Deploy and Host OpenWA on Railway

OpenWA is an open-source WhatsApp automation platform built on top of WhatsApp Web. Connect personal or business WhatsApp accounts through a REST API to send messages, manage chats, receive webhooks, and automate workflows without requiring Meta Business API approval.

About Hosting OpenWA

Hosting OpenWA on Railway requires persistent storage for WhatsApp authentication sessions, media files, plugins, and database data. This template provisions a complete OpenWA stack including PostgreSQL, Redis, MinIO object storage, and the OpenWA Dashboard.

This template uses the prebuilt Docker images:

ghcr.io/rmyndharis/openwa:latest
ghcr.io/douglasrubims/openwa-dashboard:latest

Railway provisions networking, SSL, deployments, private networking, and persistent storage automatically.

Common Use Cases

WhatsApp chatbots and automation
Customer support integrations
Workflow automation with webhooks
Notifications and alerts
Multi-session WhatsApp management
Media storage and automation pipelines

Dependencies for OpenWA Hosting

Persistent volume (mount path: /app/data)
PostgreSQL database
Redis cache
MinIO S3-compatible object storage
OpenWA Dashboard

Deployment Dependencies

Implementation Details

OpenWA Docker image:

ghcr.io/rmyndharis/openwa:latest

Dashboard Docker image:

ghcr.io/douglasrubims/openwa-dashboard:latest

Environment variables (use Railway reference syntax when deploying):

Variable	Value
`NODE_ENV`	`production`
`API_PORT`	`2785`
`LOG_LEVEL`	`info`
`DATABASE_TYPE`	`postgres`
`DATABASE_HOST`	`${{Postgres.PGHOST}}`
`DATABASE_PORT`	`${{Postgres.PGPORT}}`
`DATABASE_USERNAME`	`${{Postgres.PGUSER}}`
`DATABASE_PASSWORD`	`${{Postgres.PGPASSWORD}}`
`DATABASE_NAME`	`${{Postgres.PGDATABASE}}`
`DATABASE_SYNCHRONIZE`	`false`
`ENGINE_TYPE`	`whatsapp-web.js`
`SESSION_DATA_PATH`	`/app/data/sessions`
`STORAGE_TYPE`	`s3`
`STORAGE_LOCAL_PATH`	`/app/data/media`
`S3_ENDPOINT`	`http://${{MinIO.RAILWAY_PRIVATE_DOMAIN}}:9000`
`S3_ACCESS_KEY`	`${{MinIO.MINIO_ROOT_USER}}`
`S3_SECRET_KEY`	`${{MinIO.MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD}}`
`S3_BUCKET`	`openwa`
`REDIS_ENABLED`	`true`
`REDIS_HOST`	`${{Redis.RAILWAY_PRIVATE_DOMAIN}}`
`REDIS_PORT`	`6379`
`PLUGINS_ENABLED`	`true`
`PLUGINS_DIR`	`/app/data/plugins`
`PUPPETEER_HEADLESS`	`true`
`PUPPETEER_ARGS`	`--no-sandbox,--disable-setuid-sandbox,--disable-dev-shm-usage,--disable-gpu`

Dashboard Environment Variables:

Variable	Value
`OPENWA_HOST`	`${{OpenWA.RAILWAY_PRIVATE_DOMAIN}}`

Initial API Key:

OpenWA automatically generates an API key during the first startup and prints it in the OpenWA API deployment logs.

After deployment:

Open the OpenWA API service in Railway.
Go to Deploy Logs.
Copy the generated API key.
Open the Dashboard URL.
Paste the API key when prompted.

API keys can later be managed from inside the Dashboard or through the API.

OpenWA Volume: Mount /app/data for persistent WhatsApp sessions, plugins, SQLite fallback database, and media files.

MinIO Volume: Mount /data for persistent object storage.

MinIO Start Command:

minio server /data --console-address ":9001"

Redis Start Command:

redis-server --appendonly yes

OpenWA Public Port: 2785

Dashboard Public Port: 80

Quick start (local):

docker run -p 2785:2785 \
  -v openwa-data:/app/data \
  ghcr.io/rmyndharis/openwa:latest

API available at:

http://localhost:2785

Why Deploy OpenWA on Railway?

Railway provides a simple way to deploy and scale OpenWA without managing servers, reverse proxies, SSL certificates, databases, cache infrastructure, object storage, or frontend hosting manually.

By deploying OpenWA on Railway, you can run a complete WhatsApp automation infrastructure with PostgreSQL, Redis, MinIO, Dashboard, persistent storage, public networking, and automated deployments in minutes while focusing on your integrations and workflows instead of infrastructure management.