Gonic Hosting

How Gonic works

Gonic scans supplied music folders, reads common audio tags, and exposes artists, albums, tracks, genres, search, playlists, favourites, and playback through the Subsonic API. Many independent clients can connect to the same server, and each application decides how browsing, downloads, casting, offline use, and playback controls appear. Gonic also supports podcasts and separate user preferences.

The catalogue persists application data, music, podcasts, playlists, and a cache directory. Original media is not included and must be supplied with appropriate rights. Gonic can transcode and cache audio with the available tools, but client requests, source formats, bitrates, and seeking should be tested with representative files.

Key Gonic features

Gonic supports folder browsing, tag-based browsing, multi-valued tags, multiple users, user playlists, play statistics, scrobbling integrations, and a web administration interface. Subsonic compatibility is broad but client implementations vary, so a feature shown in one player may be missing or interpreted differently in another. External Last.fm, ListenBrainz, or metadata accounts are not included.

Upstream documents the initial admin / admin credentials. The catalogue does not generate a replacement account, so administrators should use the first login only to set a strong password and review users. The server address should not be shared before that change. Library files should also remain independently backed up because the application index and cache are not substitutes for the original collection.

Gonic vs Plex

Gonic is a lightweight self-hosted Subsonic API server for personal audio, with client choice, users, playlists, podcasts, browsing, and optional transcoding. Plex offers a commercial personal-media server and managed account environment with official apps, discovery features, and optional Plex Pass services; Plexamp provides a music-focused client for Plex libraries.

Plex may fit users who want vendor-maintained clients and a wider managed media ecosystem. Gonic is attractive when a compact server and independent Subsonic applications are preferred. The operator remains responsible for metadata quality, client selection, first-login security, scans, external scrobbling accounts, and testing transcoding against the hosted image.

Who uses Gonic

Music collectors stream a tagged library to phones or desktop players, households create separate users and playlists, and enthusiasts connect audio systems through a compatible Subsonic client. Podcast support can add spoken-word subscriptions, while scrobbling integrations can send listening activity to separately configured services.

Gonic is not a music catalogue, rights service, official mobile app, or guarantee that every Subsonic client behaves the same way. Large collections benefit from consistent tags and artwork. Users should retain original audio outside derived caches, protect the administrator account, and test a full rescan before reorganising library paths.

Self-hosting Gonic: requirements and cost

Gonic resource use is driven by music volume, scan size, tags, artwork, users, simultaneous streams, playlists, podcasts, search, transcoding, cache growth, and network throughput. PostgreSQL and MariaDB are Not required in the catalogue template; Gonic uses its own local data. Direct streaming is lighter than converting several files, while a large library makes storage the principal plan consideration. Gonic is marked storage-driven in the plan mapping, so 50 GB on Plan 3 is a realistic starting point and 100 GB on Plan 4 provides more room for a large working set.

On AvaHost, Gonic uses Plan 1 at €2. The hosted Gonic package includes one-click deployment, a custom domain with automated HTTPS, automatic application updates, and scheduled backups. The package does not include music, podcasts, playback clients, scrobbling accounts, media licences, or identical behaviour across Subsonic applications. Replace the documented admin / admin credentials immediately. Validate scans, direct play, transcoding, seeking, playlists, podcasts, and cache growth with the actual formats and clients you intend to use.