Deploy and Host HedgeDoc on Railway

HedgeDoc is a collaborative Markdown editor that runs in the browser. Several people can edit the same note at once and see changes live, with a side-by-side preview that supports diagrams, math, code highlighting and slide mode. Notes can be shared by link, published read-only or kept private.

About Hosting HedgeDoc

This template runs the official quay.io/hedgedoc/hedgedoc:1.12.0 image with a Railway PostgreSQL database. On first boot a seed step creates your account from the variables once the database is ready. Email sign-up and anonymous notes are turned off, so only accounts you create can write notes. Notes live in Postgres and uploaded images on a Railway volume, so both survive redeploys. The session secret is generated and stable, which keeps people signed in across restarts. HedgeDoc is light on resources and fits the Hobby plan. Add teammates with bin/manage_users from a Railway shell.

Common Use Cases

Live meeting notes that the whole team edits together
Drafting documentation or blog posts in Markdown before publishing
Presenting slides written in Markdown from the browser

Dependencies for HedgeDoc Hosting

quay.io/hedgedoc/hedgedoc:1.12.0 (official image)
Railway PostgreSQL
A Railway volume at /hedgedoc/public/uploads

Deployment Dependencies

Implementation Details

Service	Source	Networking	Storage
hedgedoc	`quay.io/hedgedoc/hedgedoc:1.12.0`	public domain on 3000	volume at `/hedgedoc/public/uploads`
Postgres	Railway PostgreSQL	private	Railway volume

Variable	Default	Purpose
`HEDGEDOC_ADMIN_EMAIL`	`admin@example.com`	First account, created on first boot
`HEDGEDOC_ADMIN_PASSWORD`	generated	Its password
`CMD_ALLOW_EMAIL_REGISTER`	`false`	Closes self sign-up
`CMD_ALLOW_ANONYMOUS`	`false`	Requires login to create notes
`CMD_SESSION_SECRET`	generated	Signs session cookies
`CMD_DOMAIN`	`${{RAILWAY_PUBLIC_DOMAIN}}`	Public hostname

Notes:

Add users from the Railway shell: node bin/manage_users --add user@example.com --pass .
To allow self sign-up instead, set CMD_ALLOW_EMAIL_REGISTER=true.

This is a community-maintained deployment package and does not imply affiliation with or endorsement by the HedgeDoc project.

Why Deploy HedgeDoc 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 HedgeDoc 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.