Stop Paying Monthly for Media Optimization

When you upload an image, WordPress normally generates all registered thumbnail sizes immediately — blocking your upload and spiking CPU. StaticQ intercepts this process and places each required size into a processing queue instead. A WordPress cron job then works through the queue in controlled batches, preventing server overload.

Not for the free version. StaticQ Lite handles all image optimization and scanning locally. For cloud offloading (R2 storage) and Cloudflare Image Resizing, you'll need a Cloudflare account — but even their free plan supports image resizing if your domain is proxied through Cloudflare.

Cloudflare R2 includes 10 GB of free storage and 10 million Class B (read) operations per month — more than enough for most WordPress sites. Beyond that, it's $0.015/GB/month with zero egress fees. You'll never pay for bandwidth when visitors load your images.

You pay once for a StaticQ Pro license and it's yours to use indefinitely. The purchase includes one year of plugin updates to maintain compatibility with WordPress core updates. After the first year, you can optionally renew for continued updates at a discounted rate.

Absolutely. The two-phase file scanner audits your entire media library — both the WordPress database and actual files on disk. It identifies missing sizes, extra sizes, and files that need to be offloaded. You can then process everything through the queue at your own pace.

Yes — that's actually one of its main advantages. Because images are processed in batches via cron rather than all at once on upload, StaticQ puts minimal load on your server. It's designed to work within the resource constraints of shared hosting environments.

In local mode, optimized images stay on your hosting server. In cloud mode, they're offloaded to Cloudflare R2 or Google Cloud Storage after processing, and the local copies are removed. You can mix and match — some images local, others offloaded — based on your needs.

StaticQ Lite includes queue-based processing, local image resizing, the full two-phase file scanner, orphan detection, WebP generation, and smart front-end delivery. The free version covers everything except cloud offloading and Cloudflare-specific features — no image count limits.

ShortPixel and Optimole charge monthly per-image fees and route your images through their servers. StaticQ processes everything on your own infrastructure (or via Cloudflare's free APIs), stores on your own cloud bucket, and charges a one-time fee. You own your entire pipeline.