Statically vs External Images Plugin
Want faster results? Try External Images on your store.
Get External Images →Comparing Statically with External Images? This page breaks down the key differences and similarities so you can find the best fit for your WordPress or WooCommerce store.
Overview of Statically
Statically is a free CDN service and WordPress plugin that delivers static assets — images, CSS, and JavaScript — from a global edge network. It works by rewriting URLs to route assets through Statically's CDN nodes, with additional options for image resizing and WebP conversion via URL parameters.
How External Images differs from Statically
All plugins from Super Speedy Plugins share a SQL-first architecture and an uncompromising focus on performance — and External Images is no different. Here is what sets it apart:
Store your images anywhere – a CDN, Amazon S3, a Digital Ocean space or your affiliate feed – and serve them straight through WordPress. Nothing gets downloaded to your server, so imports run faster and your disk stops filling up. Works with any post type and every WooCommerce product type, including variations and galleries.
Rated 4.65 out of 5 across 26 reviews.
- Import products without WordPress downloading or resizing a single image
- Scale to millions of products on low-cost hosting, with no image storage to worry about
- Works with WP All Import, Datafeedr and any tool that can set a custom field
- Cut disk usage and the CPU normally spent generating 20+ thumbnail sizes per image
Statically accelerates the delivery of images that are already hosted on your server by routing them through a CDN proxy. External Images takes a fundamentally different approach — it does not host or proxy images at all, but instead stores external image URLs so that WooCommerce references images at their original source without any file ever being stored or served by your server.
How to choose between Statically and External Images?
Statically speeds up delivery of images you already host. External Images eliminates the need to host product images on your server altogether — a fundamentally different model suited to stores importing products from external sources. SQL-first architecture, tested against one-million products, free trial available.
What do others say about External Images?
Bought external images and scalability pro. 5 stars for both of them. Thank you for these superb plugins which really boosted my website speed and product imports.
I love how fucking fast External Images when I import a lot image without need the CDN server.
Hi, For Woocommerce to have multiple image links, so that multiple images can be shown, will the plugin accommodate? Also do you have any suggestions for any services that allow to upload product images along with a metadata like the SKU, which we can export to a csv/spreadsheet time to time to get the matching image URLs for a product SKU?
External Images Knowledge Base
View full Knowledge Base →Articles about External Images
View all articles →- December Development Update
- More speed, more updates, and a bit of a roadmap for our plugins
- More beta updates available
- Dev Diary #7
- Dev Diary #6
- Dev Diary #4
- Dev Diary #2
- External Images 1.97 released
- External Images upgrade released – gallery support added
- External Images upgrade released
What's new in External Images?
3.35 (26th May 2026)
- Added new postmeta filter to add front-end gallery compatibility to latest Houzez theme – they no longer use metabox for their metadata
3.34 (20th May 2026)
- Updated the Super Speedy Settings page: added a "Recheck Licenses" button above the licence table so customers have a clear way to refresh licence status after a renewal or upgrade without scrolling down to the licence-key field. The button is disabled until a licence key is entered/saved and re-enables as you type.
- The Recheck flow now also force-bypasses the auth-server's own 1-hour licence cache (via a `force=1` flag on the `wpiapi/check_product_key` call), so renewals/upgrades that completed less than an hour before a recheck no longer show as expired/exceeded. Normal admin page loads continue to use both caches as before — only an explicit Recheck click bypasses them. (Lives in the `super-speedy-settings` submodule, so the change propagates to every Super Speedy plugin.)
3.33 (18th November 2025)
- Added full namespacing for plugin update checker to prevent conflicts with 3rd party plugins
3.32 (27th May 2025)
- Removed code for checking for and deleting orphans – this can be handled through a KB article instead as it's a one-off job to clean up data
Want faster results? Try External Images on your store.
Get External Images →