Deploy and Host OpenProject on Railway

OpenProject is open-source project management: work packages, Gantt charts, boards, time and cost tracking, wikis, and meeting minutes, all in one Rails application backed by Postgres. It covers most of what teams use Jira and Confluence for together, and this template deploys it with its database already wired up.

About Hosting OpenProject

OpenProject is a large Rails application, and two things matter when hosting it.

The first is the database. OpenProject keeps everything — projects, work packages, wiki pages, time entries, users and permissions — in Postgres. This template provisions one with a volume and passes DATABASE_URL as a Railway variable reference, so the credentials are generated at deploy time rather than written into a config file.

The second is first boot. OpenProject runs its migrations and seeds the default roles, types, statuses and workflows before it answers a request, and that takes several minutes on the first deploy. The service will look unresponsive while it happens. It only happens once; later deploys reuse the migrated database.

SECRET_KEY_BASE signs sessions and is generated for you. OPENPROJECT_HOST__NAME is set to the public domain so generated links and email point somewhere real.

Common Use Cases

Run projects with real Gantt scheduling and dependencies, rather than a flat task list.
Replace a Jira and Confluence pair with one self-hosted tool, on your own infrastructure.
Track time and cost against work packages for client billing.
Keep project documentation in a wiki that sits next to the work it describes.
Give a team classic project management without per-seat SaaS pricing.

Dependencies for OpenProject Hosting

Postgres — every piece of application data. Provisioned by this template with a volume.
An SMTP provider — OpenProject sends notifications, invitations and password resets. Configure it in the administration settings after first login; without it, invited users never receive their invitation.
Memory headroom. This is Rails with a large asset pipeline and background workers; the smallest instance sizes will struggle.

Implementation Details

The app connects to Postgres over Railway's private network, so no database traffic crosses the public internet and no connection string is baked into the image.

Migrations run on startup, which means upgrading OpenProject is a redeploy — but read the upstream release notes first, because major-version upgrades occasionally require an intermediate version rather than a direct jump.

Attachments and Storage

OpenProject stores uploaded attachments on local disk by default, and the application service here has no volume attached, so files attached to work packages and wiki pages do not survive a redeploy. Project data itself is safe — that all lives in Postgres.

If attachments matter to you, configure OpenProject's S3-compatible attachment storage and point it at a Railway bucket or any S3 provider before the team starts uploading. Doing it first is much easier than migrating files afterwards.

After You Deploy

Open the public URL and sign in with the default administrator account, then change the password immediately.
Set the SMTP configuration under Administration, Emails and notifications, and send a test.
Configure attachment storage if you intend to use attachments.
Create your first project and invite the team.

Scaling and Cost

OpenProject is the heaviest of these templates at idle. Postgres grows with your project history rather than your user count, and the web service is the one to give more memory as concurrency rises. For a small team it is comfortably cheaper than per-seat licensing; for a large one, size the web service deliberately.

Why Deploy OpenProject 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 OpenProject 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.