How to install Wallabag on Saplo: your own article reader instead of Pocket Premium

Do you collect articles to read later in browser bookmarks, shared chats, and screenshots? When you finally find an evening with a free hour, half the links are dead because the author deleted the post or the publication is hidden behind a paywall. Read-it-later services solve half of this problem: they save a copy of the content and collect everything in one place. The full version of Pocket Premium costs $5 per month, or $59 per year, and your entire library is stored on third-party servers. Wallabag is an open-source article reader that you host on your own Saplo Box: it saves the full content of an article without ads, organizes it with tags, allows you to add highlights and annotations, and export entries to an e-book reader. Below is a step-by-step guide on how to set up Wallabag on Saplo and migrate your saved items from Pocket.

Why Wallabag Instead of Pocket Premium

Wallabag does what people pay for in a cloud service's Premium version: it saves the full content of an article along with images, so the entry remains readable even if the author deletes it or the page disappears from the web. You can group articles by tags, search your entire library, highlight passages in the text, and add your own notes.

The difference starts with where the data resides. Pocket is a cloud service: your account and entire library live with the provider and are subject to their pricing and decisions. The history of Pocket itself shows how this works in practice: in 2015, the then-owner announced the service's closure, and it was only saved by being acquired by Readwise. You host Wallabag yourself, so your articles, accounts, and settings stay on your Box, and you decide who has access.

Wallabag has no feature fees: exporting to an e-book reader, searching the entire library, or accounts for family members are all standard features of the open-source version. The project has been under development for over a decade, and you can find a description of its capabilities on the official Wallabag website.

Wallabag requirements and hosting on Saplo

The Wallabag recipe in the Saplo catalog declares a minimum of 512 MB RAM and 2 GB disk space. This is one of the lighter recipes in the catalog, so the smallest Box S for $29 per year (1 GB RAM, 15 GB disk) will easily handle it: after installation, about 0.5 GB of RAM and 13 GB of disk space remain for other applications and your library. If you have a very large collection of articles and several accounts, it's worth considering a larger Box, but Box S is completely sufficient to start.

Before installation, prepare:

• an active Box with free resources,
• the application name and the domain or subdomain *.saploapp.pl where the reader will operate,
• access to application files via SFTP, needed once to read initial login data.

You do not set up or configure databases. The recipe uses Saplo's shared MySQL: the engine creates the database and automatically passes access data to the container. You also don't need SSH, the entire installation is performed from the panel. You can find the current offer and implementation description on the Wallabag on Saplo page.

Step-by-step installation

1. Log in to the Saplo panel and open the App catalog. Search for Wallabag (category "Business tools").
2. Give the application a name, indicate a Box with available resources, and choose the domain or subdomain under which you want to use the reader.
3. Confirm the form. The recipe downloads the official wallabag/wallabag image, connects it to the Saplo MySQL database, and exposes the application via the Box's nginx with a free SSL certificate.
4. The first launch takes longer than with simpler applications because the container then performs the database schema installation. The engine waits until Wallabag actually responds via HTTP, so the completion of the installation in the panel means a working application, not just a running container.
5. Connect to the Box via SFTP, using the access data in the Saplo panel. In the application directory /srv/apps/<app-name>/, find the file WALLABAG-SETUP.txt. It contains the application address, the administrator login (wallabag), and a randomly generated password.
6. Open the application address and log in with these details. The administrator account is created during installation; you do not create it via the public registration form.
7. Immediately after the first login, change the password and set your own email address in Settings -> Account.
8. The installer uploads several sample articles to the administrator's account. Remove them from the list; they are not the beginning of your library.

If you don't see the file with login details or the application doesn't respond, check the installation status in the panel and contact Saplo Support. Do not start a second installation just to regain access to the first one.

Your first articles, tags, and highlights

You can add the address of a new article in several ways: by pasting it into the adding field in the Wallabag panel, via the Firefox or Chrome extension, via a bookmarklet in the bookmarks bar, and on your phone via the official mobile app for Android and iOS. You connect client applications to your own installation with an API token, which you generate in your account settings.

After saving, Wallabag downloads the clean content of the article: without ads, side columns, and newsletter pop-ups, while preserving images. A copy goes into your database, so the entry will survive if the original is deleted by the author.

You organize your library with tags, assigned manually or automatically by tagging rules. For example, a rule can assign a 'competitor watch' tag to every article from a specific domain, and a 'security' tag to every article with a vulnerability phrase. You browse the list with filters: unread, starred, a specific tag. While reading, you highlight fragments and add your own notes to them. The rules for working with tags are described in the Wallabag documentation.

On a second person's account, the reader works the same way, with no additional user fee. Registration via a public form is disabled in your installation, so you create accounts yourself as an administrator in Settings -> Users, for family members or your team.

Export to an e-reader

You can export every article and the entire filtered list to EPUB, MOBI, PDF, as well as JSON, CSV, and TXT formats. EPUB and MOBI have the greatest practical value: you can pack a set of articles onto an e-reader, for example, a Kindle, and read them on the train or during your vacation without your phone or internet access. This is a feature that Pocket doesn't offer in any plan.

Exporting your full library to a JSON file also serves as an additional backup: you have a copy of your articles with tags outside of your Box, in a single file that you can import back in if needed.

Migrating from Pocket

Wallabag has a built-in data importer for Pocket, Instapaper, Readability, and Pinboard. Here's how to migrate from Pocket:

1. From your Pocket account, download the file with your saved articles using the data export option in your Pocket account settings.
2. In the Wallabag panel, go to Settings -> Import and select Pocket.
3. Point to the downloaded file and start the import. Wallabag will upload the articles along with their addresses and tags.
4. Review the first ten imported entries, and only after checking everything, cancel your Pocket account.

Instructions for importing from each supported service are described in the Wallabag import documentation. You can also add entries from Pocket gradually: the importer can be run multiple times, so you can spread the migration over several evenings.

Wallabag on Saplo vs. Pocket Premium

The price difference is $30 annually in favor of Wallabag, but the most important thing is what you see in the second row of the table: the library does not depend on the fate of a single service or the decisions of its owner.

FAQ

Do I need SSH? No. You perform the installation from the directory in the panel, and you read the first login data from the WALLABAG-SETUP.txt file via SFTP. For everyday reading, a browser is enough; advanced container administration may require additional access or Saplo technical support.

Do I need to set up a database? No. The recipe uses Saplo's shared MySQL, the engine creates the database and automatically passes access data to the container. Articles, accounts, and tags live in this database, and images from saved articles are stored on the Box's disk.

Can I create accounts for family members or my team? Yes. Public registration is disabled, so accounts are created by the administrator in Settings -> Users. The number of accounts does not generate any fees; the limit is determined by the Box's resources.

How many articles can fit on a Box S? The text of a single article usually weighs several tens of kilobytes, so tens of thousands of entries alone can fit. Images in saved articles and other applications running on the same Box take up space faster.

What about updates? Wallabag runs in a container based on the official Docker image, and the library's state resides in Saplo's shared MySQL. Refreshing the application does not affect articles, accounts, or tags, so an update is not a reinstallation from scratch.

How do I get started? Open the Wallabag hosting offer on Saplo, choose a Box, and launch the application from the catalog. Install the browser plugin, save your first five articles, and read them in the evening without ads. If your library is in Pocket, start with the import described above.