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What do I need to take care of if I don't use Iframely iframes?

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Iframely iframes are always optional. But iframes are part of the API for billing purposes and trigger hits the same way, the number of your page views doesn’t add up to your usage — each embedded URL triggers at most one hit per hour, no matter how many times it’s loaded.

Because of that, Iframely only applies iframes when necessary by default. You may opt not to use iframes due to pricing considerations. In that case, we recommend that certain aspects of embedding are handled on your end to ensure everything works as expected.

Minimum technical setup

If iframes are disabled, ensuring correct display and functionality of embedded content requires handling the following:

  • Framework compatibility – React, Vue, Angular and Svelte have restrictions on third-party scripts. Some embeds, like X/Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, require JavaScript execution to display properly.
  • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – reducing layout shifts when embeds load can improve perceived performance and user experience.
  • Caching and content updates – embedded content changes over time. Ensuring data remains accurate and refreshing content when necessary requires a caching strategy.
  • Performance considerations – you can improve page load times by implementing optimizations like lazy-loading, async loading, or other strategies to ensure embeds don’t slow down your site.

Essential embed functionality

Iframely’s iframes handle several additional functions that would otherwise require independent implementation:

  • Summary cards – Iframely generates rich media cards for supported URLs. Without iframes, embed layouts — including images, GIFs, videos — need to be created and maintained separately using raw URL data from Iframely.
  • Player formats – support for MP4, HLS, and MP3 files, including features like click-to-play and playback sync, may need to be integrated manually.
  • Image handling – direct images embedding would require a separate hosting approach instead of hot-linking.