[inka]

Now I'm kicking myself because I did something very similar for one of my clients based on AWS and shared it publicly (https://github.com/pbudzon/aws-image-gateway)! Not sure how it compares cost-wise, though. It's a combination of CloudFront, API Gateway, Lambda and S3. I'm quite sure CloudFront doesn't have limitations on what you can cache, like Cloudflare seems to have.

Like others who commented, I don't get the idea of image-resize-as-a-service, so I remember I laughed at my client when they asked me for this. For some reason I believe it's better for the world if we don't make people think it's ok to throw around gigantic images around the cables when it's completely unnecessary...

[codegeek]

Not your fault. Developers tend to sometimes underestimate the power of releasing a command line utility as a web based/API tool that can help non techies do simple stuff. Image resizing is a recurring candidate but there are others like conversion tools (to pdf), checkers/monitors (ssl for example) etc. Yes, you could do these on your server with a simple cmd line but tons of folks are willing to pay to be able to use a browser/API to do the same.

[bcjordan]

It feels like a compelling property here is to have a "single point of continuously increasing quality"—that is, one changing chunk of code that is continuously improved and battle tested as more and more users report issues that require workarounds.

(But of course ever-changing externally hosted web services like these have their drawbacks.)