FAQ

Why did you create Zimage?

Zimage was started by David Byttow to address the complexity of serving images from random locations on the web. The current solutions are either too slow (rsz.io) or require too much effort (Imgix) to setup. Others are too expensive and you’re left with building your own. Zimage is early days, but it is developing quickly into the fastest and most flexible image processing service in the world to make the web faster.

Why is Zimage better than other image processors like rsz.io, Cloudinary, Imgix, Embedly, Resize.ly, etc?

There are many great services such as those mentioned, but they all come with certain trade-offs. For example, rsz.io is awesome and free, but it does not perform any caching and so is not suitable for production use. Other services like Cloudinary and Imgix require the user to either upload their own images or declare the origin servers, this is too complicated.

Zimage believes in using a “pull model” similar to popular CDNs such as Fastly. The idea is to simply request a URL “through” Zimage and caching/optimization comes for free.

Finally, Zimage is dedicated to offering the best price for its Pro and Prime tiers among other services. We believe in a flat rate versus requiring customers to count or guess how much quota they will need.

Is the free plan limited?

Although there are rate-limits in place to protect the quality of service of Zimage, there are no limits to the free version and are suitable for many requirements.

Why would I pay for Zimage?

The paid version of Zimage offers many benefits for serious customers. Each customer is given an API key that is used to send requests to dedicated server clusters with higher limits on caching. In short, the paid version unlocks all features of Zimage.

What is the difference between a source image and a target image?

Source images are exactly that, the source image that you want to serve. The target image is the content served by Zimage with the desired transformations. Source images are cached at the Zimage layer and target images are cached at the edges.

What is Zimage’s tech stack?

Zimage is hosted in AWS and uses several pieces of technology to deliver the most optimized throughput possible. On the backend, Zimage service is written in Go and uses Groupcache for ephemeral server-side caching. Zimage is built on top of vips, the fastest image processing library written in C, generally 4x+ faster than other image libraries.

Which CDN does Zimage use?

The free version of Zimage uses Fastly to cache images at the “edge”. The paid versions use both Cloudflare and Akamai.

Can I use my own domain to serve from Zimage?

This is available to Pro and Prime customers only.

Who uses Zimage?

Zimage is used a number of customers that have been participating in the beta program to make sure that it’s resilient and ready to serve a large number of customers.

I have more questions

Great, email us at hello@zimage.io, we’re ready to answer your questions.