Deploy and Host Formbricks on Railway

Formbricks is the open-source alternative to Typeform and Qualtrics: link surveys, website and in-app surveys, NPS and CSAT, with targeting, multi-language surveys, webhooks and an API, on data you own. This template runs Formbricks 6 with every service it needs to start: Postgres with pgvector, Valkey, Formbricks Hub, Cube and SpiceDB. Uploads go to a Railway bucket.

About Hosting Formbricks

Formbricks 6 is no longer a single container. It refuses to start without SpiceDB for authorization, and it needs Hub (feedback records) and Cube (analytics) as well. This template runs the full stack in six services and a bucket:

Formbricks: the official ghcr.io/formbricks/formbricks:6.0.2 image. A small wrapper runs what upstream's compose does in one-shot jobs before the server starts: database migrations, loading the SpiceDB schema, and setting CORS on the bucket. The health check on /health waits for all of that, and upgrading means bumping the image tag.
SpiceDB: the official authzed/spicedb:v1.52.0 image (the -debug variant, which includes a shell). It migrates its datastore on boot and keeps relationships in Postgres's built-in postgres database, separate from the app's data.
Hub: the official ghcr.io/formbricks/hub:0.8.7 image. It shares the Formbricks database, as upstream does, so it waits for Formbricks to create its tables and then runs its own goose and River migrations.
Cube: the official ghcr.io/formbricks/cube:1.7.47-1 image, with upstream's cube.js and feedback-record schema built in, since Railway can't bind-mount config files.
Postgres 17 with pgvector and Valkey 8 (sessions, cache, rate limits, background jobs), each with its own volume.
A Railway bucket for survey images, file-upload answers and logos. Formbricks uploads straight from the browser with presigned POSTs, so the app sets the bucket's CORS rule for your domain on every boot.

Every secret (auth, encryption, cron, Hub and Cube keys, SpiceDB key, database and Valkey passwords) is generated per deployment.

Common Use Cases

Customer feedback, NPS and CSAT surveys without sending data to a SaaS vendor
In-app and website surveys that target users by attributes and actions, through the Formbricks JS or mobile SDKs
Product research, onboarding and churn surveys shared as links or embedded in pages
A self-hosted Typeform replacement for forms with logic, hidden fields and file uploads

Dependencies for Formbricks Hosting

Postgres 17 with pgvector (included, private network only)
Valkey 8 (included, private network only)
SpiceDB, Formbricks Hub and Cube (included, private network only)
A Railway bucket (included)

Deployment Dependencies

Implementation Details

Create the owner account first. Open the Formbricks service's Railway domain as soon as the deploy is green. A fresh instance allows exactly one sign-up without an invite: that account creates the organization and becomes its owner. Until then, anyone who finds the URL could claim it. After that, public sign-up is closed and new people join by invite (Organization settings → Members).

Email (optional). Without SMTP, email verification and password-reset emails are off (EMAIL_VERIFICATION_DISABLED=1, PASSWORD_RESET_DISABLED=1), and invites give you a link to copy. To send email, fill in the optional MAIL_FROM, MAIL_FROM_NAME, SMTP_HOST, SMTP_PORT, SMTP_USER, SMTP_PASSWORD and SMTP_SECURE_ENABLED (1 for port 465) variables, then set the two *_DISABLED flags to 0. Railway only allows outbound SMTP on the Pro plan. Don't set any of them to an empty string: Formbricks rejects empty values at startup.

Custom domain. After adding one, set WEBAPP_URL and NEXTAUTH_URL to https://your-domain and redeploy. The bucket CORS rule follows WEBAPP_URL (and PUBLIC_URL, if you serve link surveys from a separate domain) on the next boot.

Back up these values. ENCRYPTION_KEY protects 2FA secrets and single-use survey links, and NEXTAUTH_SECRET signs sessions. Changing the first breaks them; changing the second logs everyone out.

Workspaces and Enterprise features. Without a license, Formbricks 6 allows one workspace per organization. SSO, roles, the Feedback Data inbox and Analysis dashboards (the features that use Hub and Cube) need ENTERPRISE_LICENSE_KEY. Hub and Cube still have to run: Formbricks 6 won't start without them.

AI features (survey generation, taxonomy) are off until you configure an AI provider with the AI_* variables. See the Formbricks docs.

Resources. On Railway the stack idled at about 1 GB of RAM: Formbricks itself about 650 MB, Postgres about 200 MB, Cube about 95 MB, SpiceDB about 60 MB, and Hub and Valkey about 20 MB each. Formbricks alone is over the Trial plan's 512 MB per-service limit, so use the Hobby plan or higher.

Why Deploy Formbricks 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 Formbricks 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.