Why are the images not accessible by ShortPixel AI or Autoptimize?

This article applies to both ShortPixel Adaptive Image (SPAI) and Autoptimize (AO).

There are generally 7 possible reasons why you notice that an image, instead of being served from ShortPixel's CDN, is served from the original location (after a temporary redirect, HTTP code 302 or 307), almost always indicating that our servers cannot access the images:

  1. Many times there is a firewall preventing ShortPixel's servers from accessing the images on the original website. It can be one of your plugins, your hosting or your CDN. The solution is to whitelist ShortPixel's IPs as described here.
  2. The files aren't publicly accessible because they are on a website hosted on an intranet, the website is password protected or there are defined rules on your .htaccess file (usually for anti-hotlinking). The solution is to have the website hosted publicly on the Internet, remove any password protection and make sure there are no .htaccess rules that may prevent ShortPixel's API from accessing the images.
  3. The first time an image is accessed, it will be registered for being processed by ShortPixel, but for the customer not to wait a few seconds, the original image is immediately sent back via a HTTP redirect. The second time the image is accessed, the CDN-hosted image should start showing up.
  4. Cloudflare or some other CDN providers may also be the cause; as part of their security measures, they may require human input, and since our servers aren't human, they fail this check. The solution is to whitelist ShortPixel's IPs, as described here.
  5. There are no more image optimization credits in the account associated with the website where ShortPixel Adaptive Images or Autoptimize is installed. The solution is to purchase more credits.
  6. If there are enough credits in your account, then most likely the domain/website where you're using SPAI or AO is not associated with your account. Please associate the domain to your account and the images should start being served by ShortPixel's CDN.
  7. The monthly CDN traffic quota has been exceeded. When this happens, the requests will be redirected to the original image. Please login to your account to know when your monthly quota will reset.
  8. If you are using an external CDN and not ShortPixel's default one, and in case you run out of credits, you may start seeing 302 redirections. These redirections may be cached by your external CDN, so once you add more credits to your account, it is advisable to flush your CDN cache in order to get rid of those redirections.

If none of these reasons apply, we recommend flushing the redirected images from our CDN cache following these instructions and try again.

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