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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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.
I haven't used immich in a while, but ente felt like the more mature product when I was evaluating the two.
It feels quite equal now that immich is stable. I was actually waiting for that, because I knew the updates before the stable release were sometimes painful and I didn't want to do that on my production env. 😀
Apart from me maybe thinking immich should have built in backup tools, I’ve very much found it met my needs.
Personally I host all this kind of stuff using containers, only mounting the folders that need backing up. Then I just back up all my podman volumes. It's pretty nice not depending on any tools that have to be maintained or anything like that.
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.
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.
Do you conbect to your immich instance remotely when not home or just dump the photos once home?
I've got Wireguard running. As soon I am on wifi, my phone uploads the new pictures.
I use nextcloud as a general drive, where I also upload photos automatically. Then I just mount the images folder in my immich container.
Tailscale with a subnet router running for my home network makes it so that I can just connect to 192.168.50.57 from wherever I like.
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.
What do you use for 3-2-1? I try, so far I have my phone, backed up to a server HDD via SMB (Too poor for RAID-1 atm), and the very important stuff sent to a USB drive and returned to a drawer. Am I doing it right haha
Couple of considerations for you.
Is it a backup or a sync? Sync will sync your deletes and corrupted data.
It's ideal that you have your USB offsite.
I use restic and have a repo on a USB and a repo on AWS S3
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.
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.
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.
Proton services generally are not bad, but I could never use Proton Drive for anything else than mid to long term backups, because they don't have it integrated with Linux. I am not angry though, it is what it is and I am only in the niche (even-though Linux is the best OS for privacy). Ever since I have setup my Truenas (and Immich) I find myself caring even less about not being able to use Proton drive 😀 That said, once they have integration I want to use it for a few files.
I may move to tuta if I can
I'm with tuta but in term of integrability I don't feel there is a huge difference...
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.
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!
Plus thanks to built in replication, my photos are securely stored in three diferent places
I use nextcloud, the builtin photos app is pants. But memories is amzing
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.