Hosting your Shopify Remix app on Railway is a great choice due to its simplicity, scalability, and built-in deployment features. This guide will walk you through the process step by step.
Railway’s Free Trial and Pricing Plans
Railway offers a Free Trial for new users, providing a one-time grant of $5 in credits to explore the platform’s features. This trial allows access to the same features as the Hobby plan, with limitations of 500MB RAM and shared vCPU cores. To deploy code during the trial, connecting and verifying your GitHub account is necessary; otherwise, the trial is limited to database deployments.
After the trial, users can choose from the following plans:
- Hobby Plan: For $5/month, this plan includes $5 of resource usage per month. If your usage exceeds $5, you’ll be charged the difference.
- Pro Plan: Designed for professional developers and teams, this plan offers advanced features and requires contacting Railway for pricing details.
- Enterprise Plan: Tailored for large teams with specific compliance and SLA requirements, pricing and features are customized upon consultation.
It’s important to note that Railway has discontinued its previous free Developer plan, and the Free Trial now requires GitHub verification for full access.
For the most current information, visit the Railway’s Pricing Page.
Prerequisites
Before you begin, ensure you have:
- A Shopify Partner account with an existing app
- Railway account (Sign up at Railway)
- Node.js installed on your local machine
- Git for version control
- Shopify CLI installed
Step 1: Create a Shopify Remix App
If you haven’t already created a Shopify Remix app, run the following command:
npx create-shopify-app@latest --template remix --name my-shopify-app
cd my-shopify-app
This will generate a Remix-based Shopify app. For more detail checkout our blog Create a Shopify App using Remix Template
Step 2: Initialize Git and Push to GitHub
Railway integrates well with GitHub, so initialize a repository and push your code:
git init
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"
git branch -M main
git remote add origin https://github.com/your-username/my-shopify-app.git
git push -u origin main
Step 3: Deploy to Railway
- Go to Railway and create a new project.
- Click Deploy from GitHub Repo and select your Shopify app repository.
- Set up environment variables:
- SHOPIFY_API_KEY → Found in your Shopify Partner Dashboard
- SHOPIFY_API_SECRET → Found in your Shopify Partner Dashboard
- SCOPES → Define the required permissions, e.g., read_products, write_orders.
- SHOPIFY_API_URL → Define APP URL here
- PORT→ Set port where project runs on (Optional)
- Click Deploy and wait for the build process to complete.
- Generating a URL for Your Railway Service
- Once your Shopify Remix app is deployed on Railway, Railway automatically generates a unique URL for your service. You can find and customize this URL in your Railway project settings.
Step 1: Find Your Railway Service URL
- Go to your Railway Dashboard.
- Open your deployed project.
- Click on the “Deployments” tab.
- You’ll see a “Public URL”—this is your app’s live URL (e.g., https://your-app-name.up.railway.app).
Step 2: Customize the URL (Optional)
By default, Railway generates a random subdomain, but you can change it:
- Go to “Settings” → “Domains”.
- Click “Add Domain” and enter your custom domain (e.g., myshopifyapp.com).
- Update your DNS settings by adding a CNAME record pointing to Railway’s provided hostname.
- Wait for propagation, and your app will be accessible via your custom domain.
Step 4: Update Shopify App URL
After deployment, copy the Railway-provided domain and update it in your Shopify Partner Dashboard:
- Navigate to App Setup in your Shopify app settings
- Update the App URL and Redirect URLs
- Save changes
Step 5: Test the Deployment
Visit your Railway-hosted URL and install your app on a Shopify store to verify everything works as expected.
Conclusion
You have successfully deployed a Shopify Remix app on Railway! This setup allows for fast deployments and easy scalability. You can further optimize your setup by adding a database, monitoring logs, and setting up custom domains.
Checkout our more blogs on Shopify Remix App:
