Deploy prosody-template

Prosody XMPP Chat Server — One-Click Railway Template

Your own XMPP chat server in one click. Prosody is the modern, standard XMPP server: federated protocol, any client you like (Conversations, Gajim, Monal, converse.js), persistent accounts and message archives. Zero deploy-form inputs: the template provisions everything, creates your admin account at first boot, and generates its admin password fresh per deployment.

What you get

After deploying (2 minutes, no CLI needed beyond copying a password)

1. Open your service's Variables tab and copy the PASSWORD value — that is the password of your admin account.
2. Your JID is admin@YOUR-DOMAIN where YOUR-DOMAIN is the service domain shown on the service card (also the value of PROSODY_VIRTUAL_HOSTS).
3. Connect any XMPP client:
   • Web/websocket clients: WebSocket URL wss://YOUR-DOMAIN/xmpp-websocket (BOSH: https://YOUR-DOMAIN/http-bind).
   • Conversations (Android) / Gajim (desktop): JID USER@YOUR-DOMAIN, host = the 5222 TCP proxy domain (...proxy.rlwy.net), port = the proxy port shown next to it. Prosody presents a self-signed certificate on this path (Railway's TLS covers the HTTPS domain); accept it once — the fingerprint is stable across restarts.

Adding users

Registration is admin-only by design. Add users with the Railway CLI:

railway ssh --service prosody -- sh -c 'prosodyctl register USER "$PROSODY_VIRTUAL_HOSTS" "PASSWORD"'

Federation (advanced)

Chatting with other XMPP servers requires a real domain you control, _xmpp-server._tcp SRV records, and the 5269 s2s port. This template ships single-domain; treat federation as a follow-up exercise on a custom domain.

Deploy and Host

Deploy Prosody — the modern XMPP chat server — on Railway with one click. The template runs the official prosodyim/prosody:13.0 image in a single service with a persistent volume for accounts and message archives. Your Railway domain becomes the XMPP virtual host automatically (PROSODY_VIRTUAL_HOSTS=${{RAILWAY_PUBLIC_DOMAIN}}), BOSH and WebSocket endpoints are exposed through Railway's TLS, and a TCP proxy serves native XMPP clients on port 5222. A small wrapper entrypoint adapts the Railway-mounted (root-owned) volume to Prosody's needs, generates the vhost certificate, and creates the admin account exactly once at first boot.

About Hosting

Hosting your own XMPP server gives you a private, standards-based chat back-end: no vendor lock-in, no per-seat pricing, works with every XMPP client on every platform. On Railway it runs as a single ~512 MB service with one volume (roughly $3–5/month). The template configures:

• PROSODY_VIRTUAL_HOSTS=${{RAILWAY_PUBLIC_DOMAIN}} — your Railway domain is the XMPP host
• PROSODY_ADMINS=admin@${{RAILWAY_PUBLIC_DOMAIN}} — admin JID
• PASSWORD=${{secret(24, ...)}} — fresh random admin password per deployment (Variables tab)
• DOMAIN=${{RAILWAY_PUBLIC_DOMAIN}} — used for the one-time first-boot admin registration
• HTTP domain on port 5280 (websocket wss://…/xmpp-websocket, BOSH https://…/http-bind), TCP proxy on 5222 (native clients, STARTTLS)
• Volume at /var/lib/prosody — accounts, roster, MAM archive (30-day expiry), and the self-signed vhost certificate

Why Deploy

• One click, zero forms — no deploy-time inputs; admin credentials are generated per deployment and readable in the Variables tab.
• Standard, not a walled garden — XMPP means you can switch clients or self-host elsewhere any time; your accounts and archives live in an open format on your volume.
• Official image, pinned — prosodyim/prosody:13.0 (the Prosody team's own image; the older prosody/prosody Docker Hub image is unmaintained).
• Railway-ready image — the upstream image refuses root-owned data volumes (upstream FIXME); this template's entrypoint wrapper fixes volume ownership, generates the STARTTLS certificate, and makes the first-boot admin registration one-shot so restarts never crash-loop.

Common Use Cases

• Private team/family chat without handing conversations to a SaaS
• Lightweight notification/alert delivery to phones via XMPP bots
• A personal chat hub reachable from any device with Conversations, Gajim, Monal, or any web XMPP client
• Jitsi-style ecosystem familiarity — Prosody is the XMPP engine used across the Jabber network

Dependencies for

None external — the template is fully self-contained. Prosody uses its built-in internal storage on the attached volume; no database service is provisioned or required.

Deployment Dependencies

• A Railway account with the Hobby (or larger) plan (~$3–5/month for this single service + volume)
• Optional (advanced federation only): your own domain with _xmpp-server._tcp SRV records pointed at the server