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