Piwigo
Hosting

Piwigo needs PHP 7.4 or higher (PHP 8.1+ recommended), MySQL 5.5 or MariaDB 10.x, and the gd or imagick PHP extension for thumbnail generation. The exif and mbstring extensions are needed for metadata reading and Unicode handling. We host every plan on PHP 8.3 by default with imagick enabled, so you can install Piwigo and start uploading the same hour.

Piwigo is a one-click install on our web hosting plans. From the My365i control panel, open Software Installer, search for Piwigo, pick the domain you want it on, and click Install. The installer creates the database, sets file permissions, and gives you an admin login. You then upload photos through the web admin, the desktop pLoader tool, or the official mobile app.

Piwigo handles libraries up to roughly 50,000 images on our standard web hosting plan without issues, provided thumbnails are pre-generated rather than created on first request. Beyond that, the bottleneck is usually file system I/O and database performance during search rather than PHP itself. For libraries above 100,000 images, or for galleries pushing a lot of full-resolution downloads, a small managed cloud server with NVMe storage and dedicated database resources is the sensible step up.

Our support covers the hosting platform: PHP and MySQL configuration, file uploads, SSL, backups, and migrations. For Piwigo-specific questions like custom theme tweaks, plugin development, or integrating with Lightroom, we will help where we can but do not act as your Piwigo developer. The most common issue we resolve is PHP upload limits, which is firmly hosting-side and we tune that for you.

Yes, and we will do it for you free of charge on any of our hosting plans. We move the Piwigo files, the database, the entire upload directory, and any custom themes or plugins. Large galleries (over 30 GB of images) we usually move overnight to keep file-transfer windows tidy. We test the migrated gallery on a staging URL before pointing your domain across, so you get a final preview before go-live.

Yes. We set PHP upload_max_filesize and post_max_size to 256 MB by default, which covers most RAW files and short video clips. If you regularly need to upload larger files, we can raise that on request, or you can use the desktop pLoader tool which uploads directly via FTP and bypasses PHP upload limits entirely. For video, install the Piwigo VideoJS plugin which handles MP4 playback in the gallery itself.

Piwigo is self-hosted and free of subscription fees: hosting plus your domain runs to about £6 a month with us, against roughly £15 to £30 per month for the equivalent SmugMug or Adobe Portfolio plan. You own the data and the URL outright, and there is no platform risk if a service changes its terms. What you give up is the polish of a managed product: theme variety is smaller, mobile upload UX is good but not best-in-class, and you are responsible for keeping the install patched. For photographers who value ownership and long-term cost control, the trade-off is firmly worth it.