Jellyfin Hosting: Your Own Media Server in the Cloud

Jellyfin is a free, open-source (GPL-2.0) media server: it organises your movies, shows and music with artwork and metadata, and streams them to your devices. There is no vendor account, subscription or premium tier. Choose it with a plan, pay, and we build the VPS (KVM, NVMe, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS) and install it in about four minutes after boot. You get:

• Jellyfin 12.4 with its first-run wizard already completed, so the address opens on a login screen, not a setup page anyone could claim.
• Three libraries ready: Movies, Shows and Music, each on its own folder.
• An HTTPS address like yourname-x7k2.devoster.app with a Let's Encrypt certificate, which the Jellyfin apps connect to.
• Your admin account already created. You log in with the username admin and 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 Jellyfin 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.

Media goes in over SFTP, with the server's SSH login and any SFTP client (FileZilla, WinSCP, Cyberduck) or rsync. The libraries point at:

• /opt/devoster/data/jellyfin/media/movies for films,
• /opt/devoster/data/jellyfin/media/shows for TV series,
• /opt/devoster/data/jellyfin/media/music for albums.

Jellyfin matches files to metadata by name, so the usual layout pays off: Movie Name (2019)/Movie Name (2019).mkv for films and Show Name/Season 01/Show Name S01E01.mkv for episodes. After an upload, run a library scan from the dashboard (or wait for the scheduled one) and the posters, descriptions and episode lists fill in.

Uploads are limited by your own internet connection, not the server: the VPS has a 1 Gbps port with unlimited bandwidth, but a large library still takes as long as your upload speed allows. Upload the titles you watch most first.

Want downloads and imports handled for you as well? The seedbox app includes Jellyfin, already wired to qBittorrent, Sonarr and Radarr.

Open your address in any modern browser and you have the full web player. For other screens, Jellyfin has official and community clients, among them apps for Android and iOS, Android TV and Fire TV, Roku, and desktop players such as Jellyfin Media Player. In each one you enter your server's HTTPS address and log in.

• Users for the household. Create an account per person from the admin dashboard, with access to only the libraries you choose and optional parental ratings.
• Watch progress is kept per user and follows you between devices.
• Music plays from the Music library in the same apps, or in music-focused Jellyfin clients.

Which client you use matters more on a VPS than at home, because of transcoding: see the next section. As a rule, a client that can play your file's format as it is (direct play) costs the server almost nothing.

A VPS has no GPU, so Jellyfin's transcoding runs on the CPU only. That decides the plan more than anything else:

• Direct play (the client plays the file as stored) costs little: the server just sends the file. Several people can stream at once even on a small plan.
• Transcoding (Jellyfin converts the video on the fly because the client can't play it, or to lower the bitrate) is heavy: one 1080p H.264 transcode needs roughly 2 to 4 vCPU.
• 4K and HEVC transcodes are not realistic on CPU alone. Keep 4K files for clients that direct-play them, or keep a 1080p H.264 copy.

Disk is the other limit: a film in 1080p is often several GB. You can upgrade to a larger plan from the panel later.

• No email. Outbound mail ports are blocked by default on Devoster VPS plans, and Jellyfin doesn't need mail for normal use. If you forget the admin password, reset it from the Devoster dashboard.
• Strong passwords for every user. Your server is on the public internet so your apps can reach it from anywhere; give each household account its own strong password and don't share the admin one.
• Private access if you prefer. If you only watch from your own devices, you can reach the server through a VPN such as our WireGuard server and restrict access yourself with root.

Backups: nightly backups (kept 3 days) and your snapshot slot cover the whole VPS, Jellyfin's settings and watch history included. Keep your original media files somewhere else as well; a server backup is not the only copy you want of a library you built over years.

We check new Jellyfin 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 Jellyfin doesn't come back healthy the server is rolled back automatically.

The server is unmanaged: you have full root, and its security and what you store on it are your responsibility. Stream media you own or have the right to use. Our VPS hardening checklist covers SSH keys and the firewall.

When is this the wrong choice? If you mostly need 4K or HEVC transcoding, you need a GPU, which a VPS doesn't have. If you only listen to music, Navidrome is lighter and runs on Nano. And if your library is in the terabytes, the disk on VPS plans won't hold it; look at our dedicated servers.