easyappointments-app
---

# Deploy Easy!Appointments

Appointment scheduler with a public booking page for your business

**[Deploy Easy!Appointments on Railway](https://railway.com/template/easyappointments-app)**

Machine-readable deploy manifest (JSON, validated by TemplateCI): https://railway.com/deploy/easyappointments-app/manifest.json

- **Creator:** A3A
- **Category:** Other
- **Total deploys:** 1

## Template content

### MySQL https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/homarr-labs/dashboard-icons/svg/mysql.svg

- **Image:** mysql:9.4
- **Start command:** `docker-entrypoint.sh mysqld --innodb-use-native-aio=0 --disable-log-bin --performance_schema=0 --innodb-buffer-pool-size=1G`

### easyappointments https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/alextselegidis/easyappointments@1.6.0/logo.png

- **Source:** https://github.com/gridalpha/easyappointments-railway
- **Health check:** /healthz
- **Public domain:** Yes

### easyappointments-cron https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/alextselegidis/easyappointments@1.6.0/logo.png

- **Source:** https://github.com/gridalpha/easyappointments-railway
- **Health check:** /healthz

### Redis https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/homarr-labs/dashboard-icons/svg/redis.svg

- **Image:** redis:8.2
- **Start command:** `/bin/sh -c "rm -rf $RAILWAY_VOLUME_MOUNT_PATH/lost+found/ && exec docker-entrypoint.sh redis-server --requirepass $REDIS_PASSWORD --save 60 1 --dir $RAILWAY_VOLUME_MOUNT_PATH"`

### mailpit https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/homarr-labs/dashboard-icons/svg/mailpit.svg

- **Image:** axllent/mailpit:latest
- **Health check:** /livez
- **Public domain:** Yes

## Documentation

# Deploy and Host Easy!Appointments on Railway

Easy!Appointments is an open-source appointment scheduler for businesses that book people into time slots: clinics, salons, tutors, garages and council offices. Customers open a public booking page, pick a service, a provider and a free slot, and get a confirmation email; staff work from an admin back office with a calendar, customer records, per-provider working plans and booking rules. Maintained since 2013 under GPL-3.0, it ships 30-plus languages and syncs two ways with Google Calendar and CalDAV.

Self-host Easy!Appointments on Railway and this template wires up the production shape rather than a single container. **easyappointments** serves the booking page and the back office through Apache and mod_php. **MySQL** holds every appointment, customer and setting. **Redis** stores sessions, so the web tier keeps no state and a redeploy signs nobody out. **easyappointments-cron** runs the commands upstream documents as cron jobs: calendar sync, retention cleanup and a daily backup onto its own volume. **mailpit** provides an SMTP host with a password-protected inbox. The first administrator is created from your own variables while the container boots, before the public port opens, so no setup wizard is left open for a stranger to finish.

![Diagram of the Easy!Appointments services, MySQL, Redis and Mailpit on Railway](https://res.cloudinary.com/rroe4rtk/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1789612079/easyappointments-architecture.webp)

## Getting Started with Easy!Appointments on Railway

Set `EA_ADMIN_PASSWORD` before deploying — the only value you must supply, read once while the database is still empty. `EA_ADMIN_USERNAME` (default `administrator`), `EA_ADMIN_EMAIL` and `EA_COMPANY_NAME` are worth setting too; the last is the business name on the booking page.

When the deploy finishes, open the **easyappointments** service's public URL. You land on the booking page, already populated with one starter service and provider, so the flow works immediately. Sign in at `/index.php/login` and the back office opens on the calendar.

Then do four things. Under **Settings → Business Logic**, set your working days and hours; that becomes the default plan for every provider added later. Under **Services**, rename the starter service and add the rest with durations and prices. Under **Users → Providers**, replace the seeded `Jane Doe` with real staff and tick the services each offers; that account has a random password, so set one. Finally book a test appointment from **Go To Booking Page**: it should reach the calendar within seconds, and three emails — customer, provider, administrator — should be waiting in the **mailpit** inbox, which captures mail rather than delivering it.

![Public booking page offering appointment times for a dental consultation](https://res.cloudinary.com/rroe4rtk/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1789612081/easyappointments-booking-availability.webp)

![Weekly admin calendar showing a booked consultation appointment](https://res.cloudinary.com/rroe4rtk/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1789612083/easyappointments-admin-calendar.webp)

![Editing the Teeth Whitening service duration and price](https://res.cloudinary.com/rroe4rtk/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1789612084/easyappointments-services-editor.webp)

![Appointment details panel with the customer's contact information](https://res.cloudinary.com/rroe4rtk/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1789612085/easyappointments-appointment-details.webp)

## About Hosting Easy!Appointments

Booking data is sensitive: names, phone numbers, and a record of when someone visited a clinic. Self-hosting keeps it in a database you control, under your own retention policy, with no per-seat price.

- An embeddable booking page with per-service durations, slot intervals, booking limits and prices
- Administrator, provider and secretary roles, each with a working plan and exceptions
- Two-way Google Calendar and CalDAV sync, plus Jitsi and Google Meet links
- Email notifications on booking, rescheduling and cancellation, with signed cancel and confirm links
- A REST API, webhooks, LDAP login, an ALTCHA captcha and a data-retention period

The Railway split follows what upstream recommends for production: the web service is stateless and scalable once your hours are set, MySQL is the only durable store the app writes to, and Redis holds the sessions a file store would lose on each deploy.

## Why Deploy Easy!Appointments on Railway

Railway removes the parts of PHP hosting that cost an afternoon:

- MySQL and Redis provisioned, privately networked and managed
- HTTPS, the domain and the certificate handled automatically
- The first administrator created at boot from your variables
- Scheduled maintenance as a real service with its own health check
- Vertical scaling and logs one click away

## Common Use Cases for Self-Hosted Easy!Appointments

- A clinic or physiotherapy practice taking its own bookings rather than paying per practitioner for a seat
- A driving school or tutoring service where each instructor has different hours and a different service list
- A council office issuing timed slots to the public, keeping the record in-house

## Dependencies for Easy!Appointments

- **easyappointments** and **easyappointments-cron** — built from [gridalpha/easyappointments-railway](https://github.com/gridalpha/easyappointments-railway), a thin layer over upstream's published image [`alextselegidis/easyappointments`](https://hub.docker.com/r/alextselegidis/easyappointments)
- **MySQL** (`mysql:9.4`) — appointments, customers, services, providers and settings
- **Redis** (`redis:8.2`) — the session store that makes the web tier stateless
- **mailpit** (`axllent/mailpit:latest`) — SMTP host and inbox, so notification mail works immediately

### Environment Variables Reference

| Variable | Purpose |
|---|---|
| `EA_ADMIN_PASSWORD` | First administrator's password. Required; read only while the database is empty |
| `EA_ADMIN_USERNAME` | Login name for that account, default `administrator` |
| `EA_ADMIN_EMAIL` | Where password resets and admin notifications go |
| `EA_COMPANY_NAME` | Business name shown on the public booking page |
| `EA_TIMEZONE` | Default timezone, e.g. `Europe/London` |
| `LANGUAGE` | Interface language, e.g. `english` |
| `MAIL_SMTP_HOST` | SMTP host, pointing at Mailpit by default |
| `GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID` | Google OAuth client for calendar sync |

### Deployment Dependencies

- Source: 
- Docs: 
- Runtime: PHP 8.2 on Apache, with `mysqli`, `gd`, `intl`, `ldap`, `redis`

## Hardware Requirements for Self-Hosting Easy!Appointments

| Resource | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 1 vCPU | 2 vCPU |
| RAM | 512 MB | 1–2 GB |
| Storage | 1 GB | 5 GB with backups |
| Runtime | PHP 8.2, MySQL 5.7+ | PHP 8.2, MySQL 8 or 9, Redis |

A classic LAMP application, comfortable on very small instances; storage grows with the backups, not the bookings.

## Self-Hosting Easy!Appointments with Docker

Upstream publishes a production image configured through environment variables. This runs it against a MySQL container:

```
docker network create ea

docker run -d --name ea-db --network ea \
  -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=change-me -e MYSQL_DATABASE=ea mysql:9.4

docker run -d --name ea-app --network ea -p 8080:80 \
  -e BASE_URL=http://localhost:8080 -e DB_HOST=ea-db -e DB_NAME=ea \
  -e DB_USERNAME=root -e DB_PASSWORD=change-me \
  alextselegidis/easyappointments:latest
```

Open `http://localhost:8080` and a setup wizard asks for an administrator account. The three jobs upstream recommends putting on cron are:

```
docker exec ea-app php index.php console sync
docker exec ea-app php index.php console cleanup
docker exec ea-app php index.php console backup
```

`sync` pushes and pulls provider calendars, `cleanup` deletes expired sessions and customer data past your retention window, and `backup` writes a gzipped dump into `storage/backups`. The maintenance service runs all three here.

## How Much Does Easy!Appointments Cost to Self-Host?

Easy!Appointments is free and open source under GPL-3.0, with no paid tier, seat limit or feature gating — what you deploy is the whole product, and there is no licence key. The only cost is infrastructure: two small application services plus managed MySQL, Redis and Mailpit, together in the low single digits of dollars a month for a small practice.

## FAQ

**What is Easy!Appointments?**

An open-source, self-hosted appointment scheduler written in PHP. It gives a business a public booking page plus an admin back office for services, providers, customers and a calendar. GPL-3.0, maintained since 2013.

**Why does the template include Redis and a separate maintenance service?**

Sessions are stored in files inside the container by default, so they vanish on every deploy; Redis moves them out, which keeps people signed in and lets the web tier be scaled. The maintenance service exists because calendar sync, retention cleanup and backups are scheduled command-line jobs, which a template cannot express as a cron entry.

**How do I set up Google Calendar sync in self-hosted Easy!Appointments?**

Create an OAuth client in Google Cloud with the Calendar API enabled, add your deployment's URL as an authorised redirect target, then set `GOOGLE_SYNC_FEATURE`, `GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID` and `GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET` — or enter them under Settings → Integrations. Providers then switch sync on per calendar.

**How do I send real email instead of capturing it?**

Replace `MAIL_SMTP_HOST`, `MAIL_SMTP_PORT`, `MAIL_SMTP_USER`, `MAIL_SMTP_PASS` and `MAIL_SMTP_AUTH` on both application services with your provider's values, set `MAIL_SMTP_CRYPTO` to `tls`, and point `MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS` at an address it may send from.


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