For the second time now, I’ve hit the file storage limits on multiple Shopify accounts. There’s no efficient way to manage images, and Shopify’s automatic compression barely helps, nor do the limited apps. Even when products are deleted, the images remain — slowly stacking up and pushing growing retailers over their storage limits based on account tier.
It would be a game-changer to have visibility into how close we are to the image file limit, receive proactive notifications, and be given tools to easily compress or bulk-manage images. Right now, we’re flying blind.
Shopify’s system now reuses images across connected Collective retailers — and counts them against each store’s file limit. That caused our reversal. A year later, and still no effective tools to manage storage or even view usage levels. It’s long overdue
Hey @Fly - thanks for flagging this. I definitely understand where you’re coming from.
You’re absolutely right that having a storage usage meter, proactive notifications, and better bulk management tools would be game-changers, completely agree with you there, especially with the Collective image sharing counting against each store’s limit.
I can’t guarantee anything specifically, but on my end pass along your feedback as a feature request to the relevant product folks on our end. Like I mentioned, I can’t say for sure if these features will be rolled out, but in the past I have seen features I’ve requested on developers/merchants behalves get rolled out, and it does happen frequently.
If you’re willing to share your use case with me, as well, I’d be happy to share that internally on my end too - hope to hear from you soon!
Thanks for the reply. We’ve opened multiple cases on this, with the most recent being #58059268. This issue has dragged on far too long, and now we’re at a standstill—we can’t upload images, update marketing materials, or even send emails because of it.
The situation would be completely different if we had visibility into what’s impacting our file storage, efficient tools to manage images, and if images were actually deleted when products were removed.
On top of that, the fact that images from Collective retailers are counted against every connected account creates an unfair and unmanageable mess. We need a real solution or the insight to manage individually.
Hey @Fly - thanks for sharing the case number. I completely understand how frustrating this must be, especially if it’s blocking critical business operations.
I’ll do some looking into this on my end to see if these file management improvements are on the roadmap, and I’ll make we get an official feature request logged with all your specific pain points - particularly the Collective retailer image counting issue so that we have that logged on our end. I can’t guarantee that any updates will be made, but I can say that in the past for feature requests that I’ve put through on my end, some have become enabled for merchants/partner developers, and it does happen fairly often.
I definitely know this isn’t the immediate fix you need, but I’ll make sure your feedback gets to the right people with the full context of the business impact at the very least and loop back with you here when I have more info to share.
Looking forward to receiving positive news from you. Until then we’ll be looking for good image optimization apps, focusing on other parts of the store that need improvement and clarity into Shopify’s Terms of Service.
Hey @Fly - no worries, happy to help how I can here. I was able to speak with our product team on this for you and I can’t guarantee exact timelines, but I can confirm that we are looking at ways to improve file management.
Specifically, I can share that we’re first looking at a way of notifying folks when they’re reaching storage limits (via email or another way). I can’t say for sure how this will be rolled out, but that’s our first priority for improvement and we’re aiming for this to come out out in the medium-term. I’ve also passed along your feedback directly to them (and we’ve added it to our internal tracking).
I can’t offer any legal-related advice on the forums here, but let me know if I can clarify anything within the TOS you’re looking at there and I’ll see if I am able to share additional info - hope this helps a little bit at least
Appreciate the reply and your insight into the potential changes. Funny timing—right after I sent my message, I got a notice that Shopify’s TOS had been updated at 9:46 MST:
File size limits might only affect a small number of stores right now, but it’ll become a broader issue as Shopify continues to scale. The fact that it’s not addressed during sign-up or in the admin UI is a real miss. Like you said, we need real alerts and tools—not just buried policies. A few suggestions:
Analytics – Clear metrics showing file usage and trends.
Email Notifications – Warnings when you’re close to limits, oversized file alerts, and app suggestions to help.
Management Tools – Quick ways to spot and optimize large files; auto-delete product images when products are removed.
Collective Retailer – Shared images shouldn’t count against every store. Either optimize them on import or host them centrally.
Thanks again @Fly - really appreciate your suggestions here, I definitely get where you’re coming from in terms of making our file management system (and tracking) a bit more robust. I’ll get these passed along to the team as well
Thank you. And do realize that our shop, products, theme, emails and marketing are all failing as we speak because of these hidden limitations. We currently have over 7k missing images, cannot write SEO text or create emails with images or update theme. We have several image optimization tools running with little effect as most of the image usage is coming from the collective retailers. And as you know, even if we delete those products, all images remain.
Here’s another discovery that adds to our inability to fix the issue, even the apps used to optimize our images cannot work because there is no room to rewrite/replace original image.
Hey again @Fly, thanks for following up. I hear you - this is definitely difficult. I still can’t guarantee what features we’re working on or a timeline for that when it comes to file management, but did just want to confirm again that I’ve shared your feedback and ideas with our product team.
While we work on improving native file management, a short term solution you might want to consider would be working with a Shopify Partner to develop a custom app that could:
Store “backups” of your images externally (AWS/Google Cloud)
Remove files from Shopify to free up your quota
Serve/modify those images to your storefront as needed (so, remove ones you don’t need and then upload the ones you do need from that external server when required, sort of like “hot swapping” a memory card on computer)
Thanks for trying to help and offering options, but unfortunately, none of those work for us. I also get that a solution may take a while—or might never come. Based on feedback from other users and our own support experiences, I don’t have much confidence that Shopify will address this unless they’re legally compelled to. This is a familiar pattern: platforms focus on shiny new features to attract users while long-standing issues go ignored. If you come up with anything else—especially a flow that can identify archived or deleted products and remove their associated images—please pass it along. That would actually help.
- no worries, happy to help how I can here. I was able to speak with our product team on this for you and I can’t guarantee exact timelines, but I can confirm that we are looking at ways to improve file management.
