Deploy and Host Radicale on Railway

Radicale is a lightweight, open-source CalDAV and CardDAV server that lets you host your own calendars and contacts with full control over your data. It syncs seamlessly with standard clients like Apple Calendar, Thunderbird, and DAVx5 on Android, so your schedule and address book stay in sync across every device, without relying on Google Calendar or iCloud.

About Hosting Radicale

Hosting Radicale gives you a private alternative to Google Calendar, iCloud, or Google Contacts, without giving up the apps you already use. You keep full ownership and control of your data while still syncing calendars and contacts across all of your devices through the standard CalDAV and CardDAV protocols.

This template provides a ready-to-run Radicale server with authentication and persistent storage already wired up. Railway handles the infrastructure and deployment, so you can focus on connecting your devices instead of configuring a server, a reverse proxy, and storage by hand.

If you are looking for a broader all-in-one experience that includes files, documents, photos, passwords, and more alongside your calendar, check out My Own Suite, which builds on setups like this into a complete private cloud ecosystem.

Common Use Cases

• Replacing Google Calendar or iCloud with a private, self-hosted calendar server
• Syncing contacts (CardDAV) across your phone, tablet, and desktop
• Sharing a household or small team calendar without a cloud subscription
• Testing a self-hosted calendar and contacts server before moving to your own server or VPS

Dependencies for Radicale Hosting

• A Railway account

Pricing and plan requirements

New Railway users can test this template on Railway's free trial, which currently includes enough credits and supports up to 5 services per project. Radicale is very light on resources, so it is an inexpensive service to keep running.

Keeping it running after the trial ends requires a paid Railway plan. For ongoing use, Railway Hobby or higher is recommended.

Deployment Dependencies

• Radicale documentation: https://myownsuite.org/docs/apps/radicale/
• My Own Suite website: https://myownsuite.org/
• Getting started guide: https://myownsuite.org/docs/getting-started
• GitHub repository: https://github.com/rpuls/my-own-suite
• Radicale project: https://radicale.org/

Connect Radicale to your iPhone Calendar

After deploying, use your app URL as the Server URL and the username and password you chose during setup. Then, on your iPhone:

1. Open Settings.
2. Open Apps, then Calendar, then Calendar Accounts, then Add Account.
3. Tap Add Other Account, then Add CalDAV Account.
4. Paste the Server URL into the Server field.
5. Paste the Username into the User Name field.
6. Enter the Radicale password you chose during install.
7. Tap Next or Save, then open the Calendar app and confirm the account appears there.

The server URL is meant for CalDAV and CardDAV clients, so opening it in a normal browser may show a sparse Radicale page instead of your calendar. Step-by-step guides for Android (DAVx5), macOS, and Thunderbird are included in the My Own Suite Radicale docs.

Why Deploy Radicale on Railway?

Railway gives you a fast way to deploy Radicale without handling the low-level infrastructure setup yourself. You still get your own running deployment, but without the usual manual configuration work that often slows down self-hosting experiments.

By deploying Radicale on Railway, you can get a private calendar and contacts server up and running in minutes. It is the fastest way to try Radicale before deciding whether to keep it on Railway or move it to your own server later.