Host Audiobookshelf without installing anything
Your audiobook and podcast library on a server of your own, with playback position following you from the phone to the browser and back.
Starting at €4.99/month
Introduction
Audiobookshelf installed, updated and backed up by us, on a machine in France. An audiobook and podcast server with listening progress synced across your devices, and Android and iOS apps available. You install nothing and configure no server: the application is online a few minutes after you order, under your own name.
The plan that suits it is App Essentiel at €4.99/month incl. VAT — 2 GB of memory, against a theoretical minimum of 512 MB. Audiobookshelf usually streams files as they are, without transcoding: memory mostly goes to library scanning, to reading chapters through ffmpeg, and to downloading podcast episodes on schedule. We would rather quote the plan that survives a first scan of several hundred titles than the one that fits on paper.
The library stays a plain tree of folders — one per author, one per series, one per title. M4B, MP3, M4A, FLAC and OPUS play directly, chapters embedded in an M4B are picked up and editable, and metadata is filled in from Audible, iTunes, Google Books or Audnexus for narrator and series. The day you leave, you copy the folder: there is nothing else to take.
What managed hosting changes
Android and iOS apps, offline listening
The official apps point at your own server address. A downloaded title plays with no network, playback speed and sleep timer are adjustable, and your position is pushed back to the server as soon as the connection returns.
Podcasts with automatic downloads
Paste an RSS feed address, Audiobookshelf pulls the available back catalogue and picks up new episodes on its own. What you have downloaded stays with you, even if the episode later disappears from the original feed.
Chapters, bookmarks and per-title speed
Chapters in an M4B are read and can be corrected from the interface, bookmarks are placed to the second, and every book keeps its own playback speed — not a detail between a novel and a lecture.
Several libraries, several accounts
Audiobooks, podcasts and ebooks live in separate libraries. Each account has its own progress and only reaches the libraries you open to it.
Why hand it over rather than install it
Someone who listens on the road
Titles download to the phone the night before, the sleep timer cuts out by itself, and the position picked up the next day at the desk is exactly where the drive stopped.
A household sharing one library
Everyone gets an account and their own progress. Children only see the library you opened to them, with no recommendations and no advertising in the middle.
A podcast listener tired of apps that sort for them
Subscriptions are RSS feeds, nothing more. No algorithm reorders the queue, and an episode pulled from the feed stays in your library because it is on your disk.
A collection ripped from CDs
Files are dropped into the tree, the record is completed from Audible, iTunes or Google Books, cover art and narrator name come with it, and the series falls back into order.
A trainer distributing recordings
Audiobookshelf can publish an RSS feed for a given title: participants listen to the session in whatever podcast app they already use, without creating an account.
A personal library that stays in France
The instance runs in our own infrastructure in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, and the automatic backup kept for 14 days restores from the client area.
Frequently asked questions
An Audible file still under DRM — .aax or .aaxc — cannot be read by Audiobookshelf, and we provide nothing to work around that protection. Anything in M4B, MP3, M4A, FLAC or OPUS plays directly, and Audiobookshelf will fetch cover, narrator, series and summary from Audible and Audnexus to fill in the record.
Yes, the position is stored on the server, not on the device. Start in the browser, carry on in the Android or iOS app at the same spot. A title listened to offline pushes its progress back as soon as the phone finds a network again.
For ebooks, yes: EPUB, PDF, CBZ and CBR open in the built-in reader. For music, no — Audiobookshelf is built for long listening with resume, not for albums; Navidrome does that job far better. For a serious comics collection, look at Komga.
Nothing. You choose the application, fill in the two or three fields it asks for, and it goes online; the address and credentials arrive by email. The recommended plan for Audiobookshelf is App Essentiel, at €4.99/month incl. VAT with 2 GB of memory, and it can be changed later without reinstalling.
Yes, they are part of the service. A self-hosted application left un-updated is a security risk, not a saving. Version upgrades are applied and checked by us, with a backup kept for 14 days so you can roll back from the client area.