LibPixel

Not sure why this would be a better choice than Cloudinary. While this isn't as "bloated" as Cloudinary, it's also more expensive, especially on the low end of usage (things start to even out with more usage, but they also have more features). I've used Cloudinary for images extensively and everything is really straightforward. The only "extra" things they have are plugins that can do real-time image moderation or classification, as well as uploading tools and plenty of documentation. They also have a forever free plan that gives more than your starter plan. It's really hard to compete at this space because everyone essentially has the same backend costs, so whoever can get there first and scale faster will have more features and better pricing. Unfortunately Cloudinary got to your point years ago. Just my two cents, but to compete you'll need something completely different or unique, whether that be something like way cheaper pricing, or going the complete opposite way and offering a completely boutique service where you handle all of the implementation and what not. Best of luck!

It’s been great for my wedding dress store. Compressing really high res pics of our products and seamlessly serving across different device types. Can recommend 👌

Deals with heavy caching, been easy to implement