Immich Hosting

How Immich works

Immich receives photos and videos from its mobile application, browser uploads, command-line imports, or external libraries. Mobile backup can watch selected device albums and send new media to the server, while checksum checks help avoid uploading files that are already present. The server then creates records, thumbnails, previews, and other derived data for browsing.

Assets appear in a timeline and can be organised into albums or shared with other users on the same installation. Public links provide another way to share selected media. Search filters can use details such as dates, locations, albums, and recognised people, giving users several routes to find an image without knowing its file name.

Key Immich features

Mobile backup is central to the experience. Users choose which device albums to include, and supported mobile behaviour can upload new photos and videos when the app is active or permitted to work in the background. A free-space tool can remove local copies after successful backup, but the server should not be treated as the only copy of important memories.

Sharing covers private albums between instance users, partner library access, and public links with configurable controls. Search and media processing add convenience, while machine-learning work and thumbnail generation create background load after large imports.

Immich vs Google Photos

Immich stores the library on infrastructure selected by the owner and exposes a self-hosted web and mobile experience. Google Photos is a managed cloud photo library tied to Google Accounts and storage shared with services such as Drive and Gmail. Both organise and share media, but operational responsibility sits in different places.

Google Photos may suit users who want automatic mobile backup, access across signed-in devices, provider-managed storage, and no photo-server administration. Immich is more attractive when control over the server and stored originals matters, but that control also brings responsibility for capacity planning, backups, updates, and checking mobile behaviour after changes.

Who uses Immich

Families use Immich as a shared private photo library with separate accounts and albums. Photographers can browse personal archives from different devices, while technical users adopt it as a self-hosted alternative to a consumer photo cloud. It is also useful for consolidating media from several phones into one searchable location.

The application is a poor fit for users who do not want to manage storage growth or maintain another copy of their originals. A large video collection can consume capacity rapidly, and initial indexing may require more processing than routine daily uploads.

Self-hosting Immich: requirements and cost

Storage is the main long-term constraint for Immich, while imports, thumbnail creation, video processing, and machine-learning jobs create bursts of processor and memory use. The catalogue deployment includes PostgreSQL, a cache service, and a machine-learning component, so the complete stack needs more headroom than the application-only RAM figure.

AvaHost maps Immich to Plan 4 at €20 for the complete multi-container stack. Its mapped starting configuration provides 100 GB for this storage-driven application. PostgreSQL is provisioned with the stack but remains unmanaged by AvaHost. Immich hosting includes one-click setup, automatic application updates, scheduled backups, custom-domain support, and automated HTTPS. Users should still keep an independent copy of irreplaceable originals.