Deploy and Host Typebot on Railway

Typebot is a visual builder for chatbots and conversational forms. You chain blocks for messages, questions, conditions and integrations (OpenAI, webhooks, Google Sheets, WhatsApp), then publish the bot as its own page or embed it on a site. This template runs Typebot 3.19.0, its builder and its viewer, on Postgres and Redis, plus a small mailbox that makes sign-in work on every Railway plan.

About Hosting Typebot

Typebot signs you in with a 6-digit code sent by email, and it has no password login. Railway blocks outbound SMTP below the Pro plan, so on Trial and Hobby a usual SMTP setup never delivers that code and you can't get in. I added a Mailbox service (Mailpit) to the project: Typebot hands its emails to it over the private network, and you read them at MAILBOX_URL with a generated password. No email provider or account is needed.

Sign-up is closed. Only ADMIN_EMAIL can create an account, and it gets Typebot's unlimited plan; anyone else needs an invitation from your workspace. ENCRYPTION_SECRET is generated at deploy with the 32 characters Typebot requires, and Redis turns on Typebot's limit of one login-code request a minute.

Before publishing I tested it on Railway. I asked for a login code for ADMIN_EMAIL, read it in the Mailbox and signed in. From that session I created an API token, used it to build a bot through Typebot's REST API (a greeting, a question for your name, and a reply that uses it), published it, and chatted with it on the viewer. It asked for a name and answered "Nice to meet you, Railway." After restarting all five services I signed in again with a new code, and the bot was still there and still answered.

Idle, the five services used 0.82 GB of RAM (builder 0.44, viewer 0.30, Postgres 0.06, Mailbox and Redis 0.02 together), about $8 a month on Railway's usage pricing.

The tradeoff: every email Typebot sends lands in the Mailbox, including invitations and the emails your bots send with the Send Email block. People you invite get their codes there too, so you'd pass them on yourself. For real delivery on the Pro plan, point the SMTP_* variables on the Typebot service at your email provider (the Viewer reads them from there).

Common Use Cases

Lead capture on a website, with every answer saved as a result you can export or send to a webhook
Quizzes, surveys and onboarding forms that branch on earlier answers
Support bots that answer with OpenAI or another LLM, embedded as a chat bubble
WhatsApp bots, with a Meta business account

Dependencies for Typebot Hosting

Nothing beyond the template. File upload blocks and image uploads in the editor need S3-compatible storage: set S3_ACCESS_KEY, S3_SECRET_KEY, S3_BUCKET and S3_ENDPOINT on both the Typebot and Viewer services.

Deployment Dependencies

Typebot: https://github.com/baptisteArno/typebot.io
Images: baptistearno/typebot-builder:3.19.0, baptistearno/typebot-viewer:3.19.0, axllent/mailpit:v1.31.4
Configuration reference: https://docs.typebot.com/self-hosting/configuration

Implementation Details

TYPEBOT_URL        # the builder: sign in with ADMIN_EMAIL
MAILBOX_URL        # login codes arrive here; MAILBOX_USER / MAILBOX_PASSWORD are on the Mailbox service
Viewer             # serves published bots at https:///
SMTP_*             # set on the Typebot service; the Viewer references them

If you give the viewer a custom domain, set NEXT_PUBLIC_VIEWER_URL to it on both services. Typebot's license is the Functional Source License: running it for yourself or your company is allowed, selling it as a hosted service that competes with Typebot is not.

Why Deploy Typebot on Railway?

The builder, viewer, database and mailbox come up together on HTTPS, and you can sign in a few minutes after deploying without setting up email. Railway bills the RAM and CPU the bots use, with no per-chat pricing.