Replace External Images – Import External Images

After a migration, many images still load from somewhere else: Wix, Blogger, Squarespace, Medium, an old domain or a CDN you are about to switch off. As long as they do, your site depends on servers you don’t control. If those images disappear, your posts show broken images.

Replace External Images lets you import external images into WordPress in one go. It shows you where your website still loads images from other servers (hotlinked images), downloads them into your WordPress Media Library and replaces the external URLs with local ones. You don’t have to open and re-save a single post.

New in 2.1: the overview

One scan shows every external image on your website in one place – not only in posts and pages:

• posts, pages, WooCommerce products and all other content types

• Elementor layouts and ACF fields

• widgets, logo and theme settings, additional CSS, menus and category descriptions

For every place you see which server the images come from and what you can do: ✓ import right away, 🔒 with the add-on or Pro, or ✋ change by hand – with a button that takes you straight to the place. Import all now imports everything marked ✓ in one go.

The scan only reads and changes nothing. It runs in short steps, so it also works on slow hosting and big websites, and the overview stays up to date after imports and edits.

Not sure yet whether your site is affected? Our free online check for external images looks at a WordPress site from the outside – no installation needed.

Made for existing content

Most tools only import images when you save a post. With a thousand old posts that doesn’t help. Here you select your posts or pages in the list – or simply click Import all – and every entry is processed in one run.

You follow each step in the live log.

Features

• Overview – one scan finds external images everywhere on your website and sorts them by place, area and server (see above).

• Bulk import – select posts or pages in the list and process them at once, or use Import all in the notice above the list.

• Single import – one click in the editor sidebar for the post you are working on.

• See what is external – the lists show how many external images were found, the editor shows the number for the current entry.

• Live progress – counters for imported, reused and failed images and a filterable activity list.

• Clear reasons – blocked sources (for example HTTP 403 or “not an image”) are skipped and explained. Nothing broken is saved.

• No duplicates – images imported before are reused, and different images with the same file name are kept apart.

• Featured images – an external featured image is replaced with the local copy. Entries without a featured image get the first imported image (can be turned off).

• Clean alt texts – alt texts that only contain a web address (or “Image from https://…”) are emptied during import, real descriptions stay (can be turned off).

• Elementor & ACF – the free version shows external images in Elementor layouts and ACF fields and leaves them untouched, so the layout can’t break. Pro or the Elementor & ACF add-on imports them, also right from the Elementor editor.

• Import history – every import with the entries changed, the images added and the full log for each image. Copy the log with one click, e.g. for support.

• Gutenberg and Classic Editor.

• Translated into German, French, Spanish and Italian.

Typical situations

• You moved from Wix, Blogger, Squarespace or Medium.

• You pasted content from Google Docs, Notion or another website.

• Your pages are built with Elementor and still load images from the old site.

• An old domain or CDN is about to be switched off.

• You want fewer requests to third-party servers and full control over your images.

Free and Pro

Posts and pages are included in the free version, including bulk import, import history and all features above.

Pro adds:

• WooCommerce products and all custom post types

• Elementor & ACF – everything the add-on below does

• Undo – revert any import with one click: content and featured images are restored, images added by the import are removed again

• Pro Unlimited: any number of sites and WP-CLI commands ( wp replexim scan, import, runs, undo ) for large migrations

One-time payment, no subscription, lifetime updates, 14-day money-back guarantee. See Pro

Elementor & ACF add-on for the free version (one-time payment): imports external images from Elementor layouts (image, image box, gallery, carousel, testimonial, backgrounds, text editor, HTML), ACF fields (text, text area, WYSIWYG, URL) and inline background images. The layout stays as it is. Already included in Pro.

See the add-on

Privacy

Images are always downloaded directly from your server to the image source – nothing passes through our servers.

g. WordPress, PHP and plugin version, site address, admin email) to help us improve the plugin and inform you about updates. This is optional: if you skip it, nothing is sent and the plugin works fully.

Details: Privacy policy

Documentation: Help & documentation