Audiobookshelf Hosting: Your Own Audiobook and Podcast Server

Audiobookshelf is an open-source (GPL-3.0) server for audiobooks and podcasts: you keep the files, and its web and mobile apps play them and remember where everyone stopped. Choose it with a plan, pay, and we build the VPS (KVM, NVMe, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS) and install it in about two minutes after boot. You get:

• Audiobookshelf 2.37 with two libraries ready: Audiobooks and Podcasts.
• An HTTPS address like audiobooks-k3x9q2.devoster.app with a Let's Encrypt certificate, which the apps connect to.
• Your root account already created. Audiobookshelf normally hands its setup screen to the first visitor; here it is done on the server before the site goes public. You log in as admin with a generated password shown in the Devoster dashboard, where you can also reset it.
• Dashboard controls to open the app, restart, stop or start it, read its logs, run an update and connect your own domain.

The app is free; you pay only the VPS plan, with 10% off yearly. The server comes with full root, free nightly backups kept 3 days plus one snapshot, a dedicated IPv4, 1 Gbps with unlimited bandwidth and DDoS protection. Already have a Devoster VPS? You can install Audiobookshelf on it from VPS Control, after the panel checks the OS, free ports 80/443 and disk, or reinstall the server with it, at no charge. Other apps that install this way are on the One-Click Apps page.

• From the browser: Audiobookshelf's upload page puts books straight into a library folder, which is handy for a few titles.
• Over SFTP: for a whole collection, copy it to /opt/devoster/data/audiobookshelf/audiobooks with any SFTP client, one folder per book (an Author/Title layout works well), then scan the library. Multi-file books stay together as one title.
• Podcasts: search for a show inside Audiobookshelf, subscribe, and turn on auto-download; new episodes are fetched to the server on their own. You can also add a show by its RSS feed URL.
• Covers and details can be matched from online sources, one book or the whole library at a time, and edited by hand.

Audiobookshelf plays the files you give it; it doesn't remove copy protection, so books bought on services that lock their files won't play here. Only upload what you have the right to use.

The web app works on any device: open your address, log in, and press play. Audiobookshelf's Android app is on Google Play, and its iOS app has been in public beta through TestFlight; both connect with your HTTPS address, username and password. Wherever you listen, your position is saved on the server, so you can stop in the car and carry on at home on another device.

• Per-user progress: each account has its own place in every book and its own finished list.
• Bookmarks and playback speed in the player.
• Ebooks too: a basic reader handles EPUB, PDF, CBR and CBZ files, if you keep some next to your audiobooks.

Audiobookshelf itself is light; the size of your collection decides the plan. As arithmetic, not a promise: a 10-hour audiobook is roughly 300 to 600 MB depending on its bitrate, so 50 GB holds very roughly 100 books. Podcasts with auto-download keep growing until you set them to keep only recent episodes.

Bigger collections need bigger plans, up to 200 GB on Mega. You can upgrade from the panel later, but plans are not shrunk in place.

• Add people yourself. There is no public sign-up. As root you create accounts under Settings, Users, and choose each password right there; no email is involved, which matters because outbound mail ports are blocked by default on Devoster VPS plans.
• Permissions per user: decide who can download, who can upload, and which libraries each person sees, for example podcasts for everyone and some books for adults only.
• Your own password is reset from the Devoster dashboard; the reset signs out every session of the root account, so log in again in the apps afterwards. Other users' passwords you change in Settings, Users.

Backups: nightly backups (kept 3 days) and your snapshot slot cover the whole VPS. Audiobookshelf can also back up its own database (progress, users, settings) on a schedule. Your media files are the large part: keep the originals somewhere else too, or copy /opt/devoster/data/audiobookshelf off the server over SFTP or with rsync.

Updates: we check new Audiobookshelf versions and apply them in a maintenance hour you choose, or when you press Update now. A snapshot of the VPS is taken first, and if the app doesn't come back healthy the server is rolled back automatically. Keep the phone app updated too.

The server is unmanaged: you have full root, and its security and your files are your responsibility. Our VPS hardening checklist is a good hour's read.