More information on hosts for our instance of ArchivesSpace

[Alexis Jimenez]

I am the congregational archivist for a Women Religious Congregation. We implemented ArchivesSpace last year and are only using it internally and are self-hosting. I am currently extracting the data from our legacy Word document finding aids and working on loading all our finding aids into ArchivesSpace. We plan to have a public interface to allow outside research, and our IT department thinks it best if we have it hosted by an outside third party to protect our network. Who is everyone using? For reference, we are a small institution. There are currently only 725 finding aids, and we are a nonprofit with a small budget, so being conservative with cost is a priority. I had suggested to our IT department it may be more cost effective in the long run to purchase an updated server and host ourselves with some type of protection from attacks.

Any information is helpful. 

Thank you!

Alexis Jimenez

Archivist

Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia

609 S. Convent Road

Aston, PA 19014

610-558-7703

[Rockwell, Chris@Parks]

Hi Alexis,

 

We use LibraryHost and are pretty satisfied with them. They have a breakdown of their fees here: https://libraryhost.com/pricing/.

 

Chris Rockwell, Librarian / Archivist

California State Railroad Museum

Library & Archives

 

From: archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org <archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org> On Behalf Of Alexis Jimenez
Sent: Monday, February 9, 2026 11:36 AM
To: Archivesspace_Users_Group <archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org>
Subject: [ArchivesSpace Users Group] More information on hosts for our instance of ArchivesSpace

 

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[René Vlak]

Dear Alexis,

Our instance of ArchivesSpace is hosted by Lyrasis. They are an excellent hosting partner, I can really recommend them.

Best regards,

René Vlak

Functional Application Manager

Library University of Amsterdam / Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

[Megan Brett]

Hello Alexis, 

If you are a small non-profit, it may be more practical and cost-effective to go with a hosted instance. Self-hosting means either placing more workload on your IT team or running an instance of ASpace which gets fewer updates with less support. 

A hosted instance means that someone else (not your IT team) is responsible for making sure you have the latest updates, installing plugins, keeping track of the technical specifications (versions of PHP, etc), and possibly also offering you user support. If you run a self-hosted instance, you'll want to have a clear plan with you IT about how often they run updates, how much time they can give you for technical questions about ASpace, whether you get server access for tweaks and plugins, etc.

I'm at a mid-sized non-profit, and we have a hosted instance - in part to respect the bandwidth of our IT department. We use Lyrasis' hosting and it works great for us.

Best,

Megan Brett

Manager for Collections Processing and Digital Initiatives

Thomas Jefferson Foundation

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From: archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org <archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org> on behalf of Alexis Jimenez <AJim...@osfphila.org>
Sent: Monday, February 9, 2026 2:35 PM

To: Archivesspace_Users_Group <archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org>
Subject: [ArchivesSpace Users Group] More information on hosts for our instance of ArchivesSpace

[Natasha Forner]

Hi all,

We are in a somewhat similar position. We just recently started actively using ArchivesSpace again after a few years of not really using it, though we maintained our subscriptions during that time. I believe we're currently paying for Lyrasis membership--which gives us access to user guides and support--and LibraryHost for hosting. Though I need to double check that.

Thank you for asking the questions, I'm also curious.

Natasha