What happens if I exceed plan limits?

Optimole handles quota overages differently depending on your plan type. This article explains what to expect on a free account versus a paid subscription, and what you can do if you approach or exceed your monthly visit quota.

Free plan

If you exceed the monthly visit limit on a free account, Optimole will notify you by email and give you a few days to decide whether to upgrade. If you do not upgrade, Optimole will return your original images and permanently deactivate your account's optimized image delivery.

Images are not loading after exceeding the limit or deactivating Optimole

If your images go blank after a free-plan limit event or after deactivating the plugin, this is usually caused by one of these situations:

• Your images were offloaded to Optimole Cloud only, so the originals are no longer available on your server.
• Your original images are available, but one or more cache layers still serve old Optimole URLs.

If images were offloaded to Optimole Cloud

1. Reactivate the Optimole plugin.
2. Confirm the site is connected with an active API key in the plugin settings.
3. In your Optimole dashboard, make sure your site domain is still listed under Allowed Domains.
4. In Optimole > Settings > Image Storage, select Optimole Cloud and your website.
5. Confirm the rollback action and monitor progress until all images are transferred back to your server.
6. Deactivate Optimole only after the rollback is complete.

For full instructions, see Transfer your images back from Optimole cloud and What happens when you deactivate Optimole?.

If pages still contain Optimole URLs after deactivation

If you did not offload images, the original URLs should work after deactivation. If images are still missing, purge all cache layers that might still store Optimole URLs:

• WordPress cache plugins (such as WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, or LiteSpeed Cache)
• Page builder cache (for example, Elementor CSS regeneration or Beaver Builder cache)
• Host/server cache
• CDN cache (such as Cloudflare)
• Browser cache (then test in an incognito/private window)

Use How to remove the Optimole links from my site for the full cache and cleanup workflow.

Paid plan

If you exceed your monthly visit quota on a paid (premium) subscription, Optimole will notify you by email and will automatically upgrade your subscription to the next plan tier. This upgrade ensures your optimized images remain available without interruption.

📝 Note: Automatic quota upgrades for premium plans cannot be disabled. This is by design — it ensures your optimized images remain available without interruption when your site traffic exceeds your current plan limit. No opt-out option is available from account settings. See Visits based plan for more detail on how quota upgrades work.

Why you may see an additional charge after renewal

When an automatic quota upgrade occurs, FastSpring (Optimole's payment processor) issues a separate charge for the upgrade. This charge is distinct from your regular subscription renewal and can appear on your bank statement or email inbox shortly after — or even weeks after — your most recent renewal. As a result, two legitimate charges in the same billing cycle can look like a duplicate or erroneous payment when they are not.

Here is how the two charges differ:

• Renewal charge — charged on your regular billing date when your subscription cycle restarts.
• Automatic upgrade charge — charged when Optimole detects that your visit quota was exceeded and upgrades your plan to the next tier. FastSpring calculates a prorated amount based on the remaining days in your billing cycle.

The prorated upgrade amount may be different from your regular subscription price. Any applicable discounts, credits, or exact proration calculations are account-specific and are reflected in the FastSpring invoice for that charge.

📝 Note: Receiving two charges in the same period does not mean you were billed twice for the same plan. Each charge corresponds to a separate event: your subscription renewal and the mid-cycle plan upgrade triggered by exceeding your quota.

How to verify an automatic upgrade charge

If you receive an unexpected charge after a recent renewal, follow these steps to confirm whether it was caused by an automatic quota upgrade:

1. Log in to the Optimole Dashboard and check your current plan tier. If your plan tier is higher than what you originally subscribed to, an automatic upgrade occurred.
2. Use the date range filter on the dashboard to review your visit count for the billing period in question. A visit total that exceeds your previous plan's quota confirms the upgrade was triggered by traffic.
3. Open your FastSpring invoice or order history (link is available in the charge confirmation email from FastSpring) and compare the charge dates and amounts to your renewal date and the upgrade date.
4. Check your email inbox for a quota warning or plan upgrade notification from Optimole — this email is sent before or at the time of the automatic upgrade and will include the date the quota was exceeded.

If the billing cycle has already reset and the dashboard no longer shows data from the period in question, request server or CDN access logs from your hosting provider to investigate the traffic that triggered the upgrade.

How to check your current usage

If you receive a quota warning email, or want to verify your visit count before or after an upgrade:

1. Log in to the Optimole Dashboard.
2. Use the date range filter to review visits for the current billing period.
3. Compare the numeric visit total shown against your plan's quota.

The dashboard only shows data for the active billing period. If the billing cycle has already reset since the quota email was sent, the data from that prior period is no longer visible in the dashboard — request server or CDN access logs from your hosting provider to investigate the traffic that triggered the email. See How does Optimole count the number of visits? for more information on how visits are measured.

How to reduce future overages

If your site regularly approaches or exceeds your quota, consider the following:

• Review traffic sources — check your hosting access logs for bots, scrapers, or unusually high automated traffic that may inflate your Optimole visit count.
• Block unwanted bot traffic — use Cloudflare firewall rules, a WordPress security plugin, or server-level rules to block crawlers and bots that are not useful to your site.
• Upgrade to a higher plan — if your site consistently attracts more visits than your current plan allows, choose a plan that matches your expected monthly traffic on the Optimole pricing page.

When to contact support

Contact Optimole support if:

• You believe the visit count that triggered a warning or upgrade is incorrect.
• You have questions about a charge related to an automatic upgrade.
• You need help reviewing an exceptional account situation.
• After following the verification steps above, you still believe a charge was issued in error.

To help support investigate quickly, include the following details in your message:

• Your Optimole account email address
• Your site URL
• The dates and amounts of all charges in question
• The FastSpring order IDs from your invoice emails
• Any quota warning or plan upgrade emails you received from Optimole

📝 Note: Support can review your account and usage data, but cannot guarantee exceptions to the automatic upgrade policy.