Introduction

Railbase is a single Go binary you self-host. It gives you a production-grade backend — auth, a typed data layer, REST + realtime APIs, jobs, an admin console — out of one executable with no external database to operate.

The core is free to download and run. The capabilities that turn it into a product — accounting, inventory, procurement, helpdesk, and so on — are plugins: paid subscriptions you buy and install at runtime from a marketplace built into the admin. There is no rebuild and no third-party code to vet; the core pulls a signed, licensed artifact and runs it.

The three pieces

Piece	What it is	Who runs it
Railbase core	The free single binary you download and host	You
Plugins	Paid, signed add-ons installed at runtime	You (bought via the marketplace)
railbase.app	The vendor's licensing, distribution & billing server	The vendor (this site)

You run the core. railbase.app is the source of truth for the catalog, prices, your licenses, and payments — your instance syncs with it to discover plugins, complete purchases, fetch signed artifacts, and keep licenses fresh. You never download a plugin file by hand, and your server never stores card data.

What you'll find in these docs

• Quickstart — download, run, and install your first plugin in a few minutes.
• Core Concepts — the architecture, how plugins work, and licensing & seats.
• Guides — day-to-day tasks like installing plugins and managing billing.
• Self-Hosting — deploying, backups, and security for production.
• Reference — the CLI and environment variables.

What Railbase is not