Deploy roundcube-template

Roundcube Webmail — One-Click Railway Template

Roundcube webmail with Postgres — bring your own IMAP/SMTP provider.

Roundcube is the classic open-source webmail client: a fast, skinable, plugin-rich browser interface for any IMAP mailbox. This template provisions Roundcube plus a Postgres database on Railway in one click, pre-wired to the mail provider of your choice (Gmail by default).

Scope note (important): Roundcube is a webmail client, not a mail server. It does not host mailboxes, accept MX delivery, or manage accounts — it connects to an existing IMAP/SMTP provider (Gmail, Fastmail, Mailgun, your own Dovecot/Postfix/Zimbra host, etc.). Every user signs in with their mail-server credentials; there is no admin account by design.

What you get

Zero deploy-form prompts — everything is preconfigured:

• Postgres coordinates are wired automatically via Railway expressions (ROUNDCUBEMAIL_DB_HOST/USER/PASSWORD/NAME → the Postgres service; the DB password is generated per deployment).
• Mail provider defaults are baked in and overridable as plain service variables after deploy: ROUNDCUBEMAIL_DEFAULT_HOST (IMAP, ssl://imap.gmail.com), ROUNDCUBEMAIL_DEFAULT_PORT (993), ROUNDCUBEMAIL_SMTP_SERVER (SMTP, tls://smtp.gmail.com), ROUNDCUBEMAIL_SMTP_PORT (587).
• Plugins enabled: archive (one-click archiving), zipdownload (download messages/attachments as zip), enigma (OpenPGP sign/encrypt — keys persist on the /var/roundcube/enigma volume).
• First boot waits up to 120 s for Postgres, creates the schema automatically, and serves a static /health.php endpoint.

Deploy

1. Click Deploy on Railway.
2. The roundcube service needs no input. If the form lists the Postgres plugin's internal variables, keep the standard values: PGDATA=/var/lib/postgresql/data/pgdata, POSTGRES_USER=postgres, POSTGRES_DB=railway, PGPORT=5432, SSL_CERT_DAYS=820, RAILWAY_DEPLOYMENT_DRAINING_SECONDS=60.
3. Wait ~2 minutes — both services go healthy, the DB schema initializes on first boot (Postgres first init can take ~1–2 minutes; one or two automatic restarts of roundcube are normal).
4. Open the roundcube domain and log in with your mail credentials:

Troubleshooting

• "Login failed" with a correct password — wrong IMAP host/port or TLS prefix (IMAPS = ssl:// + 993; STARTTLS = tls:// + 143/587), or the provider needs an App Password.
• Mail reads but won't send — check ROUNDCUBEMAIL_SMTP_SERVER/_PORT; port 465 needs ssl://, port 587 uses tls://.
• A few restarts on the very first deploy — the container waits up to 120 s for Postgres and exits once if it is slower; the ON_FAILURE policy retries automatically.

Deploy and Host

About Hosting

Hosting Roundcube on Railway means the webmail client runs as a containerized Apache/PHP service while a managed Postgres holds settings, contacts, and sessions. The template provisions exactly two services: roundcube (built from the pinned roundcube/roundcubemail:1.7.4-apache image with a thin Railway wrapper) and the Postgres database plugin. Mail itself stays at your IMAP/SMTP provider, so there are no deliverability, PTR/DNS, or IP-reputation concerns to manage. The deploy form has no prompts: the database connection is injected through Railway variable expressions and the Postgres password is generated fresh per deployment. The database schema is created and migrated automatically on every boot (bin/initdb.sh --update), and PGP keys from the enigma plugin persist on a dedicated volume.

Why Deploy

• One click, zero forms — services, variables, domain, and volume are all preconfigured; nothing to type at deploy time.
• Bring your own mail — works with any IMAP/SMTP provider, so you keep your existing addresses and mail history; switch providers by changing four variables.
• No mail-server headaches — you get the webmail UX without running an MTA: no MX records, no spam-list risk, no TLS certificate juggling for mail.
• Current and pinned — Roundcube 1.7.4 (new layout, PHP 8.4) pinned so upgrades are your decision.
• Operational niceties — /health.php health endpoint, schema auto-migration on boot, restart policy that rides out a cold database, and PGP keys that survive redeploys.

Common Use Cases

• A browser-based reader for a personal Gmail or Fastmail mailbox on your own domain.
• A self-hosted webmail front end for a company or family mail server (Dovecot/Postfix, Zimbra, hMailServer).
• Webmail for transactional-email teams who want to check an IMAP support or reply-to inbox without a desktop client.
• A privacy-conscious alternative to provider webmail: your own UI, your own hosting, any backend.
• A demo/testing client for mail infrastructure work (multiple providers, new accounts, deliverability checks).

Dependencies for

Roundcube needs an external IMAP/SMTP mail provider to be useful — that is the one thing you supply after deploy (mail credentials at the login screen). Everything else is included.

Deployment Dependencies

• Postgres — provisioned automatically by this template (Railway database plugin, schema auto-created on first boot; no action needed).
• IMAP + SMTP provider — Gmail (default config), Fastmail, Mailgun, Zimbra, or your own mail host. Override ROUNDCUBEMAIL_DEFAULT_HOST, ROUNDCUBEMAIL_DEFAULT_PORT, ROUNDCUBEMAIL_SMTP_SERVER, ROUNDCUBEMAIL_SMTP_PORT on the roundcube service if not using Gmail.
• An App Password for Gmail specifically (plain account passwords are rejected by Google's IMAP/SMTP endpoints).