I have a collection of landscape photographs that I want to display, and on the off chance that someone wants to use one, I sell the high-resolution file and a licence.
I prefer self-hosting, so I tested the main open-source locally with docker compose to see what these self-hosted photo tools have to offer.
TL;DR
There is no overall winner. The apps are built for different jobs, so I have grouped them by purpose and ordered them best to worst within each category.
Selling photos (shop-first)
- WordPress + Easy Digital Downloads – the only mature self-hosted option for selling digital files and licences properly. The gallery is whatever you build in the theme.
- PicPeak – the strongest client/event delivery platform, with optional priced galleries and card checkout through Snipcart. Excellent client workflow.
Public portfolio galleries (display-first)
- Lychee – clean, fast and light. Watermarking is a paid Supporter Edition feature. No commerce.
- Piwigo – mature and themeable, with built-in resizing and watermarking. The admin and themes feel dated, and checkout is a dated PayPal plugin.
- Zenphoto – a media CMS with solid built-in resizing and watermarking. Old-school admin, no HEIC out of the box, and no commerce.
- Chevereto – the ideal solution if you want a multi-tenant platform like tumblr.
Personal and family photo libraries
- Immich – the best self-hosted Google Photos replacement: mobile backup, multi-user, faces, OCR and smart search. PostgreSQL only, and heavy.
- PhotoPrism – excellent AI labelling and search, but a library rather than a portfolio. PostgreSQL is experimental, preview builds only.
Folder-first archives and studio tools
- Photoview – a folder-based gallery with multiple users and share links. No public site, watermarking or commerce.
- Lumio – a filesystem-first catalogue with a genuinely good non-destructive editor and public share links. Single owner, experimental, and no licence file.
The web apps
All apps were tested using their Docker Compose setup.
Some apps were skipped because they require payment (they may still be good and fit for purpose): Symbiostock, Sunshine Photo Cart, Backlight 6 and Photopress.
WordPress + Easy Digital Downloads
- The most complete self-hosted route for selling digital files and licences.
- Built with PHP; requires MySQL or MariaDB.
- Single site, but multi-user accounts are possible.
- Display is not included: you need a theme and gallery patterns. Requires customisation.
- Easy Digital Downloads plugin handles products, cart, checkout, licence acceptance and tokenised delivery. Manual bank transfer needs a small custom gateway.
- Many plugins and integrations, which is both the strength and the maintenance cost.
Best for: selling high-resolution files and licences, especially with manual EFT.
Watch out: the gallery experience is only as good as the theme you build.
PicPeak
- Self-hosted client and event gallery platform, with a public landing page and CMS pages.
- Built with Node.js and Express; React and Tailwind on the front end.
- SQLite in the all-in-one image, or PostgreSQL in the full stack.
- Per-event galleries with expiry, passwords, downloads and guest uploads.
- A priced gallery can use a tiled watermark and Snipcart checkout, then email the clean originals.
- The public landing page and CMS pages are static content; you cannot embed a gallery grid inside them. Requires tedious work.
- CRM and accounting (quotes, contracts, invoices, expenses) are beta and off by default.
Best for: client/event delivery, with card-based photo sales as an add-on.
Watch out: Snipcart is a third-party, card-only checkout. There is no manual EFT.
Chevereto
- Build your own Flickr/Imgur-style media-sharing platform.
- Built with PHP and Laravel.
- Requires MySQL or MariaDB.
- Multi-user by default; true multi-tenancy is optional.
- No HEIC support.
- Can strip EXIF metadata on upload.
- Supports video.
- No cart. “Stores” are album-level links to an external payment page.
Best for: the best-looking public gallery and community-style sharing.
Watch out: it is a media host, not a shop.
Lychee
- Photo-management tool that can act as a public gallery for a photographer.
- Built with PHP and Laravel.
- SQLite, PostgreSQL or MySQL.
- Public albums, private albums and sharing controls.
- Watermarking and secure image links require the paid Supporter Edition.
- Single tenant.
- No payment integration.
- Supports HEIC and HTML5 video playback.
Best for: a single photographer who wants a clean, lightweight public gallery.
Watch out: the protection features are paid, and there is no checkout.
Piwigo
- A mature gallery CMS – “WordPress for photographers”.
- Built with PHP; requires MySQL or MariaDB.
- Built-in resizing and watermarking.
- Many themes and plugins; some themes feel dated.
- Checkout is a dated PayPal cart plugin, not a modern shop.
- Metadata is not stripped by default.
- HEIC is not reliably supported out of the box.
Best for: a large, well-organised public archive.
Watch out: the shop is an afterthought.
Zenphoto
- A standalone media CMS for photographers and artists, with albums, video/audio and the Zenpage plugin for pages and a blog.
- Built with PHP; supports MySQL and MariaDB only.
- Built-in resizing and watermarking.
- Ships without an uploader enabled; you must enable one under Plugins.
- The site starts in maintenance mode after setup; open it under Overview → Maintenance mode.
- Old-school admin and a lot of options.
- No HEIC out of the box.
- No ecommerce: no cart, checkout or payment gateway.
Best for: a self-contained media site with watermarking built in.
Watch out: the admin is dated and the feature set is broad but idiosyncratic.
Photoview
- A folder-based gallery built for photographers with large libraries.
- Built with Go.
- MariaDB, PostgreSQL or SQLite.
- Supports HEIC.
- Thumbnails are generated for fast browsing; the full-screen view loads the high-resolution original.
- No watermarking and no low-resolution preview mode.
- No public gallery site; albums and individual photos can be shared with public links.
- No ecommerce.
Best for: browsing an existing folder structure and sharing selected albums.
Watch out: it is a viewer, not a storefront and not a protective preview layer.
PhotoPrism
- A self-hosted personal/family photo library with strong AI tools.
- Built with Go; Vue front end.
- SQLite and MariaDB/MySQL are supported; PostgreSQL is experimental and only in preview builds.
- Supports HEIC and video.
- Automatic labels, faces, places, OCR and smart search.
- No ecommerce and no watermarking.
- A library, not a portfolio.
Best for: searching and organising a personal collection.
Watch out: do not choose it as a public portfolio or a shop.
Immich
- A high-performance, self-hosted photo and video backup server – a self-hosted Google Photos.
- Built with Node.js and NestJS; Svelte web front end; Flutter mobile apps.
- PostgreSQL only, with Valkey/Redis and a separate machine-learning container.
- Supports HEIC and video.
- Mobile background backup, multi-user accounts, albums, partner sharing and album share links.
- AI: facial recognition, OCR, object/scene matching and smart search.
- No public portfolio site, watermarking or ecommerce.
- The most polished UI of the group, and the heaviest stack.
Best for: private original archive and mobile backup.
Watch out: it is not a portfolio, a client gallery or a shop.
Lumio
- A filesystem-first photo catalogue with a non-destructive editor.
- Built with Node.js, Next.js and React; Prisma with PostgreSQL only.
- Supports HEIC (and JXL) through external decoders.
- Originals stay where they are; Lumio indexes them and generates renditions.
- Content-hash de-duplication and a genuinely good GPU-accelerated editor.
- Single owner, no video, no watermarking, no ecommerce.
- Public share links for selected photos, with optional password and expiry.
- No licence file upstream; experimental and not safe to ship.
Best for: editing and cataloguing files in place.
Watch out: no licence, no shop, and no live album sharing.
Conclusion
There is no single best self-hosted photo app, choose the best horse for the course.
- To sell licences and files with manual EFT: WordPress + Easy Digital Downloads is the only complete option. Budget time for the theme.
- To deliver client/event galleries and optionally sell by card: PicPeak is the strongest all-in-one.
- To run a public portfolio without a shop: Lychee for ease and looks, Piwigo or Zenphoto for built-in watermarking and resizing.
- To run a plhoto platform for a large user base – Chevereto.
- To keep a private, searchable archive: Immich.
- To browse existing folders: Photoview.
- To edit in place: Lumio, but not in production – there is no licence.
Pick the category that matches the job, then the best tool in that category. Do not expect one app to win on all of them.