Statically vs External Images Plugin

Dave Hilditch •

Want faster results? Try External Images on your store.

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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.

Visit Statically →

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:

If a supplier, merchant or CDN already hosts your images, downloading copies into WordPress wastes import time, CPU and disk. External Images lets WooCommerce use those remote URLs without creating local attachments or thumbnails.

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?

★★★★★
Markus — February 2019

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.

★★★★★
ihatelife — July 2019

I love how fucking fast External Images when I import a lot image without need the CDN server.

★★★★★
nokivcon — May 2020

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?

What's new in External Images?

3.43.11 (20th October 2026)

  • Faster first page views of products sharing images, because unchanged image attachment details are no longer rewritten

3.43.10 (20th October 2026)

  • Fixed first page views of products that share an image with other products being slow behind nginx-helper and other cache purgers, because unchanged image attachments are no longer re-saved
  • Tested up to WordPress 7.1

3.43.9 (22nd August 2026)

  • Updated super-speedy-settings to the latest version

3.43.8 (21st August 2026)

  • Hardened the shared settings module and removed its Jetpack Autoloader dependency
View full changelog →

Want faster results? Try External Images on your store.

Get External Images →

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