Piwigo

What Piwigo does

Piwigo is an open source photo management software platform originally released in 2002 as PhpWebGallery and renamed in 2009. It enables organizations, professional photographers, and individuals to organize, manage, and share large web-based photo collections through a self-hosted PHP/MySQL application supporting PHP 7.4 through 8.4 with the Smarty 5.5.2 template engine. The platform offers unlimited-depth album hierarchies, batch management tools, fine-grained permissions, geolocation with Google Maps and OpenStreetMap integration, RESTful web API access, Two-Factor Authentication, and native mobile apps on iOS and Android. Extensibility is central to the architecture, with 420+ plugins, 139+ themes, and 85 language packs available through a community-driven marketplace.

Piwigo operates a dual distribution model: the core software is freely available under a GPL license (2.8 million lifetime downloads across 133 releases), while Piwigo.com provides a managed cloud hosting subscription service. Additional revenue comes from annual professional support contracts priced at €990 per year and paid community-developed extensions. The business is led by founder Pierrick Le Gall without external venture capital funding, and operates as a "virtuous circle" in which Piwigo.com cloud revenues fund Piwigo.org open-source development. Notable deployments include the European Space Agency, the French Ministry of the Interior, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Wessex Water, Fédération Française de Natation, Siblu, and Winchester City Council, with the user base distributed across 40+ countries.

The most recent strategic product development emphasizes platform modernization and AI integration. Piwigo 16.0.0 (November 2025) introduced Two-Factor Authentication, API keys, an official Docker image, and PHP 8.4 compatibility. Piwigo AI (beta, May 2025) added automatic image description, tag generation, and OCR capabilities using OVH-hosted processing servers in France. Community engagement remains active with 25,065 registered forum users and continuous release cadence, indicating sustained operational health of the project rather than rapid commercial scaling.

Name

Piwigo

Legal name

Piwigo

Website

https://piwigo.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2002

Operating status

Operating

Short description

Piwigo is an open source photo management software platform, founded in 2002, that enables organizations, professional photographers, and individuals to organize and share large web-based photo collections. It operates a freemium model combining free self-hosted GPL software with Piwigo.com cloud hosting subscriptions.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

Burke

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Markets served

GTM type

B2B and B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Cloud Hosting (Piwigo.com): Managed cloud hosting service where Piwigo installs, updates, backups, and maintenance are fully handled. Users pay hosting fees for a ready-to-use Piwigo instance with dedicated support from the Piwigo team.
2. Professional Support: Annual support contracts for organizations running self-hosted Piwigo. Provides expert assistance and priority support.
3. Services from Community: Some coders and theme creators are paid by customers to create new features. Many of these creations are made available to the broader Piwigo community.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels5 records

Marketing channels7 records

Core offering

Piwigo is open source photo management software for organizing, managing, and sharing photos on the web. The core software (PHP/MySQL) can be self-hosted free of charge, while Piwigo.com offers a fully managed cloud-hosted version with installation, updates, and backups handled. The platform is extended through 420+ plugins, 139+ themes, and 85+ language packs, and is complemented by native iOS and Android mobile apps.

Product overview

Piwigo is an open source photo management software platform consisting of a core product (self-hosted PHP/MySQL software) and a cloud-hosted service (Piwigo.com). The platform is extensible through over 420 plugins, 139 themes, and 85+ language packs. Mobile apps for iOS and Android enable photo management on the go. Piwigo AI (beta) provides AI-powered image analysis including automatic descriptions, tags, and OCR. Additional tools include Piwigo Remote Sync and Piwigo Import Tree for desktop synchronization, plus an official Docker image for containerized deployment. Professional support is available for €990/year.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Piwigo.com: Cloud-hosted version of Piwigo providing ready-to-use photo gallery hosting with managed installations, updates, backups, and dedicated support.

Products and services

• Piwigo (Core Software) Open source photo management software for managing, organizing, and sharing photos on the web. Self-hosted PHP/MySQL application, free of charge. Designed for organizations, teams, and individuals needing to organize large photo collections with fine-grained permissions.
• Piwigo.com (Cloud Hosting) Managed cloud hosting service offering a fully installed, updated, and backed-up Piwigo instance with dedicated support. Available via monthly subscription. Suitable for users and organizations wanting Piwigo without managing their own server.
• Piwigo Mobile App Free native mobile application for iOS and Android to manage Piwigo photo libraries from smartphones. Features include photo/video import, album management, editing photo properties, geotagging, sharing, and user-rights-based security controls.
• Professional Support Annual support contract at €990 per year (tax excluded) for organizations running self-hosted Piwigo. Provides expert assistance, priority support, and configuration/troubleshooting help.
• Piwigo AI AI-powered automation plugin (beta) for Piwigo that performs automatic image descriptions, automatic tag generation, and text detection (OCR) on uploaded photos. Analysis runs on dedicated AI servers hosted by OVH in France.

Quantifiable outcome

• Handles collections of 500,000+ photos with fast performance
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers15 records

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles5 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration11 records

AI capability5 records

Feature13 records

Partnerships

Four partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• DockercoreTechnology or IntegrationOfficial Docker image maintained by Piwigo team, published on Docker Hub, enabling containerized deployments of Piwigo.
• GitHubcoreTechnology or IntegrationOfficial code hosting platform for Piwigo repositories. Joined GitHub community in 2015. Hosts core, mobile apps, and extension repositories.
• Free.frminorChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorFrench ISP that offered 1-click Piwigo installation starting in 2003, which attracted many early contributors to the project.
• Piwigo.comcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCloud hosting service operated by the Piwigo team. Profits from piwigo.com fund development time for piwigo.org, creating a virtuous circle between the two projects.

Scale indicators11 records

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• Bynder: Enterprise digital asset management (DAM) platform used by mid-market and large organizations. Represents the higher-end, scaled version of the DAM niche Piwigo's organizational customers are addressing.
• Flickr: Long-established consumer and pro-photographer photo sharing and storage platform owned by SmugMug. A broad incumbent offering cloud-hosted galleries at scale that competes for Piwigo.com's paying users.
• SmugMug: Subscription photo platform purpose-built for professional photographers, with portfolio, client proofing, and print fulfillment. Competes with Piwigo's professional photographer segment through a broader portfolio of paid services.
• Adobe Lightroom: Industry-standard photo editing and cloud gallery management tool with an integrated ecosystem (Lightroom + Portfolio). Broad incumbent for professional photographers who are also Piwigo's primary paying segment.
• Google Photos: Default cloud photo management platform for billions of consumers. While not a direct enterprise peer, its free tier and AI features set the consumer baseline against which Piwigo's privacy and self-hosted positioning must compete.

Emerging players

• Immich: Rapidly growing open-source self-hosted photo and video backup solution with AI-powered search. Emerging peer focused on consumer/family backup use case rather than the DAM/organizational niche Piwigo serves.
• Nextcloud Photos: Open-source collaboration platform whose Photos app offers self-hosted photo management as part of a broader productivity suite. Partial overlap with Piwigo but bundled into a larger ecosystem aimed at enterprise file sync.

Direct peers

• Zenphoto: Long-running open-source CMS for photo galleries and albums, also LAMP-based. A direct open-source peer with overlapping photographer and small organization use cases and similar extensibility model.
• Lychee: Open-source self-hosted photo management application built in PHP/MySQL. Directly competes in the same self-hosted photo gallery niche as Piwigo with similar installation requirements and target users.
• PhotoPrism: Open-source AI-powered photo management platform offering self-hosted deployment with face recognition, geolocation, and search. Directly comparable to Piwigo in target audience (individuals, families, organizations) and self-hosted delivery model.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/Piwigo
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/piwigo
• Xx.com/piwigo

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Piwigo