Plausible Community Edition

Privacy-friendly, open-source web analytics for the modern web

Deploy and Host

Plausible Community Edition on Railway. Lightweight, open-source web analytics with no cookies, GDPR/CCPA/PECR compliant out of the box. This template deploys three sibling services so every marketplace deploy boots into a working state with no manual env-var hunting.

About Plausible

• No cookies required — no consent banners
• Lightweight script — < 1 KB
• ClickHouse-powered — handles millions of page views
• 27.4K+ GitHub stars — battle-tested at scale

Services Deployed

> Why upstream postgres:16-alpine instead of the Railway postgres-ssl:18 plugin? The plugin forces PGDATA to match the volume mount path exactly. With the Railway volume mount default of /var/lib/postgresql/data, the volume's ext4 lost+found/ directory ends up inside PGDATA — and initdb crashes with directory exists but is not empty. The sibling-service fix mounts the volume at the parent path /var/lib/postgresql with PGDATA=/var/lib/postgresql/data, so lost+found/ lives at the volume root, outside PGDATA. See postgres/.env.example for the full rationale, or .agents/skills/railway-deployment/references/plausible-ce-and-postgres-docker-patterns.md § "Lost+Found Gotcha — Empirically Verified 2026-07-08".

Why Deploy

• Own your analytics — eliminate Google Analytics
• Privacy by default — no tracking cookies, no fingerprinting
• Real-time dashboards — see visitors as they arrive
• GDPR/CCPA compliant out of the box

Common Use Cases

SaaS analytics (no third-party scripts), content websites (monitor traffic + referrals), e-commerce conversion analytics, personal blogs, or behind-the-firewall internal analytics.

Quick Start

1. Deploy

Railway creates all three sibling services in one click and wires internal networking. Wait ~30-60 seconds for Postgres initdb (~30s) and Plausible CE DB migrations (~60s on first boot).

2. Configure environment variables (if any)

The template ships with literal defaults that work out of the box. Most users won't need to touch anything. The variables you can rotate (and must keep in sync between services):

• DATABASE_URL (Plausible CE) — credentials match the Postgres sibling tile defaults
• CLICKHOUSE_DATABASE_URL (Plausible CE) — credentials match ClickHouse sibling tile defaults
• BASE_URL (Plausible CE) — defaults to https://${{RAILWAY_PUBLIC_DOMAIN}} (auto)
• SECRET_KEY_BASE (Plausible CE) — defaults to ${{secret(64)}} (auto-generated)

If you rotate POSTGRES_PASSWORD or CLICKHOUSE_PASSWORD on their respective tiles, update the corresponding Plausible CE URL in the same change.

3. Register the first user

Visit BASE_URL (e.g. https://plausible-ce-production-XXXX.up.railway.app) and create your admin account. Then set DISABLE_REGISTRATION=true if you don't want public signups.

Environment Variables

Plausible CE (root)

Postgres (postgres/ sibling service)

ClickHouse (clickhouse/ sibling service)

Optional (SMTP, Google Auth, GeoIP)

SMTP, Google OAuth, and MaxMind GeoIP are unchanged from prior templates — see .env.example for the full list. Defaults auto-skip these unless you uncomment them.

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                     Railway Project                          │
│                                                              │
│  ┌──────────────────┐      ┌──────────────────┐            │
│  │   Plausible CE    │─────▶│    ClickHouse     │           │
│  │   :8000           │      │   :8123:9000      │          │
│  └────────┬──────────┘      └──────────────────┘            │
│           ▼                                                  │
│  ┌──────────────────┐                                        │
│  │   PostgreSQL      │  Image: postgres:16-alpine (upstream)│
│  │   (sibling)       │  Volume mount: /var/lib/postgresql   │
│  │                   │  PGDATA: /var/lib/postgresql/data     │
│  │                   │  → lost+found/ stays OUTSIDE PGDATA   │
│  └──────────────────┘                                        │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

All three services communicate via Railway's private network (postgres.railway.internal, clickhouse.railway.internal).

Troubleshooting

Postgres crashes with directory exists but is not empty

Confirm the Volume widget on the Postgres tile is set to mount at /var/lib/postgresql (NOT /var/lib/postgresql/data). The latter traps lost+found/ inside PGDATA. See postgres/.env.example for the geometry explanation.

Volume widget settings don't survive marketplace deploy

Railway's UI widget for volumeMounts may not always serialize into the serializedConfig.services..volumeMounts block. If a fresh marketplace deploy lacks the postgres volume, verify in the template editor's root-level Raw JSON that the postgres service has volumeMounts: { "/var/lib/postgresql": {...} }. If it's missing, you can either (a) inject it manually in the root Raw JSON editor, or (b) switch to IaC (.railway/railway.ts) for durable volumeMounts encoding. Worst case, run railway volume add --service --mount-path /var/lib/postgresql post-deploy.

Connection refused Postgres on first deploy

Postgres initdb runs on first boot — allow ~30 seconds. Check railway logs --service Postgres.

Plausible logs show ECONNREFUSED / cannot create schema_migrations

Postgres is still initializing (wait + refresh), OR Plausible CE's DATABASE_URL doesn't match the Postgres tile defaults (verify both via railway variables --service --kv).

Health endpoint returns 502

First deploy takes 60-90 seconds while both Postgres (initdb) and Plausible CE (db migrate + Elixir release boot) initialize. If 502 persists past 2 minutes, check Postgres logs first — most failures cascade from there.

Registration stays open after admin signup

Set DISABLE_REGISTRATION=true on the Plausible CE tile and redeploy.

License

Plausible CE is licensed under AGPL-3.0.

Resources

• Plausible CE Repository
• Plausible CE Wiki
• Plausible Documentation
• Railway Documentation
• Lost+Found gotcha reference: .agents/skills/railway-deployment/references/plausible-ce-and-postgres-docker-patterns.md § "Lost+Found Gotcha — Empirically Verified 2026-07-08"