English
Lychee Hosting
Manage and share photo collections through an elegant gallery with albums and permissions.
No setup fees-
One click deploy -
2 GB RAM Memory needed -
25 GB Disk Space Needed -
From 5 € Price
Official links
Lychee’s official links and original website
Lychee Website
More
Tech
- Docker image
- lycheeorg/lychee:latest
- Default port
- 8000
- Database
- mariadb
How Lychee works
Lychee receives photographs through its web interface or supported import paths and stores their records in MariaDB. Administrators arrange images into albums, apply tags, edit titles or descriptions, and use captured metadata such as dates and camera information to understand the library. Public or protected sharing makes selected albums available without exposing the complete administration area.
The application generates browser-friendly views around original files and can present individual images, album collections, and searchable metadata. It is designed as a gallery manager rather than a phone backup service, so the operator remains responsible for deciding how originals reach the hosted storage and for keeping an independent copy of valuable photographs.
Key Lychee features
Album organisation keeps related events or projects together, while tags allow one image to appear in several thematic searches. Visibility controls separate private material from albums intended for clients, friends, or public visitors. Metadata editing helps correct titles, dates, descriptions, and location-related information when the source files are incomplete.
Import and batch-management functions reduce repeated work across larger collections. Gallery appearance and supported extension options can change over time, so themes or plugins should be evaluated against the installed release rather than assumed to be part of the default catalogue image.
Lychee vs Google Photos
Lychee is a self-hosted photo-management application built around an operator-controlled gallery, database, albums, and sharing rules. Google Photos is a managed consumer cloud library tied to Google Accounts, automatic mobile backup, provider-operated storage, and access across signed-in devices.
Google Photos may suit users who want mobile capture to flow into a vendor-maintained service with little infrastructure administration. Lychee is more suitable when a curated web gallery, direct hosting control, and explicit album permissions matter more than automated phone backup or the surrounding Google ecosystem.
Who uses Lychee
Photographers create client galleries, families organise event albums, and small organisations publish visual archives under their own domain. Design and marketing teams can also use it for a controlled collection of approved images when a full digital-asset platform would be excessive.
The platform is less appropriate for continuous multi-phone backup or computational photo search. Its value comes from deliberate gallery management, so upload workflows, album permissions, and the retention of original files should be planned before a large migration.
Self-hosting Lychee: requirements and cost
Original photographs and generated display files are the main capacity drivers, while imports, thumbnail creation, metadata processing, search, and concurrent browsing consume processing resources. MariaDB stores albums, users, tags, permissions, and file records. The database is included with Lychee but remains unmanaged, and its memory is outside the exported application minimum.
AvaHost maps the complete Lychee stack to Plan 3 at €10, which provides 50 GB for the storage-driven gallery. Plan 4 offers 100 GB when a larger collection needs more room. One-click setup, a custom domain, automated HTTPS, automatic application updates, and scheduled backups are included, but irreplaceable originals should also exist outside the hosted gallery.
F.A.Q
Lychee starts at €10 on Plan 3 after including headroom for its MariaDB container. The plan supplies 50 GB for originals, generated files, and application data. Import volume, image resolution, thumbnail generation, album count, and visitor activity determine whether the gallery should later move to a larger storage tier.
Measure the original collection, then allow space for future uploads, previews, thumbnails, database growth, and operational headroom. Lychee is storage-driven. Plan 3 provides 50 GB as the corrected minimum, while Plan 4 provides 100 GB for a larger library. Keep another copy of photographs that cannot be recreated.
The deployment creates MariaDB and connects Lychee to it automatically. Albums, users, tags, permissions, image records, and configuration depend on the database, while photographs occupy persistent file storage. MariaDB is included but unmanaged, so both data areas must remain aligned when considering imports, updates, exports, or recovery.
A custom domain can be attached to the Lychee interface, with automated HTTPS applied after DNS points to the hosted installation. Select the final address before sending album links to clients or relatives. Once connected, test administration, public albums, protected shares, image loading, and any saved links that reference the previous hostname.