Urgent Issue: AliExpress CDN Blocking Images on My Websites

[oran147]

Hello everyone,

I've been using the Alidropship plugin on multiple websites for years without issues. However, recently, I encountered a serious problem: all images hosted on the AliExpress CDN are no longer displaying and appear as broken images.

The error message I see is "referer ban hit", and I am attaching screenshots for reference.

About a week ago, this issue started on one of my websites. After extensive troubleshooting with my hosting provider, Cloudflare, and several developers, it became clear that the problem is caused by a domain-level block from the AliExpress CDN.

Today, another one of my websites has been affected in the same way. Given that these blocks occurred within a week of each other, it seems likely that AliExpress has made some changes to its policies or restrictions.

I have tested duplicating my websites on different domains, and everything works fine there, confirming that this is not an IP-based restriction but rather a domain-specific block.

Has anyone else encountered this issue recently? Could it be that AliExpress has implemented new limitations on image requests or changed their CDN policies?

This is an urgent matter for me as it significantly affects site performance and sales. Any insights or solutions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

[gihugo]

Hi, Is there a solution for this problem. This has affected a number of my websites

 

[Sharonn]

Hello everyone,

I've been using the Alidropship plugin on multiple websites for years without issues. However, recently, I encountered a serious problem: all images hosted on the AliExpress CDN are no longer displaying and appear as broken images.

The error message I see is "referer ban hit", and I am attaching screenshots for reference.

About a week ago, this issue started on one of my websites. After extensive troubleshooting with my hosting provider, Cloudflare, and several developers, it became clear that the problem is caused by a domain-level block from the AliExpress CDN.

Today, another one of my websites has been affected in the same way. Given that these blocks occurred within a week of each other, it seems likely that AliExpress has made some changes to its policies or restrictions.

I have tested duplicating my websites on different domains, and everything works fine there, confirming that this is not an IP-based restriction but rather a domain-specific block.

Has anyone else encountered this issue recently? Could it be that AliExpress has implemented new limitations on image requests or changed their CDN policies?

This is an urgent matter for me as it significantly affects site performance and sales. Any insights or solutions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Hi,
I’m experiencing exactly the same issue on my store. All product images hosted on AliExpress CDN are returning 403 errors or showing as broken, and I also saw the “referer ban hit” message.


I’ve already followed all the usual troubleshooting steps and even contacted AliDropship support. I'm wondering — did you reach out to their support team as well? If so, did they provide any useful fix or feedback?

thanks

 

[nihao]

I had this problem last year and contacted the support team but they were unable to fix the limitation on AliExpress's side so I had to download the images

 

[Ray Erby]

From what I'm understanding,

The Root Cause:​

AliExpress (like many large sites) restricts hotlinking, which means you cannot reliably serve their images directly on your site by linking to the image URL hosted on their CDN (e.g., ae01.alicdn.com/...). They detect this via the referer header.


When your visitors load your page, AliExpress sees the request coming from your domain and returns a 403 Forbidden error.

---

What You Should Do:​

To avoid broken images and 403 errors:

1. Download all product images from AliExpress.
2. Upload them to your own WordPress media library (or use AliDropship’s built-in importer with local storage).
3. Serve them through your Cloudflare-backed site — not from AliExpress’s CDN.

---

What Not to Do:​

• Don’t rely on direct image URLs from AliExpress — they might work temporarily, but they will break intermittently or permanently later.
• Don’t try to work around it with referer spoofing or proxying unless you’re doing advanced custom development (not recommended for AliDropship setups).

---

Pro Tip:​

If you're importing products using the AliDropship plugin, go to:


AliDropship → Settings → Import
Make sure "Download images to server" is enabled.


This ensures images are stored locally and served reliably through your own site.

Hope this helps!

Hi,
I’m experiencing exactly the same issue on my store. All product images hosted on AliExpress CDN are returning 403 errors or showing as broken, and I also saw the “referer ban hit” message.


I’ve already followed all the usual troubleshooting steps and even contacted AliDropship support. I'm wondering — did you reach out to their support team as well? If so, did they provide any useful fix or feedback?

thanks