Open-source design editor Doory offers free exports and self-hosting as a Canva alternative

Doory, an open-source design editor that runs entirely in the browser, reached Hacker News's front page this week via its GitHub repository. The project pitches itself as a Canva alternative where every feature is free — no Pro tier, no locked templates, no watermarks — and where the whole service, including real-time collaboration, can run on a server you control.

What the editor covers

According to the project's README, Doory handles posters, social posts, stories, slides, invitations, resumes, thumbnails and business cards. Editing is layer-based: every object can be renamed, locked, hidden, reordered by dragging, grouped, masked and filtered, with alignment guides, snapping, rulers, multi-page designs that can mix pages of different sizes, and a magic-resize feature.

Text support includes headings, curved text, text effects, font pairings, bulleted and numbered lists, an open-licensed font catalogue and uploaded fonts. The elements library is claimed to hold roughly 25,000 icons, emoji, illustrations, stickers and QR codes. Photos can be cropped, masked and filtered, and the README says one-click background removal runs its model inside the browser rather than calling a third-party service. Stock photo search exists, but requires you to supply your own Unsplash or Pexels API key.

Motion, sound and presenting

The editor also targets animated and presentation work: a timeline carries 27 enter-and-exit animations, 12 emphasis effects and 16 page transitions, backed by a built-in CC0 library of 24 music loops and 88 sound effects, plus voiceover recording with trims and fades. Present mode adds speaker notes, timing, auto-advance, a laser pointer and a second presenter window.

Exports happen in the browser: PNG with transparency, JPG, SVG and PDF, plus MP4, WebM and animated GIF. Print-ready PDFs with bleed and crop marks are supported, and server-side PDF export can be enabled by installing a headless Chromium instance.

Self-hosting and the stack

Deployment is a Docker Compose setup that the README says runs the web app, API, PostgreSQL database and live collaboration under one command, followed by management commands that seed templates, fonts, elements, audio and the background-removal model, since a fresh install starts empty. Configuration lives in an environment file covering the site URL, allowed hosts, TLS settings, SMTP, Google sign-in, S3-compatible storage and the published port.

The browser side is built with React 19, TypeScript, Vite, Fabric.js, Yjs and Zustand; the server side with Django 5, Django REST Framework, Channels and PostgreSQL, with nginx and optional Redis in the Compose stack.

Accounts, templates and licensing

Guests can design without an account, with their work stored locally in the browser; creating an account moves those designs to the server in one step and unlocks sharing and brand kits. Share links can grant view, comment or edit access, optionally password protected, with pinned comments, version history and real-time co-editing with live cursors.

The template library is deliberately minimal — ten editable starter templates, ranging from a gig poster to a pitch deck, with admins able to add their own — a sharp contrast with Canva's catalogue. The licence also deserves a read before deployment: the README states the tool can be used commercially and hosted for other users, provided the licence and NOTICE files are kept and the author is credited within the running app.

Why it matters

Canva's free tier has long gated features such as background removal and video export behind paid plans. Doory's claim — every tool free, files on infrastructure you control — speaks directly to schools, non-profits and organisations with data-residency requirements, and self-hosting removes vendor lock-in from a tool category that is almost entirely cloud-hosted. The trade-offs are real: a ten-template library, a young codebase whose claims come from its own documentation, and an attribution requirement that may not suit every deployment. But as an open-source canvas editor combining layout, photo editing, animation, audio, collaboration and print output in one self-hostable package, it is a credible entry in a category where open alternatives have historically lagged far behind commercial products.