Deploy and Host Kaneo on Railway

About Hosting

Railway provides a modern, streamlined platform for deploying web applications and databases. This template bundles Kaneo — open source project management ("All you need. Nothing you don't.") — running the official ghcr.io/usekaneo/kaneo image with a managed Postgres database, configured to work together out of the box.

Why Deploy

Deploying this template gives you a complete self-hosted project management suite in ~2 minutes:

Kanban boards, tasks & time tracking — full Linear/Jira alternative with Backlog, Board, List and Gantt views
Team collaboration — workspaces, members, invitations, labels, comments, notifications (real-time via WebSockets)
GitHub/GitLab sync — optional SSO sign-in and repository integration when you add OAuth credentials
Zero-build deploy — the official Kaneo image is used as-is; migrations run automatically at startup
Production-ready defaults — healthcheck endpoint (/api/health) for Railway monitoring and restart-on-failure policy

Common Use Cases

Self-hosted project management — keep your data on your own infrastructure, no vendor lock-in
Startup task tracking — free Kanban/issue tracker without per-seat pricing
Team collaboration — workspaces with members, invitations and role-based access
Production deployment — official image, auto-migrations, persistent sessions across restarts

Dependencies for

This template requires:

Deployment Dependencies

Postgres — add the Postgres service in the Railway dashboard; the DATABASE_URL connection string is injected automatically
PORT — fixed to 5173 (the image's exposed port; Railway routes healthchecks/traffic by this variable)
AUTH_SECRET — generate one with openssl rand -hex 32; the Railway deploy wizard will prompt you for it (sessions persist across restarts only with a stable secret)
KANEO_CLIENT_URL — your public URL (defaults to https://${{RAILWAY_PUBLIC_DOMAIN}}); used for auth cookies and redirects

Getting Started

Click Deploy on Railway
In the deploy wizard, provide the required variables (AUTH_SECRET, PORT, KANEO_CLIENT_URL)
Add the Postgres service — Railway injects DATABASE_URL automatically
Open the generated domain and create your first account (becomes workspace owner)

Next Steps

Invite your team — add members and set up workspace roles
Enable GitHub SSO — create an OAuth App and set GITHUB_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID/GITHUB_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET
Add email notifications — configure SMTP_* variables for invites and verification codes
Custom domain — add one to your Railway service

License

MIT (Kaneo) — template wrapper under MIT