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Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

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Immich Has a Free Photo Backup Platform — Self-Hosted Google Photos Alternative

Immich is a self-hosted photo and video backup solution — Google Photos experience on your own server.

What You Get for Free

  • Auto backup — mobile app auto-uploads photos and videos
  • ML features — face recognition, object detection, CLIP search
  • Timeline — scroll through photos by date
  • Albums — create and share albums with links
  • Maps — view photos on a map by GPS location
  • Search — search by face, object, location, date
  • Partner sharing — share libraries with family
  • External libraries — index existing photo folders
  • Mobile apps — iOS and Android with background backup
  • RAW support — view and manage RAW photo files

Quick Start

# docker-compose.yml from immich docs
docker compose up -d
# Open http://localhost:2283
# Install mobile app → point to your server → enable auto-backup
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Why Developers Switch from Google Photos

Google Photos has a 15GB limit and uses your data for training:

  • Unlimited storage — limited only by your disk
  • Privacy — your photos never leave your server
  • No compression — store originals, not compressed copies
  • ML on-device — face recognition runs locally

A family hit Google Photos' 15GB limit and faced $3/month for 100GB. After Immich on a $10/month VPS with 1TB: unlimited photos, same mobile experience, faces and search work, complete privacy.

Need Custom Data Solutions?

I build production-grade scrapers and data pipelines for startups, agencies, and research teams.

Browse 88+ ready-made scrapers on Apify → — Reddit, HN, LinkedIn, Google, Amazon, and more.

Custom project? Email me: spinov001@gmail.com — fast turnaround, fair pricing.

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