Typebot

Why deploy Typebot on Render?

Typebot is an open-source visual chatbot builder that lets you design conversational flows through a drag-and-drop editor and deploy them via embeds, APIs, and webhooks. It solves the problem of building and hosting chatbots without writing custom code, while letting you self-host the application and retain full control of your data in your own database.

This template wires up Typebot's split builder/viewer architecture as two Docker-based web services against a managed Render Postgres instance—and handles the parts that usually break a manual setup: it generates the encryption key for stored credentials, cross-injects each service's public URL into the other so embeds and the chat API resolve correctly, and runs prisma migrate deploy on boot. Instead of hand-provisioning a database, managing migration order, and reconciling two services' env vars, you click Deploy, supply your SMTP credentials and admin email, and both services come up connected. Version upgrades are a one-line tag change in render.yaml—push it and the Blueprint redeploys the builder and viewer together.

Architecture

What you can build

You'll have a self-hosted Typebot instance where you can visually build chatbots, publish them, and embed them on your own sites, with all bot definitions, responses, and user data stored in a Postgres database you control. The editor runs separately from the public-facing viewer that serves your live bots and handles the chat API embeds call, and sign-in works over your own SMTP provider using email magic links. From there you can connect blocks like OpenAI, Google Sheets, and Zapier, and invite teammates to an unlimited workspace.

Key features

• Split builder/viewer services: Deploys separate typebot-builder (editor and API) and typebot-viewer (serves published bots) web services that share one Postgres database.
• Pinned Docker images: Both services pull official baptistearno/typebot-* images at a pinned 3.19.1 tag, so upgrades are done by changing the tag in render.yaml and pushing.
• Automatic encryption key handling: Generates a shared ENCRYPTION_SEED once and exports its first 32 characters as the required ENCRYPTION_SECRET on both services at start.
• Auto-wired service config: On Apply, Render provisions the database, generates the encryption key, and injects each service's public URL (NEXTAUTH_URL, NEXT_PUBLIC_VIEWER_URL) into the other.
• Boot-time DB migrations: The builder runs prisma migrate deploy on startup, so schema migrations are applied automatically before the app starts.

Use cases

• Startup founder builds a lead-qualification chatbot embedded on the marketing site
• Support team deploys a self-hosted FAQ bot keeping customer data private
• Marketer launches a quiz funnel capturing responses in their own Postgres
• Developer embeds an OpenAI-powered onboarding bot with webhooks into Sheets

What's included

Prerequisites

• Admin Email: The email address that will receive an unlimited workspace and be used to sign in to the Typebot builder.
• SMTP Host: The hostname of your SMTP email provider used to send sign-in links and notifications.
• SMTP Username: The username for authenticating with your SMTP email provider.
• SMTP Password: The password or API key for authenticating with your SMTP email provider.
• SMTP From Address: The sender name and email address shown on outgoing emails, e.g. 'Typebot' typebot@example.com.

Next steps

1. Open the typebot-builder URL, enter your ADMIN_EMAIL, and click the sign-in link in your inbox — You should land in an unlimited workspace dashboard; if no email arrives, check the SMTP values and logs on typebot-builder
2. Build a simple bot in the editor and click Publish, then open the generated share link — The bot should load and respond from the typebot-viewer URL (NEXT_PUBLIC_VIEWER_URL), confirming the builder and viewer share the same encryption key
3. Test a chat on the published bot and then open the Results tab in the builder — The submitted answers should appear there within a few seconds, confirming both services are reading and writing to typebot-db

Resources

• Typebot official site