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Railway is the fastest path to production. It manages PostgreSQL and Redis as plugins, and deploys from your GitHub repository automatically on every push.
1

Create a Railway account and project

  1. Go to railway.app and sign up
  2. Click New Project
  3. Select Empty Project
  4. Name the project (e.g., Acme Production)
2

Add PostgreSQL

  1. In your project, click New → Database → Add PostgreSQL
  2. Railway creates a PostgreSQL instance and adds it to your project
  3. Click on the PostgreSQL service → Variables tab
  4. Copy the DATABASE_URL value — you will need it shortly
3

Add Redis

  1. Click New → Database → Add Redis
  2. Click on the Redis service → Variables tab
  3. Copy the REDIS_URL value
4

Deploy the API

  1. Click New → GitHub Repo
  2. Connect your GitHub account and select your repository
  3. Railway detects the Dockerfile in the project root and uses it
  4. Before the first deploy, go to the service’s Variables tab
  5. Add all required environment variables (see Environment Variables):
  1. Click Deploy — Railway builds the Docker image and starts the container
5

Run migrations

  1. Install the Railway CLI: npm install -g @railway/cli
  2. Log in: railway login
  3. Link your project: railway link
  4. Run migrations against the production database:
Or open a shell in the running container and run the migration:
6

Run the database seeder

This creates the admin user. The --seed-only flag runs seeders and exits without starting the HTTP server.
7

Deploy the frontend

  1. In your Railway project, click New → GitHub Repo again
  2. Select the same repository, but this time set the Root Directory to frontend/
  3. Add the frontend environment variable:
  1. Railway detects package.json and uses the Vite build command (npm run build)
  2. Set the Start Command to npx serve -s dist -l 3000
8

Configure custom domains

  1. For the API service: Settings → Domains → Generate Domain or Add Custom Domain
  2. Add a CNAME record in your DNS pointing api.yourdomain.com to the Railway-provided domain
  3. Repeat for the frontend service at yourdomain.com or app.yourdomain.com
  4. Railway provisions SSL automatically via Let’s Encrypt
9

Register the Stripe webhook

Now that you have a production API URL:
  1. Stripe Dashboard → Developers → Webhooks → Add endpoint
  2. URL: https://api.yourdomain.com/api/v1/webhooks/stripe
  3. Select all five required events (checkout.session.completed, customer.subscription.updated, customer.subscription.deleted, invoice.payment_failed, invoice.payment_succeeded)
  4. Copy the signing secret → update STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET in Railway
Railway redeploys automatically when you update environment variables.
10

Verify

  1. Open https://yourdomain.com — the login page should load
  2. Log in with admin credentials (email set via --AdminEmail at scaffold time, password Admin123!)
  3. Change the admin password immediately
  4. Test a complete checkout with a real payment method
  5. Confirm the Stripe webhook delivered successfully in the Stripe Dashboard
After verifying everything works, change the default admin password from Admin123! to something secure. Do this before announcing the application publicly.