i finally got around to setting up a proper photo backup solution. keeping everything on google photos with their “unlimited storage” that they can revoke whenever they feel like it isn’t the smartest move. who would’ve thought.
anyway, i went down the rabbit hole of self-hosted photo management and landed on two options that kept coming up everywhere: immich and ente photos. figured i’d share my thoughts.
the basics
immich is the classic self-hosted option. you run it on your own server, it backs up all your photos and videos, and you have complete control. no one else touches your data. simple concept, solid execution. it’s free and open source, though you’ll obviously need to pay for your own server.
ente photos is a bit different. it’s got a cloud service with zero-knowledge encryption (which is fancy speak for “even ente can’t see your photos”) but you can also self-host it. so it’s kind of the best of both worlds if you’re indecisive like me.
the setup situation
immich is pretty straightforward to set up. docker compose, follow the docs, boom. done. the downside is it wants some resources. we’re talking 4-6 gigabytes of RAM recommended, a couple CPU cores. so if you’re running this on some ancient server you found in a closet, good luck.
ente on the other hand is way more chill on resources. we’re talking 130-150 megabytes of RAM. almost nothing. this thing is optimized like someone actually cared about efficiency. setting it up is a bit more involved though, especially if you want to self-host. you need to deal with S3 storage and it gets complicated fast on systems like TrueNAS.
the AI stuff
here’s where it gets interesting. both services have machine learning for face recognition and searching your photos with natural language. which is genuinely useful.
immich does all the AI stuff on your server. this means it can be pretty resource intensive, but hey, your photos aren’t leaving your machine for processing. good for privacy, bad for your electricity bill.
ente does things differently. they do on-device machine learning. your phone or tablet does the heavy lifting. this keeps everything super efficient on mobile, and it’s pretty neat. the tradeoff is that you need a bit more oomph on your device, but most phones handle it fine these days.
the encryption thing
this is kind of a big deal.
ente encrypts everything. your photos are scrambled up and only you can unscramble them. even if someone broke into ente’s servers, they couldn’t see your photos. this is the whole zero-knowledge thing.
immich stores files unencrypted. which means if you want encryption, you gotta handle that yourself at the storage level. some people see this as a downside, but if you’re self-hosting and someone has access to your server… you’ve got bigger problems than unencrypted photos.
which one should you use?
it depends on your situation.
if you want the easiest setup, don’t care about managing your own infrastructure long-term, and want that cloud convenience with encryption? ente photos is probably your jam. their mobile app is also apparently faster for background syncing and viewing photos offline. that’s nice.
if you want maximum control, plan to run this on decent hardware, and don’t want to deal with the complexity of ente’s self-hosting setup? immich is solid. it’s well-maintained, feature-rich, and the community is active.
i ended up going with immich because i already had a server running 24/7 and wanted to squeeze every feature out of it. but i totally get why someone would pick ente instead.
either way, both are infinitely better than trusting some big tech company with your memories. ask anyone who lost photos when google photos changed their policies. ouch.
pick one and commit. your future self will thank you when you’re 80 and can actually find that photo of your friend falling off the bike at age 23.