Excalidraw Collaboration is a self-hostable Excalidraw stack that adds live collaboration and scene storage to the drawing tool through a small set of Docker Compose deployment examples, and it is aimed at teams and individuals who want to run their own whiteboard instead of depending on a hosted third-party service.

What it is

The project is a deployment kit rather than a new drawing application. It bundles three services that are wired together for you: an Excalidraw frontend configured through runtime environment variables, an HTTP storage backend for scenes and files, and a Socket.IO room service for real-time collaboration that is powered by excalidraw-room-go, a Go implementation of the Excalidraw Socket.IO room server. The repository ships the exact service wiring in basic/docker-compose.yaml and advanced-nginx/compose.yml, so the topology of browser, frontend, storage backend, room server, and Nginx with TLS is already defined rather than left to the operator.

The concrete problem it solves is assembly. Excalidraw itself is a client, and running a private collaborative instance normally means separately obtaining a frontend image, a storage backend, a compatible room server, and a reverse proxy that knows how to route HTTP storage traffic and WebSocket upgrade traffic to the right places. This project replaces that manual assembly with a working stack: Nginx forwards / to the frontend, /storage/ to storage, and /socket.io/ to the room service with WebSocket upgrade headers. It lives in the Docker Compose and self-hosting ecosystem around Excalidraw, and it is released under the MIT licence.

Key capabilities

• Runs an Excalidraw frontend configured at runtime through VITE_APP_HTTP_STORAGE_BACKEND_URL and VITE_APP_WS_SERVER_URL, which lets one image serve different storage and WebSocket endpoints.
• Provides HTTP storage for scenes and files so drawings survive beyond a single browser session.
• Supplies real-time collaboration through a Socket.IO room service, using the pinned image alswl/excalidraw-room-go:v0.1.0.
• Exposes the standard collaboration flow: open the app, select Live Collaboration, then share the room link with another browser session.
• Includes two deployment examples: basic/docker-compose.yaml for local development with frontend, storage backend, and room service on separate local ports, and advanced-nginx/compose.yml with advanced-nginx/draw.example.com.conf for one-domain HTTPS.
• Offers a one-click Railway template and a live Railway demo that has been verified with alswl/excalidraw-room-go:v0.1.0.
• Ships advanced-nginx/.env-example for setting host names and database credentials, and documents a configurable Traefik-based Compose example in Someone0nEarth/excalidraw-self-hosted.

Who uses it and how

• Developers evaluating collaboration locally clone the repository and bring up basic/docker-compose.yaml, which exposes the frontend, storage backend, and room service on separate local ports.
• Operators running a single public domain copy .env-example to .env, set host names and database credentials, and configure the supplied Nginx virtual host so that HTTPS terminates in front of all three services.
• Teams that split traffic across load balancers configure TLS for the WebSocket and storage endpoints separately and point the frontend at each with the two public URL variables; the FAQ describes an AWS-oriented variant of this.
• Users who need a throwaway or demonstration instance deploy from the Railway template, or open the hosted Railway demo.
• Operators standardized on Traefik follow the external Traefik Compose example instead of the bundled Nginx configuration.

Getting started

With Docker Compose installed, clone https://github.com/alswl/excalidraw-collaboration.git, enter the directory, and run docker-compose -f basic/docker-compose.yaml up -d. For a public instance, deploy advanced-nginx/compose.yml with the supplied Nginx virtual host and .env, or use the one-click Railway template.

How it compares

It sits inside a small family of related projects: excalidraw-room-go supplies the Go Socket.IO room server, excalidraw-storage-backend supplies the storage backend, and a self-hosting-focused Excalidraw fork supplies the frontend image, while excalidraw.alswl.com is a separate static Excalidraw site with Chinese font support. This repository is the piece that combines the other three into a runnable deployment with reverse proxy configuration and deployment examples. A Traefik-based alternative for the same problem is maintained outside this project in Someone0nEarth/excalidraw-self-hosted.

When to use it — and when not to

A self-hoster takes on Docker Compose, an Nginx reverse proxy with TLS, a storage backend, and the database credentials it needs, plus the requirement that HTTPS be present because collaboration depends on browser crypto APIs. Anyone who wants a managed, zero-ops whiteboard should not pick it. Note also that the collaboration service is pinned to a single released room image, alswl/excalidraw-room-go:v0.1.0, and that the production path expects the operator to edit .env and an Nginx virtual host by hand.

flowchart LR
  Browser[Browser] --> Frontend[Excalidraw frontend]
  Browser -->|scenes and files| Storage[Storage backend]
  Browser <-->|Socket.IO| Room[Go room server]
  Nginx[Nginx + TLS] --> Frontend
  Nginx --> Storage
  Nginx --> Room

git clone https://github.com/alswl/excalidraw-collaboration.git
cd excalidraw-collaboration
docker-compose -f basic/docker-compose.yaml up -d

docker-compose -f basic/docker-compose.yaml down

TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'generateKey')