A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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Why is this even a point of discussion? Immich, period. It's like people NEED to make it more difficult and laborious than it has to be.
I would have said exactly the same, but about PhotoPrism. Funny how perspectives differ.
One more vote for Immich. While I don't like how it's not easy to create albums from existing folder structures out of the box, the search and face recognition is amazing for a free self hosted app.
Does anyone know if any of these systems will interpret a Google takeout export from Photos? The data separation is brutal, I haven't found something to pull it together yet.
It wasn't mentioned in the list, but I like Photoview; it uses your existing file structure (rather than its own structure or a database), works with read-only access, accepts external syncing like Syncthing, and can handle multiple users. Not sure how it compares on features, but I just wanted something basic anyways, so I'm happy with it.
iCloud /s
The short description seems to be written by a LLM, why?
Tl;dr:
Immich's AI search is so much better than PhotoPrism
It’s true. I uploaded a nude out of curiosity. I then searched “Penis”. It found my penis. Now if only my wife could too. 10/10 Immich best self hosted google photos replacement.
Lol
I'm sold!
It's even better than Google's in some regards.
I have experience with both Ente and Immich and I can say they are both excellent. I like Ente a little bit more, but Immich is imho better for selfhosting (both are easy to self host). What I like about Immich in that regard is that it keeps photos organized as files too, they can be categorized in folders (like year > month > day and its customizable). I just want to have an option to have access to the files directly on the filesystem and if (big if) Immich dies, I still have my photos accessible and organized in directories without me needing to do anything. Ente uses s3 storage system.
Apart from me maybe thinking immich should have built in backup tools, I’ve very much found it met my needs.
I have a docker compose immich that I somehow managed to kill fourteen minutes after convincing my wife to switch to it.
Welcom to the world of self-hosting :-D
Oh yeah, I've killed mine a couple times. Usually it's because I didn't keep it updated and jumped too far ahead too quickly. Rolling it back and walking it forward fixed it for me once, another time there was something I was supposed to run first and I didn't read the release notes (that one was a really long time ago though).
Every part of what you just said can be encapsulated in proper packaging so you don't even need to care -- about pre/post upgrades, or even dependencies and checks before it starts.
The lack of a proper release is the absolute only thing keeping me from using it.
its not beta anymore since 2.0
I tried Photoprism, Ente and Immich.
Immich is by far the best. It has got an app that really does what it should do, has an AI that actually works and is easy to host and to update.
Last I tried Immich its background upload was horrible.
Some of that is definitely iOS being bad, but other apps at least semi-worked when Immich didn’t at all.
I might try it again, though. See if it’s improved.
When I used iOS, background upload seemed to work okay. On both iOS and Android, though, I occasionally go into the app to manually backup since both like to kill background processes to save on battery life.
They mentioned "better background backups" as a enhancement as since version 1.141.1 which was released on 9/8/2025. Personally I just started testing it after v2.0 so I'm not sure how bad it was previously but have not seen any significant issues with backup.
Immich + a backup solution of your choice. If it's worth saving, it's worth backing up. Try to follow 321 as much as possible, but having at least a second copy is a good start.
Anyone with Nextcloud Memories setup? I've read it's the only one that still respects a sane files and folders setup, whereas the other options basically force you to forever use their database-based system and files are terribly organized, so you are forced to use their interface.
whereas the other options basically force you to forever use their database-based system and files are terribly organized, so you are forced to use their interface.
Immich has a "storage templates" section which allows you to choose a folder structure that it will use to store the files in.
Or go the other way and include your folders as external libraries.
"external library" is the way
Since I would recommend everyone 3-2-1. I have both a good structured photobackup AND immich.
Another vote for immich here, works great and let's me shade albums with other accounts on my server.
I started using photoprism. But their viewer doesn't show my 3D side by side stereo photos. Immich brings a better viewer that gets out of the way and it also has multiple users. The immich multiple user accounts function a bit weird. My family photos need to be shared as external libraries while our phone photos cannot be shared unless you share accounts. They did some decisions around handling multiple users that is not fabulous. I used photoprism for awhile but just a few months on immich I can tell its going to be a better experience.
Comparison of self hosted photo library https://github.com/meichthys/foss_photo_libraries
Wow these all sound so much better than Proton's photo backup. In the words of @mhzawadi@lemmy.horwood.cloud , it's pants.
Proton reinventing the wheel is so stupid.
They should use what's out there and improve it. Like including simplelogin. They should use immich, make it private, and include it in their setup. They even suck for calendar. You can't integrate it anywhere. Integrating email is difficult as well. They want to become the next tech silo. I am somewhat stuck with them for now but I may move to tuta if I can
Honestly I would be ok with then being the next tech silo. If they just actually did a good job more often.
They perpetually suffer from 6 outta 10 syndrome.
They are good enough to use, better then most alternatives, but just suck enough that I'm always disappointed but not angry.
I use nextcloud, the builtin photos app is pants. But memories is amzing
I'm super happy with self hosted Ente. It was really simple to setup, mobile app is perfect and local ML works great. I can recommend!
I selfhost immich in a netcup VPS. They have a 2tb VM for about 22 euros a month via a black Friday sale
I'm on a 1tb arm plan for about 10 euros a month.