I just do not know, whether you have read about ETHERPAD LITE
https://github.com/Pita/etherpad-lite/wiki
It needs only a fraction of the resources of Etherpad.
Etherpad vs Etherpad Lite
Etherpad
Etherpad Lite
Size of the folder (without git history) 30 MB 1.5 MB
Languages used server side Javascript (Rhino), Java, Scala
Javascript (node.js)
Lines of server side Javascript code ~101k ~9k
RAM Usage immediately after start 257 MB (grows to ~1GB) 16 MB
(grows to ~30MB)
I like this:
"The Etherpad Lite jQuery plugin
<https://github.com/johnyma22/etherpad-lite-jquery-plugin> easily allows
you to add a pad from Etherpad in a web page. It injects the pad
contents into a div using iframes."
Tom