Why We Built Small Pics

At Foster Commerce, my web agency, we’ve been building Craft CMS sites since 2017. For most of that time, we used Imgix for on-the-fly image transforms and edge caching. It worked well until 2025 when their pricing model changed and overall costs shot up. Even before that, some clients were facing $300/mo bills just for having 5,000 origin images. We had to find an alternative.

The self-hosted detour

We tried self-hosting ImgProxy with a custom Craft plugin. It worked on a couple of large client sites after some trial and error, but it wasn’t scalable. Too much config, too much maintenance, and we had to manage caching rules ourselves.

It solved the cost problem, but created an ops problem.

So we built our own

Ty Tudehope and I started a new company, separate from Foster Commerce, to build what we actually wanted: a focused, affordable image transform service with predictable pricing and zero ops overhead.

We called it Small Pics. Because size matters.

What we wanted to get right

We had a clear list of requirements based on years of dealing with what was out there.

Predictable pricing. Three tiers. Clear usage caps. No surprise overages. Our Starter plan is $19/mo ($228/yr), which saves over $500/yr compared to what some of our clients were paying Imgix for the same workload.

No infrastructure to manage. Small Pics runs on AWS Lambda (similar to how Craft Cloud works) with origin images cached in S3 and transformed images cached at the edge. You point your images at us and forget about it.

Fast by default. Automatic AVIF and WebP encoding based on browser support. Global edge caching with instant purge. Response times on par with Imgix, faster than Cloudinary.

Built for Craft CMS. We built an Imager X transformer plugin so Craft developers already using Imager X can switch from Imgix with minimal code changes. Install the plugin, update your config, and rename a few parameters. We wrote a full migration guide if you want to see the details. There’s also a standalone PHP package if you want to integrate directly without Imager X.

Not just Craft. Small Pics is a URL-first API. Any platform, any framework. No SDK required. If you can build an image URL, you can use Small Pics.

Who it’s for

Small Pics is for developers and agencies who are tired of overpaying for image transforms. If you’re running client sites on Craft, WordPress, or any CMS with an external image origin, and your current provider is eating into your margins (or your client’s budget), we built this for you.

What’s next

Small Pics is live and production-ready, but we’re just getting started. Here’s what we’re working on:

• Imgix compatibility mode. We’re building a compatibility layer so you can enable Imgix parameter support on any of your image sources. Most parameters already map 1-to-1. This means you can switch from Imgix without changing a single URL in many cases.
• Expanding the API. More transform options, including face detection.
• Dedicated Craft CMS plugin (beyond the current Imager X transformer)
• JavaScript/Node.js package
• WordPress plugin
• Framework packages for React/Next.js, Vue, and Nuxt
• Benchmark stats. We’re running performance comparisons against Imgix, ImageKit, Cloudinary, and Gumlet. We’ll publish the results when they’re ready.

We’re building based on what our users need, so if there’s something you’d like to see, let us know at support@smallpics.io.

Try it

Plans start at $19/mo with a 14-day free trial. Sign up and see how it works. If you need help migrating, reach out at support@smallpics.io. We’ll walk through it with you.