Instagram alternative
An Instagram alternative
you actually own.
Retro Photo Blogging. No Algorithm.
What’s new is old again. Nothing here is an invention: the single-photo blog, long-form posting, classic Insta, Picasa-style albums — all of it used to belong to photographers. We’re giving it back, on hardware you control, where nobody can take it again.
Your photos. Your voice. Your style. Your dignity.
Remember when you posted a photograph and it just… stayed there? Nobody cropped it into a square, buried it under a dance video, or sold the space next to it to a mattress company. Nobody “updated the terms.” That’s this.
It’s software. You put it on a cheap web host. It’s yours the way your camera is yours. The three-across grid is back, your captions and dates come with you, and the only algorithm is the one where newer things are at the top.
And yes, people can still follow you. Your site is on the fediverse: anyone on Pixelfed, Mastodon, or the rest can follow, like, boost, and comment on your photographs from where they already are, while every one of them stays on your server. Followers without a landlord.
Highlights
- YoursYou host it. You own the art. No company, no tiers, no upsell, no “we’ve updated our terms.”
- Four ways to scoreOne photo at a time, the classic grid, writing with photographs in it, or SMACKTHEMUP: simplified, self-hosted public photo sharing for friends and family. Pick the way you always shared.
- Get in, get outImport Instagram, Flickr and Blogger with dates and captions intact. Leave any time with everything, in a form other software reads.
- SkinsReal sites, real archives, and nothing that looks like a template.
- Not aloneYour site is on the fediverse. People on Mastodon, Pixelfed and the rest can follow, like, boost, and reply to your work while it stays on your server. Plus a directory of photoblogs worth browsing and a weekly challenge.
- Desktop suiteA free non-destructive photo editor, batch publishing, backup, import and export tools. Windows and Linux.
- Locked downReal security, publicly audited. If something goes wrong you hear it from us the day we know — not two weeks later.
- AI insideCaptions, alt text, looks, a skin designer. Five providers, your own key, your call. It’s the intern, not the boss.
- Cheap to runShared hosting, small footprint, upload and go. Run several sites from one desk.
- Not a companyBuilt by a working photographer who uses it every day, under a licence that stops anyone fencing it off.
No algorithm.No ads.No Zuck.
Just your photographs, on your domain, looking the way you meant them to. THE UNZUCKER brings your Instagram export home in an afternoon. See one that made the trip: unzucked.ca.
Built by a photographer, not a company. Ask him anything — he’s rude but he answers.