Run Picstome on your own server

In the panel: Picstome is free to install on your own server. This is the whole process, from an empty VPS to your first login.

Picstome is free and open source. You can run it on your own server and keep every feature: galleries, sharing, contracts, invoices, Stripe, camera upload and the desktop apps. There is no paid edition and no feature flag.

The only things you pay for are the server and, if you want, the installation service described at the end.

What you need

A server running Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04, with root access. The realistic minimum for a small studio:

Resource	Minimum	Comfortable
CPU	2 vCPU	4 vCPU
RAM	2 GB	4 GB
Disk	40 GB	100 GB or more
Software	PHP 8.5, MySQL 8 / MariaDB 10.6+, Nginx, Node 22+	same

Photo processing is the expensive part: RAW files and large videos need CPU and RAM while they are converted. If you plan to ingest thousands of photos per session, get more than the minimum.

Before you start

Self-hosting means you own the server, the database and the backups. Nobody else has a copy of your photos, and nobody else can restore them if the disk fails. Read the backups section before you upload a real client gallery.

Installation

Point the domain at the server. Create an A record for photos.yourdomain.com pointing to the server IP. Do this first: the HTTPS step fails without it.

Install the packages.

apt update && apt upgrade -y
apt install -y nginx mysql-server unzip git supervisor \
  php8.5-fpm php8.5-cli php8.5-mysql php8.5-mbstring php8.5-xml \
  php8.5-curl php8.5-zip php8.5-gd php8.5-intl php8.5-imagick

Check with php -v that you are on 8.5. If your distribution does not ship it yet, add the ondrej/php PPA first:

add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
apt update

Create the database.

mysql -u root -p

CREATE DATABASE picstome CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
CREATE USER 'picstome'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'a-long-random-password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON picstome.* TO 'picstome'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Get the code and the dependencies.

cd /var/www
git clone https://github.com/picstome/picstome.git
cd picstome
composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
npm ci && npm run build

Configure the environment.

cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate

Then edit .env and set at least:

APP_NAME=Picstome
APP_ENV=production
APP_DEBUG=false
APP_URL=https://photos.yourdomain.com

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=picstome
DB_USERNAME=picstome
DB_PASSWORD=a-long-random-password

Create the schema and the first admin.

php artisan migrate --force
php artisan create-admin-user
php artisan storage:link

Nginx. Create /etc/nginx/sites-available/picstome:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name photos.yourdomain.com;
    root /var/www/picstome/public;

    index index.php;
    client_max_body_size 5120M;   # match the 5 GB per-file limit of the app

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.5-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_read_timeout 3600;
    }

    location ~ /\.(?!well-known).* {
        deny all;
    }
}

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/picstome /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
nginx -t && systemctl reload nginx

HTTPS.

apt install -y certbot python3-certbot-nginx
certbot --nginx -d photos.yourdomain.com

The background worker. Uploads, RAW conversion, gallery ZIPs and emails run in a queue. Without it, photos stay in processing forever.

Create /etc/supervisor/conf.d/picstome-worker.conf:

[program:picstome-worker]
command=php /var/www/picstome/artisan queue:work --sleep=3 --tries=3 --max-time=3600
autostart=true
autorestart=true
user=www-data
numprocs=2
stdout_logfile=/var/www/picstome/storage/logs/worker.log
stopwaitsecs=3600

supervisorctl reread && supervisorctl update

The scheduler. Expiry reminders, cleanup and pruning run on Laravel’s schedule. Add it to root’s crontab with crontab -e:
```
* * * * * cd /var/www/picstome && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1
```

Permissions and caches.

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/picstome
chmod -R 775 storage bootstrap/cache
php artisan config:cache
php artisan route:cache
php artisan view:cache

Log in. Open https://photos.yourdomain.com with the admin user you created and change the password immediately.

PHP settings that matter

Two INI values cause most self-hosting support requests. Edit /etc/php/8.5/fpm/php.ini and restart the service:

upload_max_filesize = 5120M
post_max_size = 5120M
max_execution_time = 3600
memory_limit = 512M

upload_max_filesize also has to match client_max_body_size in Nginx. If one is smaller than the other, large uploads fail with a generic error.

For very large files, the queue worker is what actually processes them, so give PHP-FPM a generous max_execution_time and keep numprocs at 2 or more.

Using S3 storage

Local disk works, but S3-compatible storage (AWS S3, Cloudflare R2, Hetzner, Backblaze B2, MinIO) is a better fit for photos: cheaper per GB, no disk limits and downloads served directly by the storage provider.

Set these in .env:

FILESYSTEM_DISK=s3
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=...
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=...
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=auto
AWS_BUCKET=picstome
AWS_ENDPOINT=https://your-provider-endpoint
AWS_USE_PATH_STYLE_ENDPOINT=false

Then run php artisan storage:link again and upload a test photo. The bucket must be private: Picstome generates short-lived links for every download.

Updates

There is no auto-update. A safe update, every time:

cd /var/www/picstome
php artisan down
git pull
composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
npm ci && npm run build
php artisan migrate --force
php artisan config:cache && php artisan route:cache && php artisan view:cache
php artisan queue:restart
php artisan up

php artisan queue:restart is not optional: workers keep the old code in memory until they restart.

Take a backup of the database and of storage/app before every update. Migrations are additive, but a backup is what turns a bad update into a bad afternoon.

Backups

Three things to back up, in this order:

The database — mysqldump picstome > picstome.sql on a schedule.
storage/app — the files not in S3. If you use S3, back up the bucket separately.
.env — it holds the app key; without it, encrypted values are unreadable.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause
Photos stuck in processing	The queue worker is not running. `supervisorctl status`.
500 on every page after an update	Stale caches. `php artisan optimize:clear`.
Large uploads fail	`client_max_body_size` or `upload_max_filesize` too low.
Emails not delivered	Set the `MAIL_*` variables; the default `log` driver writes to `storage/logs`.
Gallery download never becomes ready	Worker stopped or the archive disk is full.
Camera upload connects but nothing appears	The FTP inbox path or the account state; check the camera dialog.

Logs live in storage/logs/laravel.log and storage/logs/worker.log.

Security checklist

Before you invite a client:

APP_ENV=production and APP_DEBUG=false.
The admin password is not the default one.
HTTPS is active and the HTTP version redirects.
The database is not reachable from the internet.
php artisan about shows no local environment.
Backups run and you have restored one at least once.

We can install it for you

If all of this is not how you want to spend an afternoon, we install Picstome on your own server for €100. You keep the server, the data and the updates; we do the setup.

What the service includes:

a fresh Ubuntu server configured with Nginx, PHP, MySQL, HTTPS and the queue worker;
the app installed and migrated, with your admin user ready;
storage configured (local disk or your S3 bucket);
a test gallery uploaded and a shared link verified end to end;
email delivery checked with a real send;
a short handover with the credentials, the backup command and the update command.

What it does not include: the server itself, the domain, S3 costs or any third-party subscription. Write to [email protected] with the provider and the server size you have in mind.

Plans and storage — what changes between plans on app.picstome.com.
Picstome Rater and Photo Stats — the desktop companions.
Is Picstome up? — the hosted service status.