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Nityam Sheth
Nityam Sheth

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I built my own S3 for $5/mo Shared Hosting (because no one else did)

#aws #php #sideprojects #testing

The Problem: S3 is expensive, and MinIO needs VPS

I was looking for a way to have S3-compatible object storage without paying AWS/Cloudflare/Backblaze fees, and specifically, I wanted to run it on the cheap Shared Hosting (cPanel) plan I already pay for.

The problem?

  1. MinIO requires a binary/Docker (can't run on shared hosting).
  2. LocalStack is for testing, not storage.
  3. Existing PHP scripts were either 10 years old, unmaintained, or didn't support the S3 API properly.

I wanted something I could just FTP upload, create a MySQL database, and boom—my own personal S3 bucket.

The Solution: Lite-S3

Since it didn't exist, I built it (with a lot of help from AI agents).

Lite-S3 is a pure PHP implementation of an S3-compatible server.

What it does:

  • ✅ S3 API Compatible: Works with AWS SDK, boto3, rclone, etc.
  • ✅ Shared Hosting Friendly: Runs on standard PHP 8.0+ and MySQL (cPanel, Plesk).
  • ✅ Multi-User: Create users with their own Access/Secret keys.
  • ✅ Permissions: Read/Write/Admin access controls per bucket.
  • ✅ Large Files: Supports 5GB+ uploads (using PHP streams).
  • ✅ Admin UI: A clean dashboard to manage everything.

How it works (The Technical Part)

It maps S3 API calls to PHP functions.

  1. Authentication: It verifies standard AWS Signature v4 headers against credentials stored in MySQL. This was the hardest part to get right in PHP!
  2. Routing: A simple .htaccess routes specific S3 paths (/bucket/key) to the handler.
  3. Storage: Files are stored as plain flat files on the disk. This means you can easily FTP in and backup your data; it's not locked in a proprietary format.
  4. Multipart Uploads: It implements the full S3 multipart upload flow (Initiate -> Upload Part -> Complete) to handle large files without hitting PHP memory limits.

Is it 100% S3 Compatible?

Honest answer: No.

It implements the Core CRUD operations that 95% of apps use:

  • PutObject (Upload)
  • GetObject (Download)
  • DeleteObject
  • ListObjectsV2
  • CreateBucket / DeleteBucket

It missing things like:

  • Object Versioning
  • Range Requests (seeking in video)
  • Object-level ACLs (permissions are per-bucket)

But for "I need a place to dump my backups/images via API," it works perfectly.

Try it out

It's fully open source (GPLv3) and I'd love for people to test it on their cheap hosting plans and break it.

🔗 GitHub Repo: nityam2007/lite-s3

(Note: This project was heavily assisted by AI coding agents, which helped me sanity check the AWS Signature logic and build the UI quickly. We live in the future!)

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