Any web server which is accessible over HTTP or HTTPS can be configured as an origin in ImageKit.io. This allows you to use ImageKit.io's real-time image optimization and transformation features on all existing images.

Note: We do not start copying images from your server as soon as you add it. Instead, we will fetch the particular image when you request it through ImageKit.io URL-endpoint. Learn more to understand how this works. The images accessed from this origin will not appear in your Media library.

Step 1: Configure origin

1. Go to the external storage section in your ImageKit.io dashboard, and under the Origins section, click on the "Add origin" button.

2. Choose Web server from the origin type dropdown.

3. Give your origin a name, it will appear in the list of origins you have added. For example - Website load balancer.

4. Fill out the base URL, for example, if your current image URL is https://www.example.com/rest-of-the-path.jpg, then enter https://www.example.com as the base URL.

5. Leave the advanced options as it is for now.

6. Click on Submit button.

Step 2: Access the image through ImageKit.io URL-endpoint

When you add your first origin in the dashboard, the origin is by default made accessible through the default URL-endpoint of your ImageKit.io account. For subsequent origins, you can either create a separate URL-endpoint or edit existing URL-endpoint (including default) and make this newly added origin accessible by editing the origin preference list.

Let's look at a few examples to fetch the images:

• Original image through your web server (old URL) https://www.example.com/rest-of-the-path.jpg​

• The same master image using ImageKit.io URL-endpoint https://ik.imagekit.io/your_imagekit_id/rest-of-the-path.jpg​

• Resized 300x300 image https://ik.imagekit.io/your_imagekit_id/tr:w-300,h-300/rest-of-the-path.jpg​

So when you request https://ik.imagekit.io/your_imagekit_id/rest-of-the-path.jpg, ImageKit.io internally fetches the file from https://www.example.com/rest-of-the-path.jpg.

            URL-endpoint                transformation      image path                                    
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐┌─────────────┐┌───────────────────┐
https://ik.imagekit.io/your_imagekit_id/tr:w-300,h-300/rest-of-the-path.jpg

If you get a "Not found" error while accessing the image, check out this troubleshooting guide.

Step 3: Integrate and Go live

Now start using ImageKit.io URL endpoint in your application to accelerate image loading.

Get started with our SDKs:

Learn about real-time image resizing:

Advanced options for web server origin

Include canonical response header

When enabled, the image response contains a Link header with the appropriate URL and rel=canonical. You will have to specify the base URL for the canonical header.

For example, if you set https://www.example.com as the base URL for canonical header, then the image response for URL https://ik.imagekit.io/your_imagekit_id/rest-of-the-path.jpg will have a Link header like this:

Link: <https://www.example.com/rest-of-the-path.jpg>; rel="canonical"

Forward Host header to this origin

By default, when ImageKit.io tries to get the image from your origin, the value of the Host header is the same as the base URL specified for the origin. For example, if the base URL is https://www.example.com, then the same gets forward to your origin.

However, when this setting is enabled, the host value from the image URL will be forwarded to the origin as the Host header. For example, if you are using a custom domain name for your image URLs, like static.example.com , then that is what gets forwarded to your host instead of www.example.com

Whitelist request from ImageKit.io

If you have deployed a WAF, you need to whitelist requests coming from ImageKit.io servers.

We recommend you to whitelist our requests to your origin based on request header value. All our requests to your origin will have a header x-req-from with its value set to imagekit.

Below is a list of IP addresses currently used by ImageKit.io to fetch images from your origin:

3.0.152.204
3.105.141.56
3.105.153.182
3.105.56.110
3.106.43.145
3.120.113.108
3.124.164.235
3.125.145.160
3.125.232.112
3.126.54.34
3.228.64.190
3.25.15.199
3.6.106.236
3.6.117.197
3.6.117.226
3.6.125.142
3.6.139.207
3.6.31.234
3.6.77.26
13.211.250.60
13.234.210.223
13.235.117.100
13.239.68.153
13.239.93.60
13.250.152.216
13.251.231.118
13.54.10.227
13.57.157.178
13.57.80.35
13.57.84.219
15.206.35.88
18.136.180.238
18.138.42.101
18.138.48.167
18.140.193.132
18.144.94.93
18.184.51.46
18.194.51.214
18.214.253.69
34.198.33.10
34.227.255.75
35.156.190.52
52.1.78.96
52.220.21.200
52.221.19.26
52.23.130.57
52.29.99.236
52.52.150.88
52.52.156.33
52.53.89.205
52.63.6.226
52.76.146.253
52.86.168.184
52.9.51.127
52.9.54.118
54.183.110.13
54.198.229.74
54.93.187.13
100.25.189.19
100.26.0.170
18.138.154.61
52.66.188.11
3.123.46.194
3.226.115.3
13.52.20.231
3.24.91.28
159.65.154.196
206.189.46.125
174.138.126.207
142.93.174.223