OpenClaw on Railway

The docs call Railway the easiest path with no terminal on the server: Railway runs the Gateway for you from a one-click template, and you reach it through the web Control UI. The whole setup is a volume, four variables and a networking toggle. Here is the sequence, what you get at the end, how a channel is connected without a shell, and the backup command that also works from Railway’s own shell.

The steps

• Deploy the template, then attach a volume mounted at the data path, which the docs mark as required for persistent state.
• Set the variables: the Gateway port, which must match the port in public networking; the Gateway token, treated as an admin secret; the state directory and the workspace directory, both under the volume.
• Enable the HTTP proxy under public networking on that port.
• Find the public domain in the service settings, generated or custom, open the openclaw path on it, and connect with the shared secret; the template uses the token by default, or a password if you switch auth.

This is the easiest "no terminal on the server" path: Railway runs the Gateway for you.

What you get

A hosted Gateway with the Control UI, and persistent storage on the volume, so the config file, the shared and per-agent auth stores, channel and provider state, sessions and the workspace all survive redeploys. From Railway’s shell the read-only doctor preflight with JSON output confirms the deployment.

Channels and backups

• Connect a channel from the Control UI at the openclaw path, or run onboarding through Railway’s shell for the channel instructions; the docs call Telegram the fastest, since it is just a bot token.
• The backup command exports state, config, auth profiles and the workspace; restore verifies and extracts into a fresh staging directory, with activation a separate offline step.
• Keep it updated the same way any other install is, through the updating page the docs link.

OpenClaw on Telegram is the first channel the docs suggest, and OpenClaw backup and restore the archive that moves an instance elsewhere.

What one click does not do

It runs the Gateway, and that is all: the model bill, the channel policies, the pairing approvals, the token and the updates are still yours, which is the same list as every other one-click host. OpenClaw alternatives sets that list beside the other ways to run OpenClaw.

On Diali

Diali is the managed end of that spectrum: the template is replaced by an instance per assistant, the token by a dashboard session, and the updates by a release we test first. Hosted OpenClaw on Diali is the assistant and One-click hosts compared sets one-click hosts beside it.

• Template, volume, four variables, public networking.
• The Control UI at the openclaw path with the shared secret.
• State survives redeploys on the volume.