Photoview Hosting Live In 5 Minutes

Deploy Photoview hosting and browse a photo and video library on infrastructure you control instead of a hosted gallery service. xCloud runs the pinned Photoview 2.4.0 image beside a private MariaDB 11.8 database, mounts separate volumes for your originals, thumbnail cache and database, and publishes the gallery over HTTPS. You create the administrator, point it at /photos and run your first scan.

Deploy your Photoview

No terminal
No technical skills needed
No lock-in, cancel anytime

What is Photoview?

Photoview is a simple, user-friendly photo gallery made for photographers. Upstream says it maps directories to albums, scans your photos and videos, generates thumbnails, and supports RAW and EXIF, video, user management with per-user paths, and sharing by public link. Self-hosted Photoview is the alternative to a hosted photo service for people who keep their library on a file system, under AGPL-3.0.

On xCloud it is Photoview 2.4.0 with a private MariaDB 11.8 sidecar, both pinned by digest. The originals sit on photoview_photos, mounted read-only into the app, thumbnails on photoview_cache and users, albums and shares on photoview_database. You create the first administrator yourself, use /photos as the media path, copy media in, then run a scan from Settings to build the timeline.

About this app

Version xCloud installs: 2.4.0
Licence: AGPL-3.0
Official website: photoview.github.io
Source code: github.com/photoview/photoview

Photoview is a third-party project. xCloud is not affiliated with or endorsed by its maintainers. Names and logos belong to their owners.

From Sign-Up to a Live Photoview Gallery In Just 3 Easy Steps

Self-hosting a photo gallery normally means a container, a database, a read-only media mount, a domain and a certificate before a single photo is browsable. This is the same result without assembling any of it.

Step 01
Sign Up
Create your xCloud account and pick Photoview from the OneClick catalog. Choose your domain and target server — there is nothing else to fill in, since the database credentials are generated automatically.
Step 02
We Deploy It For You
One click. We bring up the official Photoview 2.4.0 image alongside a private MariaDB sidecar, mount the photoview_photos, photoview_cache and photoview_database volumes, and publish Photoview over HTTPS on your domain.
Step 03
Create The Admin And Scan
Open the generated HTTPS URL, create the first administrator with /photos as the media path, copy media into the photoview_photos volume, then run Scan All from Settings to build the timeline.

Everything Photoview Does, On Your Own Server

Photoview runs in full here — scanning, thumbnails, albums, sharing and users, on infrastructure you control.

Directory-Based Media Scanning
Photoview scans your existing photo and video directory structure instead of requiring a manual re-upload into a new app.
Generated Thumbnails And Timeline
A browsable timeline and album thumbnails are generated automatically once a scan completes, from any device with a browser.
Read-Only Original Protection
The media library is mounted read-only inside Photoview, so scanning and browsing can never modify your original files.
Albums And Shares
Organize scanned media into albums and share selected content, all tracked in the private database alongside your users.
Multiple User Accounts
Create more than one account on the same installation while every photo, video and share stays on infrastructure you control.
Persistent Originals, Cache And Metadata
Originals, generated thumbnails and the indexed database persist on their own volumes across restarts.

Everything You Need To Run Your Photo Library 24/7

Managed hosting for Photoview, so the parts that keep it online are not your problem.

Photoview 2.4.0 deployed instantly
Private MariaDB database
Read-only original media protection
Free SSL certificate
Server backups and snapshots
Server security updates included
Choose your server region
Restart-safe originals, cache and metadata
Unused balance refunded

What You Can Do With Photoview

Browse a RAW photo archive in a browser
A photographer opens a directory-based library on any device and scrolls thumbnails instead of opening RAW files one by one from a file server.
Give family a private photo site
Create separate accounts, each tied to a path on the server, so every person sees only the folders assigned to them.
Share an album without a hosted service
Send a public link to an album or a single photo, optionally password protected, from your own domain.
Keep originals untouched
Mount the library read-only so scanning, thumbnailing and browsing cannot alter or delete a single original file.

Photoview vs Alternatives

Hosted photo services: A hosted photo service stores your library on a vendor's servers. Self-hosted Photoview indexes a directory on your own server and keeps originals read-only.
PhotoPrism: PhotoPrism has its own OneClick page. Upstream's README lists it among other self-hosted galleries and says Photoview is built around navigating the file system's own directories.
LibrePhotos: LibrePhotos has its own OneClick page and is another self-hosted gallery that upstream names. Photoview maps the folders in your library directory straight to albums.
Piwigo: Piwigo has its own OneClick page and is also named in upstream's list of existing galleries. Photoview scans a directory on the server and builds its albums from the folders it finds.

Simple Pricing. Everything Included.

Dedicated Cloud VPS sizes, pre-configured for Photoview hosting. Pick the one that fits, and resize any time.

Cloud VPS 6 GB

Cloud VPS 16 GB

More headroom for a larger media library and more concurrent viewers.

$59.99per month

16 GB RAM
6 vCPU cores
200 GB NVMe SSD
30 TB
Unlimited

Get started

Cloud VPS 24 GB

Photoview alongside a larger self-hosted media stack.

$84.99per month

24 GB RAM
8 vCPU cores
300 GB NVMe SSD
30 TB
Unlimited

Get started

Every size is a dedicated Cloud VPS we provision, patch, monitor and restore. Billed monthly with no lock-in — delete the server and the unused balance comes back to your account. Photoview itself is free under the GNU AGPL-3.0 licence.

Docker hosting

Already Have a Server? Bring Your Own

Connect any VPS — DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, Hetzner or bare metal — and deploy Photoview on it through the same panel, for a per-server management fee instead of a Cloud VPS rental.

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$3per server / month

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Priced per connected server, so your rate adjusts automatically as you add or remove servers. You pay your own provider for the server itself.

Self-managed hosting

Ready To Run Your Own Photo Gallery?

Photoview on xCloud runs on a dedicated Cloud VPS that we provision, patch, monitor and restore. Deploy faster. Own the server. Stay in control.

Fast Provisioning
Deploy faster using an xCloud Managed Server built with optimized stacks and high-speed SSDs.
Enterprise-grade security
Protect your infrastructure with a free SSL certificate and more advanced security features at no additional cost.
Intuitive Control Panel
From Server creation to application deployment, everything can be managed from our intuitive control panel.

Hear what people are saying about us

See why agencies, developers, startups, and growing businesses choose xCloud to power their projects.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you may have.

Can you self-host Photoview with Docker?

Yes. Upstream supports Docker, and this template is Photoview Docker hosting assembled for you: the 2.4.0 image and MariaDB 11.8 pinned by digest, three named volumes, a one-shot cache permission fix and HTTPS on your domain. It is your own Photoview cloud gallery, with the database private to the install.

How much RAM does Photoview need?

The template declares 2 CPU cores, 2048 MB of memory and 10 GB of disk, because thumbnail generation and MariaDB share the server. The 6 GB plan is where this page starts, with headroom for scans of a growing library and for the thumbnail cache.

Is Photoview free?

Yes, under AGPL-3.0 the software itself costs nothing. Your bill is the dedicated Cloud VPS and its storage, and it can be cancelled any time. Originals remain ordinary files that you can copy out whenever you like.

How do I sign in to Photoview as administrator?

xCloud shows no administrator login. Open the HTTPS address after deployment and create the first administrator inside Photoview, using /photos as the media path. Choose a strong password straight away, because anyone who reaches the page first could create that account.

Can Photoview modify my original photos?

No. The photoview_photos volume is mounted read-only inside Photoview, so scanning, thumbnailing and browsing cannot change or delete originals. Only you can alter them, from the server side. Generated thumbnails go to the separate photoview_cache volume instead.

How do I add photos to Photoview?

Copy your media into the photoview_photos volume through a server-side workflow you control, such as SFTP or rsync, then open Settings in Photoview and run Scan All. The scan builds the timeline and album thumbnails, and each directory becomes an album.

Does Photoview support RAW photos and video?

Upstream says it supports RAW file formats and EXIF parsing, and many common video formats, which are optimised for the web. Large RAW and video libraries take longer to scan and use more CPU, so allow time for the first scan on a big collection.

Can I share photos from Photoview?

Yes. Upstream lets you share albums and individual media with a public link, and the link can be password protected. Shares and users are stored in the private MariaDB database, so keep photoview_database in your backups.

How do I back up Photoview?

Back up photoview_photos, photoview_cache and photoview_database together, as one boundary. The first is your primary archive, the second holds thumbnails that can be rebuilt, and the third holds users, albums and shares. Use a stopped state or a snapshot so they stay in sync.

Backups in xCloud

How do I upgrade Photoview?

The install stays on pinned 2.4.0 and MariaDB 11.8 until you adopt a newer template version. Back up all three volumes, read the upstream release notes, then redeploy and check sign-in, a scan and thumbnails. Nothing upgrades automatically.

Can I cancel anytime?

Yes. There is no lock-in — cancel any time. Hosting is billed monthly and charged for what you actually use, so when you delete the server the unused balance is refunded to your account, less up to 10% in payment-processing fees.