Documenso

6.0k 741

01 May, 2024

TypeScript

What is Documenso

Documenso is the Open Source DocuSign Alternative.

Signing documents digitally should be fast and easy and should be the best practice for every document signed worldwide.

This is technically quite easy today, but it also introduces a new party to every signature: The signing tool providers. While this is not a problem in itself, it should make us think about how we want these providers of trust to work.

Documenso aims to be the world’s most trusted document-signing tool. This trust is built by empowering you to self-host Documenso and review how it works under the hood.

Join us in creating the next generation of open trust infrastructure.

Local Development

Requirements

To run Documenso locally, you will need

Node.js
Postgres SQL Database
Docker (optional)

Developer Quickstart

Note: This is a quickstart for developers. It assumes that you have both docker and docker-compose installed on your machine.

Want to get up and running quickly? Follow these steps:

Fork this repository to your GitHub account.

After forking the repository, clone it to your local device by using the following command:

git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/documenso

Set up your .env file using the recommendations in the .env.example file. Alternatively, just run cp .env.example .env to get started with our handpicked defaults.
Run npm run dx in the root directory
- This will spin up a postgres database and inbucket mailserver in a docker container.
Run npm run dev in the root directory
Want it even faster? Just use

npm run d

Access Points for Your Application

App - http://localhost:3000
Incoming Mail Access - http://localhost:9000
Database Connection Details
- Port: 54320
- Connection: Use your favorite database client to connect using the provided port.
S3 Storage Dashboard - http://localhost:9001

Developer Setup

Manual Setup

Follow these steps to setup Documenso on your local machine:

Fork this repository to your GitHub account.

After forking the repository, clone it to your local device by using the following command:

git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/documenso

Run npm i in the root directory
Create your .env from the .env.example. You can use cp .env.example .env to get started with our handpicked defaults.
Set the following environment variables:
- NEXTAUTH_URL
- NEXTAUTH_SECRET
- NEXT_PUBLIC_WEBAPP_URL
- NEXT_PUBLIC_MARKETING_URL
- NEXT_PRIVATE_DATABASE_URL
- NEXT_PRIVATE_DIRECT_DATABASE_URL
- NEXT_PRIVATE_SMTP_FROM_NAME
- NEXT_PRIVATE_SMTP_FROM_ADDRESS
Create the database schema by running npm run prisma:migrate-dev
Run npm run dev in the root directory to start
Register a new user at http://localhost:3000/signup

Optional: Seed the database using npm run prisma:seed -w @documenso/prisma to create a test user and document.
Optional: Create your own signing certificate.
- To generate your own using these steps and a Linux Terminal or Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), see Create your own signing certificate.

Run in Gitpod

Click below to launch a ready-to-use Gitpod workspace in your browser.

Run in DevContainer

We support DevContainers for VSCode. Click here to get started.

Video walkthrough

If you’re a visual learner and prefer to watch a video walkthrough of setting up Documenso locally, check out this video:

Docker

🚧 Docker containers and images are current in progress. We are actively working on bringing a simple Docker build and publish pipeline for Documenso.

Self Hosting

We support a variety of deployment methods, and are actively working on adding more. Stay tuned for updates!

Please note that the below deployment methods are for v0.9, we will update these to v1.0 once it has been released.

Fetch, configure, and build

First, clone the code from Github:

git clone https://github.com/documenso/documenso.git

Then, inside the documenso folder, copy the example env file:

cp .env.example .env

The following environment variables must be set:

NEXTAUTH_URL
NEXTAUTH_SECRET
NEXT_PUBLIC_WEBAPP_URL
NEXT_PUBLIC_MARKETING_URL
NEXT_PRIVATE_DATABASE_URL
NEXT_PRIVATE_DIRECT_DATABASE_URL
NEXT_PRIVATE_SMTP_FROM_NAME
NEXT_PRIVATE_SMTP_FROM_ADDRESS

If you are using a reverse proxy in front of Documenso, don’t forget to provide the public URL for both NEXTAUTH_URL and NEXT_PUBLIC_WEBAPP_URL variables!

Now you can install the dependencies and build it:

npm i
npm run build:web
npm run prisma:migrate-deploy

Finally, you can start it with:

npm run start

This will start the server on localhost:3000. For now, any reverse proxy can then do the frontend and SSL termination.

If you want to run with another port than 3000, you can start the application with next -p <ANY PORT> from the apps/web folder.

Run as a service

You can use a systemd service file to run the app. Here is a simple example of the service running on port 3500 (using 3000 by default):

[Unit]
Description=documenso
After=network.target

[Service]
Environment=PATH=/path/to/your/node/binaries
Type=simple
User=www-data
WorkingDirectory=/var/www/documenso/apps/web
ExecStart=/usr/bin/next start -p 3500
TimeoutSec=15
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Railway

Render

Koyeb

Troubleshooting

I’m not receiving any emails when using the developer quickstart.

When using the developer quickstart, an Inbucket server will be spun up in a docker container that will store all outgoing emails locally for you to view.

The Web UI can be found at http://localhost:9000, while the SMTP port will be on localhost:2500.

Support IPv6

If you are deploying to a cluster that uses only IPv6, You can use a custom command to pass a parameter to the Next.js start command

For local docker run

docker run -it documenso:latest npm run start -- -H ::

For k8s or docker-compose

containers:
  - name: documenso
    image: documenso:latest
    imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
    command:
      - npm
    args:
      - run
      - start
      - --
      - -H
      - '::'