Immich, Vaultwarden and Plex Without a Home Server

Yes, you can run all three without a server at home

Rent an appbox instead of buying a box for the cupboard. On a Bytesized appbox, Plex, Vaultwarden and Immich are each one click in the panel, each gets its own HTTPS address, and Appbox Lite starts at €5 a month with 500 GB of storage. Your phone, your TV and your browser connect to them the same way they would to a server at home.

The usual advice for "how do I self-host my photos, my passwords and my films" is to buy a NAS or a mini PC. That works, but then you're the one running it: updates, port forwarding, certificates, a disk that dies on a Sunday, and a machine that's on all day. If what you want is the apps and not the hardware, let someone else run the server. We've been doing that since 2009.

Here's how I'd set it up, what it costs, and when you'd be better off with something else.

What you end up with

• Plex for your films, shows and music, streaming to your TV, phone and browser.
• Vaultwarden as your password manager. It works with the official Bitwarden apps and browser extensions.
• Immich as your photo library, with automatic backup from your phone, face grouping and search.

All three run in their own containers on the same appbox, and you don't need a command line to get any of them going.

Step 1: pick a plan by storage

Storage decides the plan here, because photos and media take the space. Vaultwarden needs next to nothing.

Plan	Storage	Monthly traffic	Price
Appbox Lite	500 GB	3 TB	€5/month
Stream +3	3 TB	10 TB	€16/month
Stream +6	6 TB	10 TB	€32/month

If it's mostly photos and passwords with a small Plex library, Lite is enough to start. If you already have a film collection, start at Stream +3. Before you pick, look up how big your photo library actually is: Google Photos and iCloud both show it in their storage settings. You can move up a plan later without starting over, and every plan is on the plans page.

Step 2: Plex

Open the Bytesized Panel, find Plex and click install. Then claim the server with your Plex account and point a library at your media folder. How to set up Plex on a seedbox walks through libraries and clients step by step.

Once it's claimed, your appbox shows up in the Plex app on your TV and phone like any other Plex server.

One thing to know before you start: Plex treats every stream from a server in a data centre as remote, and remote streaming now needs a paid Plex plan. What changed at Plex in 2025 and 2026 has the prices. If you'd rather not pay Plex, Jellyfin is free, it's one click as well, and you can run it next to Plex to compare.

To give family access, see sharing your Plex seedbox.

Step 3: Vaultwarden

In the same panel, find Vaultwarden and click install. It comes up at https://vaultwarden.USERNAME.SERVER.bysh.me with a real certificate already in place. USERNAME is your panel username in lowercase and SERVER is your server name; your appbox page shows both.

Your account is created during the install. The login email is your panel username in lowercase with @bytesized-hosting.com on the end, and the password is on the Vaultwarden tile on your appbox page. That address is only a login name; nothing gets mailed to it.

Then:

1. Sign in on the web page once to check it works, and change the master password to one of your own (Settings, Security).
2. In the Bitwarden app or browser extension, pick the self-hosted server option before you log in, and enter your Vaultwarden address.
3. Log in with the same email and your new master password. Your vault syncs across your devices from then on.

Sign-ups are closed on your instance, so nobody else can make an account on it. Your vault is encrypted with your master password before it leaves your device, so we can't read it either. There's more in the Vaultwarden guide.

Do one thing straight away: once your passwords are in, make an export from the Bitwarden app and keep it somewhere safe and offline. Of the three apps, this is the one where a second copy matters most.

Step 4: Immich

Immich is one click now too. Find it in the panel and click install. It sets up four containers for you (the Immich server, machine learning, a database and a cache), and only the server is reachable from outside, at https://immich.USERNAME.SERVER.bysh.me.

Then:

1. Install the Immich app on your iPhone or Android phone.
2. Enter https://immich.USERNAME.SERVER.bysh.me as the server address.
3. Sign in with the same kind of login as Vaultwarden (your panel username with @bytesized-hosting.com on the end) and the password on the Immich tile.
4. Turn on backup.

Your photos are stored in the Immich folder inside your media folder (~/media/Immich), on the same storage as everything else.

A few things worth knowing:

• The first backup is the heavy part. Immich makes thumbnails and runs face detection on every photo, so a phone with years of pictures on it can take a night. After that, new photos go up on their own.
• Machine learning runs on the CPU. For a personal library that's fine; the first scan just takes longer.
• Immich uses about 3 GB of memory at idle with machine learning on.
• If you reinstall Immich from the panel, your photos stay on disk but the database starts fresh, so they won't show in the app until you import them again. If something looks wrong, open a ticket before you reach for reinstall.
• If you set Immich up by hand earlier with our Docker Compose guide, don't install the one-click version on top. Both want the same immich address, so pick one.

What it looks like when you're done

App	Where it lives	What you use it with
Plex	Your Plex account	Any Plex app, on your TV, phone or browser
Vaultwarden	vaultwarden.USERNAME.SERVER.bysh.me	Bitwarden apps and browser extensions
Immich	immich.USERNAME.SERVER.bysh.me	The Immich phone app and your browser

No domain to buy, no port forwarding, no certificates to renew. You can add your own domain later if you want one, but you don't need it.

Keep a second copy

Appbox plans don't have disk redundancy; the plans page says so next to every plan. For films you can get again, that's fine. For your photos and your passwords, it means the appbox shouldn't be the only copy:

• Keep the originals of your photos somewhere else as well, even if that's an old external drive or the cloud service you're moving away from.
• Keep a recent Vaultwarden export offline.

That's the same advice I'd give for a NAS at home. A single copy of anything isn't a backup, wherever it lives.

When something else makes more sense

• You only want Vaultwarden. A host that runs just that one app will be cheaper than any appbox. The appbox makes sense when you want all three together with the storage included.
• You already run a home server and you like it. Keep it. This is for people who don't want the hardware.
• You want to manage every container yourself. You still can: every appbox has SSH and rootless Docker, see running your own Docker containers. A plain VPS works too, but then the updates, the reverse proxy and the certificates are yours again, which is what you were trying to get away from.

Common questions

Do I need my own domain? No. Every app gets its own address under your appbox, with HTTPS already set up.

Can my family use it? Plex and Immich both let you add people. Vaultwarden has sign-ups closed to keep strangers out, so open a ticket if you want accounts on it for your family.

What else can I add? The same panel has the rest of the app catalogue, including Nextcloud for files and calendars, Audiobookshelf and Jellyfin. You can run your own Docker containers next to them as well.

Can I leave later? Yes, plans are monthly. Your photos are ordinary files in ~/media/Immich, so you can download them over SFTP, and the Bitwarden app exports your vault.