Self-host excalidraw-collaboration
v0.18.1-fork-b3Collaborative Excalidraw whiteboard stack for Docker Compose
- Stars
- 633
- Port
- 80 (Excalidraw frontend web app (host mapping 80:80))
What is excalidraw-collaboration?
Excalidraw Collaboration packages Excalidraw for running on your own hardware: an Excalidraw frontend image configured through runtime environment variables, an HTTP storage backend that keeps scenes and files, and a Go Socket.IO room service that powers live collaborative drawing. It ships two Compose examples — a basic one exposing the three services on separate local ports, and a production one that puts everything behind Nginx and TLS on a single domain, with MongoDB for scene persistence. Collaboration depends on browser cryptography APIs, so a public instance needs HTTPS (or localhost) to work. A verified Railway one-click template is published as an alternative to manual deployment. S3 storage, SSO and Helm charts are still open roadmap items.
Should you self-host excalidraw-collaboration?
excalidraw-collaboration scores 46/100 on selfhost.directory (how scoring works) and ranks #10 of 12 in Diagramming. It has 633 GitHub stars.
It shipped 3 stable releases in the past year. The latest, v0.18.1-fork-b3, came out on 8 August 2026. New versions land roughly every 6 weeks.
Setup is moderate: expect some configuration beyond a single command. It is MIT-licensed.
Its closest alternative on selfhost.directory is drawdb (80/100, 40 154 stars). It scores higher overall, so compare the two before you pick. See excalidraw-collaboration vs drawdb side by side.
Features
- HTTPS reverse-proxy deployment example
- Real-Time Collaboration
- Runtime environment configuration
- Scene and file storage backend
excalidraw-collaboration README
FAQ
Why does collaboration fail with generateKey errors?
Excalidraw relies on browser cryptography APIs for collaboration, which are unavailable on plain HTTP; serve the site over HTTPS or use http://localhost while developing.
How do I deploy with separate public endpoints?
Point VITE_APP_HTTP_STORAGE_BACKEND_URL at the storage endpoint and VITE_APP_WS_SERVER_URL at the WebSocket endpoint, and give both endpoints their own TLS.
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