Deploy Excalidraw
Your own Excalidraw, with live collaboration on your instance
Deploy Excalidraw, the hand-drawn style whiteboard, with live collaboration rooms and shareable links that run on your own instance. Drawings are encrypted in the browser before they are stored, and the key stays in the link, so only people you send it to can open them.
What you get with Excalidraw
- Draw together in real timeStart a session from Share and send the room link. Everyone sees each other’s cursors and edits as they happen.
- Encrypted in the browserRooms, images and shared copies are encrypted before they leave the browser. The key is the part of the link after #, which never reaches the server.
- Runs on your instanceThe collaboration relay and the storage for rooms and shareable links are part of the app, not excalidraw.com’s servers.
- Rooms survive a redeployRoom scenes, room images and shared copies live on a volume, so a room link still opens after a restart.
- Diagrams from MermaidPaste a Mermaid flowchart and Excalidraw turns it into editable hand-drawn shapes, right in the browser.
- Export anywhereSave to PNG, SVG or the clipboard, in light or dark, or keep the scene as a .excalidraw file.
After you deploy Excalidraw
- 1Open the public URLThe hostname is on the app page after deploy. The whiteboard opens straight away; there is nothing to set up.
- 2DrawPick a shape from the toolbar or use the keyboard (R for a rectangle, A for an arrow, T for text). Your drawing is kept in your browser.
- 3Invite peopleClick Share, then Start session, and send the room link. Or create a shareable link for a snapshot anyone with the link can open.
How Excalidraw is wired
Excalidraw is a single app with a volume. It runs our build of upstream Excalidraw, with the collaboration relay and the storage for rooms and links on the same instance.
- What is stored
- Encrypted room scenes, room images and shareable-link copies, as files under /data. Drawings nobody shared stay in each browser.
- Open to anyone with the URL
- There are no accounts. Anyone with the app URL can draw, start rooms and create links. Uploads have size limits, and writes stop when the volume is 95% full.
- One replica
- The collaboration relay keeps rooms in memory, so the app runs one instance. A redeploy drops live sessions for a moment; rooms reload from the volume.
- Hosted extras
- The AI diagram features and Export to Excalidraw+ rely on excalidraw.com services and do not work on a self-hosted instance.
Why run Excalidraw on StackBlaze
- Scale your appChange CPU, RAM, and replicas without a rebuild, or let autoscaling add replicas when CPU climbs.
- Git-based CI/CDPush to GitHub and it builds and ships. Pull requests get their own preview URL on Pro and Business.
- One-click rollbackA deploy went wrong? Go back to any previous successful deploy.
- Environments built inProduction, staging, and dev as separate environments in one project, each with its own URL.
- Built-in observabilityCPU, memory, and response time per app, live logs with search, and alerts to Slack, Discord, or a webhook.
- Developer-first toolsA CLI and Stack MCP: deploy, read logs, and wire services from your terminal or your AI assistant.
- Built for teamsInvite teammates with roles. An audit log records who changed what.
- Managed Postgres with HAPostgres is run for you. Turn on high availability for a three-node cluster when the app needs it.
Common questions about Excalidraw
Do I need to create an account?
No. Excalidraw has no accounts or sign-in. Open the app URL and start drawing. Anyone you give the URL to can do the same.
Who can see my drawings?
A drawing you have not shared stays in your browser. Rooms and shareable links are encrypted in the browser, and the key is in the link after #, which the server never receives. Only people with the link can open them.
Does live collaboration use excalidraw.com?
No. The relay that passes edits between people, and the storage for rooms, images and shareable links, run inside your app. The stock Excalidraw image sends these to excalidraw.com, which does not accept other sites.
Where are my drawings saved?
Your own drawings are saved in your browser’s storage, so save important ones to a file from the menu. Rooms and shareable links are saved on the app’s 2 GB volume and survive a redeploy.
Do the AI features work?
No. Text to diagram and Wireframe to code call excalidraw.com’s AI service, which only answers excalidraw.com. Mermaid to Excalidraw works, because it runs in the browser.
Can I use my own domain?
Yes. Attach a custom domain from the dashboard. Room and share links then use your domain. Custom domains
What does it cost?
You pay for the compute, storage and bandwidth Excalidraw uses, not per seat or per board. Pricing
