Hello everybody,

Firstly, on behalf of the Immich team, I'd like to thank everybody for your continuous support of Immich since the very first day! Your contributions, encouragement, and community engagement have helped bring Immich to its current state. The team and I are forever grateful for that.

Since our last announcement of the core team joining FUTO to work on Immich full-time, one of the goals of our new position is to foster a healthy relationship between the developers and the users. We believe that this enables us to create great software, establish transparent policies and build trust.

We want to build a great software application that brings value to you and your loved ones' lives. We are not using you as a product, i.e., selling or tracking your data. We are not putting annoying ads into our software. We respect your privacy. We want to be compensated for the hard work we put in to build Immich for you.

With those notes, we have enabled a way for you to financially support the continued development of Immich, ensuring the software can move forward and will be maintained, by offering a lifetime license of the software. We think if you like and use software, you should pay for it, but we're never going to force anyone to pay or try to limit Immich for those who don't.

There are two types of license that you can choose to purchase: Server License and Individual License.

Server License​

This is a lifetime license costing $99.99. The license is applied to the whole server. You and all users that use your server are licensed.

Individual License​

This is a lifetime license costing $24.99. The license is applied to a single user, and can be used on any server they choose to connect to.

You can purchase the license on our page - https://buy.immich.app.

Starting with release v1.109.0 you can purchase and enter your purchased license key directly in the app.

Thank you​

Thank you again for your support, this will help create a strong foundation and stability for the Immich team to continue developing and maintaining the project that you love to use.

Cheers! 🎉

Immich team

FAQ

1. Where can I purchase a license?​

There are several places where you can purchase the license from

• https://buy.immich.app
• https://pay.futo.org
• or directly from the app.

2. Do I need both Individual License and Server License?​

No,

If you are the admin and the sole user, or your instance has less than a total of 4 users, you can buy the Individual License for each user.

If your instance has more than 4 users, it is more cost-effective to buy the Server License, which will license all the users on your instance.

3. What do I do if I don't pay?​

You can continue using Immich without any restriction.

4. Will there be any paywalled features?​

No, there will never be any paywalled features.

5. Where can I get support regarding payment issues?​

You can email us with your orderId and your email address [email protected] or on our Discord server.

Immich is joining FUTO!

Since the beginning of this adventure, my goal has always been to create a better world for my children. Memories are priceless, and privacy should not be a luxury. However, building quality open source has its challenges. Over the past two years, it has taken significant dedication, time, and effort.

Recently, a company in Austin, Texas, called FUTO contacted the team. FUTO strives to develop quality and sustainable open software. They build software alternatives that focus on giving control to users. From their mission statement:

“Computers should belong to you, the people. We develop and fund technology to give them back.”

FUTO loved Immich and wanted to see if we’d consider working with them to take the project to the next level. In short, FUTO offered to:

• Pay the core team to work on Immich full-time
• Let us keep full autonomy about the project’s direction and leadership
• Continue to license Immich under AGPL
• Keep Immich’s development direction with no paywalled features
• Keep Immich “built for the people” (no ads, data mining/selling, or alternative motives)
• Provide us with financial, technical, legal, and administrative support

After careful deliberation, the team decided that FUTO’s vision closely aligns with our own: to build a better future by providing a polished, performant, and privacy-preserving open-source software solution for photo and video management delivered in a sustainable way.

Immich’s future has never looked brighter, and we look forward to realizing our vision for Immich as part of FUTO.

If you have more questions, we’ll host a Q&A live stream on May 9th at 3PM UTC (10AM CST). You can ask questions here, and the stream will be live here on our YouTube channel.

Cheers,

The Immich Team

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FAQs​

What is FUTO?​

https://futo.org/what-is-futo/

Will the license change?​

No. Immich will continue to be licensed under AGPL without a CLA.

Will Immich continue to be free?​

Yes. The Immich source code will remain freely available under the AGPL license.

Is Immich getting VC funding?​

No. Venture capital implies investment in a business, often with the expectation of a future payout (exit plan). Immich is neither a business that can be acquired nor comes with a money-making exit plan.

I am currently supporting Immich through GitHub sponsors. What will happen to my donation?​

Effective immediately, all donations to the Immich organization will be canceled. In the future, we will offer an optional, modest payment option instead. Thank you to everyone who donated to help us get this far!

How is funding sustainable?​

Immich and FUTO believe a sustainable future requires a model that does not rely on users-as-a-product. To this end, FUTO advocates that users pay for good, open software. In keeping with this model, we will adopt a purchase price. This means we no longer accept donations, but — without limiting features for those who do not pay — we will soon allow you to purchase Immich through a modest payment. We encourage you to pay for the high-quality software you use to foster a healthy software culture where developers build great applications without hidden motives for their users.

When does this change take effect?​

This change takes effect immediately.

What will change?​

The following things will change as Immich joins FUTO:

• The brand, logo, and other Immich trademarks will be transferred to FUTO.
• We will stop all donations to the project.
• The core team can now dedicate our full attention to Immich
• Before the end of the year, we plan to have a roadmap for what it will take to get Immich to a stable release.
• Bugs will be squashed, and features will be delivered faster.