When it comes to backing up our photos from our mobile phone, there are quite a few options that we can consider, most of which are paid. As part of our Build your own homelab series, we want to focus on taking control of our data, and more importantly, saving us some money. (to at least help offset the cost of the homelab itself - which is pretty small anyways). Self-hosting a solution to take care of our mobile phone photo backups is very easy and the two best options are Nextcloud and Immich. Nextcloud provides a mature, all‑in‑one collaboration platform with a built‑in auto‑upload feature for mobile photos and videos, while Immich delivers a Google Photos‑style interface complete with ML-powered semantic search, facial recognition, and advanced search. Our Nextcloud installation walkthrough and Immich installation walkthrough cover both options in the Build Your Homelab series.
But let's first explain why self-hosting is the way to go.
What Is Self‑Hosting and Why It’s Great
Self‑hosting means running software on your own physical or virtual servers at home (or in a hosted VPS), rather than relying on third‑party cloud services. In our case, it will be running on our Homelab server running Proxmox.
- Privacy & Control: You decide who accesses your data and where it’s stored, giving you control over the server, access and exports. Configured integrations, hosting and backup services can still involve third parties.
- Cost Efficiency: After initial hardware costs, you avoid recurring subscription fees for storage. Whether it saves money depends on hardware, electricity, independent backup storage and the time you spend maintaining it.
- Customization & Extensibility: Open‑source platforms let you add plugins, integrate with other homelab services, and tailor features to your needs.
- Scalability: With hosting your library at home, adding more disk space and/or features becomes a lot easier than cloud services with different payment tiers. No longer will you need to pay for a feature you don't need or will never use (especially on higher tiers).
Nextcloud: Your All‑In‑One Cloud Hub
Overview
Nextcloud is a self‑hosted content collaboration platform that handles files, calendars, contacts, and photos all in one place. Its mobile apps for Android and iOS include an auto‑upload feature that detects new photos and videos on your device and synchronizes them to your server, with options for Wi‑Fi‑only uploads, custom folder structures, and HEIC (High Efficiency Image Container) support.
Pros of Nextcloud for Photo Backups
- Integrated Ecosystem: Photos live alongside documents, calendar events, and chats. This is ideal if you already use Nextcloud for collaboration, or if you want to back up more than just photos.
- Rich Gallery Features: Nextcloud Photos offers timeline views, map integration, and galleries, plus optional AI tagging and facial recognition via community apps like Recognize and Memories. Note that these features are add-ons and not part of the standard install, so extra work will need to be put in to your installation for features that might be standard with Immich.
- Granular Access Controls: Share individual folders or albums with friends, family, or team members, with password protection and expiration settings.
- Mature Community & Support: Active forums and extensive documentation provide troubleshooting advice and shared experience. Third-party apps can extend Nextcloud to suit your needs, but check their compatibility and maintenance; community resources cannot guarantee long-term stability.
Cons of Nextcloud for Photo Backups
- Basic Photo‑First Features: While functional, Nextcloud’s gallery UI and search are less polished than dedicated photo managers like Immich.
- Mobile App Battery Usage: Background-upload behavior depends on your phone, operating system, permissions and power settings. Test your actual device before assuming uploads are immediate or battery use matches another app.
- Less Frequent Core Updates: New photo‑centric features can lag behind specialized projects, as Nextcloud balances many use cases. After all, it is much more than a photo backup utility, so other document types, collaboration and chat features also need to be worked on by the Development team.
Immich: A Google Photos‑Style Alternative
Overview
Immich is a free, open‑source, self‑hosted photo and video backup solution designed to mimic the look and feel of Google Photos while keeping everything on your own server. You install an Immich server using its supported Docker deployment, preferably on Linux or a full VM and then use its Android or iOS apps to auto‑upload, browse, search, and share media. The main appeal of Immich is the familiar look and feel of Google Photos, so this option is mostly a lot easier to understand for less-technical users.
Pros of Immich
- Specialized Photo UI: Offers albums, maps view, "Memories" (just like Google Photos), and draggable scrubbers for fast browsing.
- Advanced Search & AI: Metadata, object, and facial recognition powered by on‑premise ML models let you find photos by people, places, or things through its machine-learning service. It needs models and resources; semantic search does not necessarily generate visible object tags.
- Deduplication & Selective Backup: Prevents duplicate uploads and lets you choose specific albums or folders to sync.
- Frequent Feature Releases: Under active development with regular updates, bringing new capabilities quickly. However, this also means that it is less mature than Nextcloud.
Cons of Immich
- Rapid, Breaking Changes: Fast release cadence sometimes causes version mismatches between server and mobile apps, requiring extra maintenance. Read release notes and keep client/server versions compatible; the complexity of recovery depends on the change.
- Narrow Scope: Focuses on photos and videos only. Immich lacks Nextcloud’s broader collaboration tools (documents, chat, calendar).
- Data Storage Practices: Immich does not provide end-to-end encryption of your photo library. Protect storage, backups and application access; HTTPS protects transport rather than encrypting every stored file. When we look at the installation, we will also look at some security tips as well, but this is worth mentioning if security of your photos is important (and it should be!)
- Relatively Young Project: While promising, Immich’s community and ecosystem are still growing compared to Nextcloud’s longer history. Nextcloud began in 2016; neither project age nor update frequency alone proves reliability.
Feature Comparison at a Glance
- Auto‑Upload: Both support background sync, but Immich offers more selective control (per‑album).
- Apps: Both support Android and iOS apps, so both will be easy-to-use with your mobile device.
- Gallery & Browsing: Nextcloud covers basics; Immich delivers a richer, Google‑Photos‑like experience.
- AI & Search: Nextcloud needs extra apps for tagging; Immich has built‑in ML-based search and facial recognition.
- Ecosystem: Nextcloud integrates with many homelab services like chat and collaboration; Immich stays focused on media.
- Install: Use the supported installation documentation for each. Immich explicitly recommends a full VM over Docker inside LXC; a community LXC recipe is a separate maintenance choice.
Which to Choose? Homelab Use‑Cases
- Choose Nextcloud if: you want a single self‑hosted hub for files, photos, calendar, contacts, and chat. It is ideal for families or teams already running a Nextcloud server or that need a bit more than just a photo backup solution.
- Choose Immich if: your primary goal is photo/video management with a slick UI, powerful AI search, and dedicated mobile apps. It is perfect for homelabs focused on media curation who do not necessarily need other services.
Some Frequently Asked Questions
What is the main difference between Nextcloud and Immich?
Nextcloud is a generalist content collaboration suite with basic photo features, while Immich is a photo‑first management tool with advanced AI search and limited features outside of photo/video management.
Do I need special hardware to self‑host?
Check each selected release. Current Immich documentation lists 6 GB minimum RAM and recommends 8 GB, with amd64 and arm64 support and CPU-instruction requirements for machine learning. Its guidance allows 4 GB with ML disabled. A universal 2 GB recommendation or “any x86_64 CPU” claim is therefore unsuitable; Nextcloud sizing also depends on enabled apps and workload.
Is self‑hosting secure?
Self‑hosting puts security in your hands: use HTTPS (Let’s Encrypt), firewall rules, and regular backups to keep your data safe.
Conclusion
Self‑hosting your mobile photo backups is a powerful way to reclaim privacy, cut costs, and tailor features to your exact needs. Nextcloud and Immich each excel in different homelab scenarios. Choose the one that aligns with your priorities, whether it’s broad collaboration or photo‑centric excellence. Follow our existing Nextcloud and Immich installation guides for practical setup steps.
Check Uploads Before Trusting Them
Choose a sample set containing a normal photo, a long video, an older file, a HEIC image and any Live Photo or motion-photo format you use. Confirm the original files reach the server, open them from another client and compare dates, orientation and metadata. A thumbnail appearing in a timeline is not proof that every original and companion file arrived intact.
Test foreground upload first, then close the app and check background behavior with the phone locked. On iOS, the operating system controls when background tasks run; Android permissions and battery optimization also matter. Check pending uploads after returning from travel or changing networks. “Auto-upload” is not a guarantee that an unseen backlog is already protected.
Do not delete the camera roll after the first successful-looking upload. Verify completeness, download a few originals and establish an independent backup first. Test deletion with expendable files so you understand whether a client action removes a local copy, server asset or both. Keep household accounts and shared-album permissions separate from administrator access.
Back Up the Server as Well as the Phone
Immich needs both the database and original media for a comprehensive backup. Its built-in database dumps contain metadata, not your photos or videos. Copy the required media directories and configuration to an independent destination, and include external-library originals where used. A RAID array or another folder on the same failed server is not an independent backup.
Nextcloud recovery needs its database, data and configuration, along with custom apps and themes where applicable. Use its documented consistency procedure or the backup process supplied by your chosen deployment. A directory copy taken while applications change files and database records can leave mismatched state.
Practice restoring a small representative library on an isolated instance. Confirm account access, albums, originals and video playback, and avoid letting a test server trigger unintended uploads or deletes. Encrypt backup storage as appropriate and keep recovery keys accessible outside the failed machine.
Can You Run Both Together? The Hybrid "External Library" Workflow
You don't actually have to choose one exclusively over the other. In fact, many experienced homelabbers run both Nextcloud and Immich on the same server with a shared source collection where suitable:
- Use Nextcloud for Documents, Desktop File Sync, Calendars, and Contacts: Keep your PDFs, spreadsheets, Joplin/WebDAV sync, and family calendars inside Nextcloud (see our Nextcloud installation guide and Nextcloud configuration guide).
- Use Immich for Mobile Camera Roll Backups & AI Photo Discovery: Install the Immich mobile app on every family member's phone for configured foreground and background photo/video uploads, facial recognition, and Memories timelines (see our Immich installation guide and Immich configuration guide).
- Cross-Mount via Read-Only External Library (Optional): If you already have years of family photos organized inside a Nextcloud folder or NAS share, mount that exact host path into Immich with the
:ro(read-only) flag and register it as an External Library in Immich. The read-only mount prevents Immich writing to that source path, while its database, thumbnails, transcoded videos and indexes still consume additional storage. Current read-only external libraries limit metadata editing and cannot delete originals; trashed assets can reappear when the application cannot remove the file.
Sharing storage requires readable originals and stable paths. Do not bypass Nextcloud's file-access model by mounting an encrypted or object-storage backend as though it were an ordinary plaintext folder. Decide which application owns uploads and deletions; keep an external library read-only until you understand both systems' behavior. Shared indexing is a browsing option, not a replacement for a backup of the source files.
