FileGator is a free, open-source, self-hosted PHP web application that gives teams, schools, and administrators a browser-based multi-user file manager with fine-grained permissions and pluggable storage backends.

What it is

FileGator is a self-hosted web application for managing files and folders, written in PHP and released under the MIT licence. It manages files inside a local repository folder on your server's hard drive or connects to other storage adapters, and it supports multi-user setups in which admins and other users work with different access permissions, roles, and home folders. The front end is a single page built with Vue.js, Bulma, and Buefy, and the project explicitly requires no database.

It solves the concrete problem of giving a group of people controlled access to files without standing up an FTP server or a full file-server stack. Basic file operations are all covered — copy, move, rename, edit, create, delete, preview, zip, unzip, download, and upload — and users who are allowed to can download multiple files or folders at once. Uploads use chunking, so large files can be transferred regardless of server configuration, with drag-and-drop, a progress bar, and pause and resume. In typical use it replaces an FTP or SFTP workflow and can be used to manage S3 or other third-party cloud storage.

Key capabilities

• Multiple storage adapters: Local, FTP, Amazon S3, Dropbox, DO Spaces, Azure Blob, and many others via Flysystem.
• Multiple auth adapters with roles and permissions, storing users in a JSON file, in a database, or through WordPress.
• Multiple session adapters — Native File, Pdo, Redis, MongoDB, Memcached, and others via Symfony's HttpFoundation session storage handlers.
• Chunked uploads built with Resumable.js, supporting drag-and-drop, a progress bar, and pause and resume.
• Zip and bulk download support, including zipping and downloading remote files quickly.
• A single page front end built with Vue.js, Bulma, and Buefy.
• Highly extensible, decoupled, and tested code, with no database required.

Who uses it and how

• Teams and individuals share a folder with colleagues, friends, or family for joint file access.
• Schools and instructors give students access to upload their work.
• Field workers upload data, documents, and images from the field, with administrators controlling permissions and home folders.
• Administrators use it as cloud backup and to manage a CDN with multiple people.
• Operators use it as an FTP/SFTP replacement or to manage S3 and other third-party cloud storage from one interface.

Getting started

The official Docker image is filegator/filegator, runnable with docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 filegator/filegator, after which you visit http://127.0.0.1:8080 and log in as admin/admin123; further installation methods are documented at docs.filegator.io.

How it compares

FileGator stands alone in this registry; no comparable tools are named in the available facts.

When to use it — and when not

A self-hoster operates the web server and the storage backend, choosing session and auth adapters (JSON file, database, Redis, MongoDB, Memcached, WordPress) to match, while still needing no database for the core. It should not be picked when you need symlink support or file ownership (chown), because the underlying Flysystem local adapter does not support symlinks and ownership is unsupported, and performance suffers when too many files sit in the same directory. With 222 open issues at the time of writing, expect some rough edges when troubleshooting.

docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 filegator/filegator
visit: http://127.0.0.1:8080 login as admin/admin123