blakemillerQ: I have a question about how Lifetime Credits work (and how they renew and are assigned).
I run a small agency and we design and host dozens of websites so have lots of images in total.
I've read the referenced articles but still don't fully understand. I just bought 2 codes to stack into my account for 24,000 images per month. I understand that 1 credit is used for each image and each thumbnail / variation. So if I have a site with 1000 images + 5 variations, it will use up 6,000 credits upon optimization.
My question is, what happens the following month - do I have to keep those 6,000 credits assigned to that website, or can I reassign them to another site?
In other words, if I want to use this across say 20 sites, for example, do I have to calculate how many total images I have and then maintain that amount in my monthly amount? Or can I use them site by site, say over a few months, until everything is optimized.
Does the approach differ if I'm going to use the new CDN option? I would assume that yes, I have to keep the images assigned, but without knowing how the first step works, i'm not sure.
Thanks,
Alex_ShortPixel
May 14, 2024A: Hello and thank you for your purchase! :-)
1) 6K optimization: you'll need this amount of credits only once if you use ShortPixel Image Optimizer.
If you're using ShortPixel Adaptive Images you may need much less (hard to estimate) but you'll use credits each month as the images, after 30 days, we'll be reprocessed.
So depending on the plugin you're using, you could use those 6K credits for another website or not.
I hope it is clearer now, you can also check out these 2 articles if you haven't already did this:
https://shortpixel.helpscoutdocs.com/article/96-how-are-the-credits-counted
https://shortpixel.helpscoutdocs.com/article/13-a-credit-equals-an-optimized-image
2) the CDN option: CDN is linked to ShortPixel Adaptive Images and regardless whether you're using our CDN or a different one you'll use the same amount of credits.
Verified purchaser
So if I understand this right, if you had the old deal you can keep using that as you always have. If you add one or more codes you have access to the CDN - but only to use the credits you buy today, not your old ones.
If you optimize the images on your site, you pull from your total pool (old and new) since they do the same thing. Images stay optimized but not adaptive.
If you choose to use the CDN, you don't optimize on your site but rather use credit for each image and those get loaded up to the CDN every month and you use those credits monthly (since they expore) as opposed to one time credits to optimize on your site.
But you wouldn't do both, right? Just on-site or through the CDN, correct?
Is that correct?
How many credits does the adaptive images/CDN method use for an image every month vs on site? Or is that an impossible calculation due to the different sizes that are optimized on the site vs what happens on the CDN?
@PatrickHealy - you're very close to being 100% right! :-)
For SPAI & CDN: you can use for image optimization both type of credits (old and new), the limiting factor is the 100GB/month CDN traffic/code. Hope it is clearer now.
Usually there is no good reason to use both SPAI and SPIO plugins, if that's what you're asking. But in some particular cases it could make sens to have them both active.
As for your the estimate you're asking about: it is rather impossible to tell some exact numbers as it depends on the theme, on the visitor's viewports, how many old pages are visited. But from our observations usually the amount of monthly credits used is significantly lower than the amount of credits you'll use to optimize all the past images at once.
Like 80% lower.
Hope this helps.