11 days ago
Hey Railway team 
,
I really like the idea of templates — they’re exactly what I need to help me spin up projects faster. However, for the category "Starters", the current “eject template” flow feels unintuitive, especially when using templates as starter projects. I think this is one of the most valuable use cases outside of deploying databases and 1-click installs like WordPress. Sometimes I want something "quick", which is exactly what a starter template provides.
I am specifically talking about:
https://railway.com/deploy?category=Starters
A few points of friction I’ve noticed:
Unclear code origin: When deploying from a template, it’s unclear what code I’m deploying. There’s no prominent link to the original repository before deploying; only after I deployed and opened the project.
Ejecting feels hidden: The “eject template” button is buried in a weird spot and doesn’t feel like a natural part of the flow. It confused me so much while trying to make some templates that I included it in the description of my starter templates.
Ejecting should be the default: Starter templates are meant to be ejected into your own codebase to iterate more quickly. I don't think there is a starter template that one would deploy and no longer touch.
Suggestions:
Please make the origin repo link more visible before and right after template deployment so that I can inspect the source immediately.
Treat ejecting as the default for starter templates. Maybe just a prompt: “Do you want to fork this to your own repo?”. Ideally, while also creating a new repository.
This would make templates much more usable as real starting points, not just demo deployments.
So far, I’m enjoying Railway a lot—thanks for listening, and keep up the great work. I can totally see Railway becoming a much bigger player if it leans into being a "get it done" marketplace, especially compared to how slow and bloated bigger platforms like GCP, AWS and Azure feel.
No promises tho, but I can feel something is brewing here...
0 Threads mention this feature
2 Replies
11 days ago
Ejecting should be the default
I personally think that the goal of a template is to be deployable, without touching it. All of my templates are meant to function like that.
Ideally, while also creating a new GitHub repository
Many, many templates aren't based off of GitHub at all. I would definitely not want this behavior.
loudbook
Ejecting should be the defaultI personally think that the goal of a template is to be deployable, without touching it. All of my templates are meant to function like that.Ideally, while also creating a new GitHub repositoryMany, many templates aren't based off of GitHub at all. I would definitely not want this behavior.
11 days ago
I'm not saying all templates, but specific the category "Starter templates", maybe I need to make that more clear in my description.
For example: https://railway.com/deploy/node-js
Or check: https://railway.com/deploy?category=Starters
I can get that Github is too specific.
But I do want to have the link to whatever is going to be deploying if it's a starter template.
The purpose of most starter templates is to get something to build upon.
EDIT: I've updated the description by removing Github repo specific, and I've clarified that I'm talking about the category starters.
