Coppermine
Hosting
Install Coppermine in one click on our fast, reliable UK web hosting. Fully managed with free SSL, daily backups, and dedicated expert support.
What is Coppermine?
Coppermine is a free, open-source photo gallery application written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database. It has been around since 2003 and has powered photo archives for clubs, family sites, model railway groups, motorsport communities and small museums for over twenty years. The software is feature-rich for what it is: nested albums, EXIF data display, user accounts, batch uploads, ratings, comments and a thumbnail engine that handles both GD and ImageMagick.
The project is in long-term maintenance mode. Releases are infrequent and the admin interface looks dated next to modern gallery platforms. That said, the code still runs cleanly on PHP 8.3 with current MySQL versions and the security record has been quiet for years. For people who already run a Coppermine site and want it to keep working without rebuilding on something new, it remains a perfectly reasonable choice.
365i offers Coppermine as a one-click install on shared hosting plans from £5.99/mo with PHP 8.5, MySQL 8, free SSL, daily backups and free migrations.
365i’s editorial review of Coppermine
I've been hosting Coppermine sites since the mid-2000s. At one point we had dozens of them on the platform, mostly running on what was then PHP 5.2. They've been the quietest tenant on shared hosting for two decades. Coppermine is one of those applications you forget exists until someone emails to ask why their gallery feels sluggish, you open the site, and it turns out they've stuffed 40,000 images into a single album over fifteen years.
The software hasn't changed much, and that's part of why it still works. It uses a sensible directory structure, a small set of PHP files, and a MySQL schema that hasn't needed redesigning. We've moved Coppermine sites between hosts, between server generations, and through three major PHP upgrades, and the only thing that ever needs touching is the config.inc.php file with the database credentials.
"If a Coppermine site has run quietly for ten years on PHP 5, it'll run quietly for another ten on PHP 8.3. The code is small, the schema is small, and there's no plugin sprawl to worry about. That's a feature, not a bug."
Mark McNeece, Founder, 365i Hosting
Where Coppermine struggles isn't on the server side, it's on the user-experience side. The admin panel is a long scrolling list of options, the default theme looks like 2008, and it has no concept of responsive design beyond what you can hand-bolt into a custom template. If you're starting a new gallery from scratch in 2026, I'd point you at something more modern. If you've already got Coppermine running and your visitors know where everything is, leave it alone and host it cheaply.
Resource-wise, Coppermine sips. A typical install with a few thousand images uses well under what a £5.99/mo shared plan offers, and the unlimited LVE resources on our autoscaling cloud platform mean even a sudden burst of traffic from a club newsletter won't trip a throttle. The thumbnail engine is the only thing that can spike CPU, and only when bulk-uploading hundreds of images in one go. We tend to suggest users upload in batches of 50-100 if they're working over a slow connection.
On migrations, Coppermine is one of the friendliest applications to move. Copy the files, dump the database, fix the config, and you're live. Our free migrations team has shifted dozens of these from other hosts over the years, and I can't remember the last time one took longer than an hour. PHP version mismatches are the usual snag, and that's a five-minute fix on our side because we run PHP 8.5 with the right extensions enabled by default.
For anyone running Coppermine today, my honest advice is: keep your install patched to the latest official release, take the daily backups we provide seriously, and don't try to bolt on third-party plugins from forums that haven't been touched since 2015. The core software is solid. The third-party ecosystem around it is not.
Why Host Coppermine with 365i?
Our web hosting is built for PHP applications like Coppermine. Every plan includes everything you need to launch and grow.
One-Click Installation
Install Coppermine with a single click from your control panel. No manual configuration, no FTP uploads, no database setup.
Free SSL Certificate
Every site gets a free SSL certificate, automatically configured and renewed. Keep your Coppermine installation secure from day one.
99.9%+ Uptime Track Record
Enterprise-grade data centres in the UK, US & Asia with redundant power, cooling, and network connectivity. Shared hosting runs on autoscaling cloud infrastructure with a 99.9%+ historical uptime record; Managed Cloud Servers target 99.99% uptime; our VPS products carry a contractual 99.99% network availability SLA with service credits.
Daily Backups
Automatic daily backups with easy one-click restore. Your Coppermine data is always safe and recoverable.
7-Day Expert Support
UK-based hosting specialists available 7 days a week including evenings, weekends, and bank holidays. Real people, real help.
SSD Storage
All plans run on fast SSD storage for snappy page loads and responsive admin panels. Coppermine performs at its best.
Where Coppermine Fits
Best for
Existing Coppermine installations being moved to a current PHP 8.5 / MySQL 8 platform. Clubs, family archives, hobbyist communities and small museums with thousands of images, where the gallery has settled into a routine and visitors know the layout. Coppermine works well for low-frequency uploads, occasional admin and steady read traffic, especially when paired with our daily backups and free migration service.
Watch for
Coppermine is in long-term maintenance, so don't expect new features, modern admin tooling or responsive default themes. The plugin ecosystem is largely abandoned and many third-party mods break on PHP 8.3. There is no built-in CDN integration, no native WebP conversion, and the EXIF parser is dated. If you need a starting-from-scratch gallery in 2026, look at a more current platform.
Web Hosting for Coppermine
Get Coppermine up and running in minutes with our fast, reliable web hosting. Every plan includes one-click installation, free SSL, UK, US & Asia data centres, and dedicated expert support.
- 1 website
- 10 GB SSD storage
- Free SSL certificate
- 80+ 1-click installs
- Unlimited LVE resources
- Autoscaling cloud platform
- UK, US & Asia data centres
- 5 websites
- Unlimited SSD storage
- Free SSL certificate
- 80+ 1-click installs
- CDN included
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Timeline Backup/Restore
Timeline Backup
- Website files and databases
- Daily snapshots, 30-day retention
- One-click file and database restore
- Everything above, plus email mailbox backups
- 60-day database retention
- Mailbox restore (to a temporary mailbox first, then sync back)
- Unlimited LVE resources
- Autoscaling cloud platform
- UK, US & Asia data centres
- 10 websites
- Unlimited SSD storage
- Free SSL certificate
- 80+ 1-click installs
- CDN included
-
Timeline Backup/Restore (Pro)
Timeline Backup
- Website files and databases
- Daily snapshots, 30-day retention
- One-click file and database restore
- Everything above, plus email mailbox backups
- 60-day database retention
- Mailbox restore (to a temporary mailbox first, then sync back)
- Unlimited LVE resources
- Autoscaling cloud platform
- UK, US & Asia data centres
All prices exclude VAT. No contract, cancel any time.
Need More Power for Coppermine?
For high-traffic sites, large catalogues, or mission-critical deployments, our fully managed cloud servers give Coppermine dedicated resources and enterprise-grade performance.
- Dedicated CPU, RAM & SSD storage
- 99.99% uptime
- Fully managed by our team
- Choose 365i, AWS, or Google Cloud
Servers
Servers
Servers
A Coppermine case from our books
A motorsport club in the Midlands came to us in late 2025 with a 14-year-old Coppermine install on a host that was forcing them to PHP 7.4 max. The gallery held just under 28,000 images across roughly 300 albums, with a 4.6 GB image directory and a 180 MB MySQL database. Their existing host quoted them £180 for a "specialist migration" and said the application was unsupported.
We migrated the site under the free migration service in 90 minutes. The image directory transferred over rsync, the database dumped and reimported cleanly, and the only code change was three lines in config.inc.php for the new database credentials. We bumped the install to the latest Coppermine release on PHP 8.3, ran the upgrade script, and the site came back exactly as it left, only faster. First-page load dropped from 3.2s to 0.9s on the same theme.
What we would tell anyone in the same spot: Coppermine is portable, the migration is genuinely simple, and there is no reason to pay a premium to keep an old gallery running on a current server. PHP 8.5 plus daily backups plus free SSL on a £5.99 shared plan is more than enough for a club gallery with this kind of traffic profile.
Anonymised at the client's request. Industry, scale, and timeline preserved.
What we look for in gallery hosting
Photo galleries trip on PHP upload limits, file storage, and on-the-fly thumbnail generation. We raise upload_max_filesize and post_max_size to 256MB on install for any gallery app, recommend pre-generating thumbnails on import rather than letting the application build them on first request, and set sensible cache headers so popular albums do not regenerate the same thumbnail twice. For libraries above 100,000 images, NVMe storage on a managed cloud server changes the experience more than any application tuning.
More applications you can install on 365i hosting
Beyond Gallery, our one-click installer covers 79 open-source PHP applications across 27 categories. A small selection from across the catalogue:
Coppermine Hosting FAQ
Common questions we hear from people running Coppermine on our hosting.
Coppermine is in long-term maintenance rather than active feature development. The project still ships occasional security and compatibility releases, but you should not expect major new features or a redesigned admin interface. For an established gallery, that's usually fine. For a brand-new project in 2026, I'd point you at something more current. The core code runs cleanly on PHP 8.3 and MySQL 8, which is what we offer by default on every shared plan, so the platform side is not the limiting factor.
In nearly every case we've handled, yes. Coppermine's codebase is small enough that the official maintainers have kept it in step with current PHP releases. The exception is third-party plugins from forums that haven't been touched in years. Those will often throw deprecation warnings or fatal errors on PHP 8.3. We test the upgrade as part of the free migration so you find out before going live, and we can recommend whether to drop the plugin, find a maintained alternative, or stay on PHP 8.2 if needed.
Yes, free migration is included on every hosting plan. Coppermine is one of the simpler applications to move because the file structure is flat, the database is small, and the configuration is a single file. A typical migration with up to 30,000 images and a few hundred MB of database takes about 60-90 minutes, including the PHP version bump and a test login on a staging URL before we change DNS. We'll handle SSL provisioning automatically once the domain points at our servers.
Coppermine is a dedicated gallery application, so it handles thousands of images and nested albums without the database bloat that some WordPress galleries develop. It also has finer-grained user permissions out of the box. The trade-off is dated admin tooling, no responsive default theme and a much smaller pool of designers who know how to skin it. If you already have a WordPress site and only need a few hundred images, a gallery plugin is usually easier. If you need a standalone gallery with tens of thousands of images, Coppermine still earns its keep.
Ready to Host Coppermine?
Get started with Coppermine on our fast UK web hosting. One-click installation, free SSL, and dedicated expert support included.