Best Image Optimization Plugins for WordPress

Images are an essential part of your website for user interactions and engagement. They can make your website’s content prominent and interesting. But at the same time, having a lot of images on your website can slow down its speed, which can annoy your website visitors. If you have a website with a number of images, image optimization becomes essential to improve the speed of the website. This image optimization is often referred to as image compression in WordPress. In this article, we will get to know about Image Compression and discuss the best WordPress plugins for image compression.

• What is Image Compression?
• How to compress an image?

What is Image Compression?

There is a famous saying in the Website design world:

“A Picture is worth a Thousand Words ”

It is proven that images make your content more interactive and engaging. But at the same time using a lot of images can slow down your website. To overcome a situation, where you must use a large number of images on your website without compromising on your website speed, you need to compress these images. Image compression reduces the size of images from MBs to KBs.

How to Compress an Image?

You can achieve this by optimizing images manually using Adobe Photoshop or any other software available. There are some online tools also available for compressing an image. If you choose the manual method of compression, you may end up losing image quality. You may not want that to happen as it affects your website’s appearance. Another drawback of this approach is that you have to do all process by yourself, which may take a lot of time and energy.

To overcome this situation, you may want to use the automatic approach for optimizing. For this purpose, there are a number of plugins available on the WordPress repository. Using a plugin will surely save your time and energy. We are going to discuss some of the best plugins for Image Compression in WordPress.

WordPress Image Optimization Plugin:

Plugins for Image compression:

• Imagify
• WP Smush
• EWWW Image Optimizer
• Compress JPEG & PNG images
• ShortPixel Image Optimizer
• reSmush.it
• Imsanity
• WP Retina 2x
• Optimus
• Optimole

Imagify

Imagify provides you to compress the images in three different ways. You can also optimize thumbnails and retina images through Imagify. The plugin is completely compatible with Woocommerce and NextGen Gallery. To convert an image to WebP format Imagify is a great option. The plugin is very much easy to use you just have to perform a few clicks to optimize images on your website.

Features:

• Lossless, Lossy, and Ultra Lossy algorithms.
• Supports PNG, JPG, and GIF.
• Multisite Support.
• Backups optimized Images
• Automatic optimization on upload
• WebP conversion

Active installations: 200,000 +

Rating: 4.5 / 5

Pricing: You can optimize for free 25MB of images (about 250 images) every month. Conversion of JPEG or PNG image types to WebP format is free.

WP Smush

WP Smush is one of the most popular Image compression plugin developed by WPMU DEV. It can automatically compress your images on upload as well as compress the older image files in bulk. You can compress 50 images in bulk at a time. For more images, the process can be repeated as many times as it takes to compress all of the image files.

WP Smush is well known to compress images without compromising the quality of the image. You can compress the image with very minimal loss in quality. The plugin helps you to resize the images as well. The main reason of popularity of WP Smush is that it does not use your server to optimize the images which make your website’s load time more efficient.

Features:

• Lossless image compression algorithm.
• Supports PNG, JPG, and GIF.
• Bulk Optimization
• Lets you set maximum height and width to resize optimized images.
• Automatic optimization on upload.
• Keep EXIF Data.
• Compression irrespective of the image directory.
• Multisite Support
• Compatible with most of the gallery plugins available at the WordPress marketplace.

Active installations: 1+ Million

Rating: 5 / 5

Pricing: As long as you compress Images under 5MB, WP Smush is totally free. But if you want to enjoy extra features like conversion to WebP, PNG to JPG, Compression on another directory, you will have to switch to WP Smush Pro, which costs you from $19 / month with 30 days free trial.

EWWW Image Optimizer

EWWW Image Optimizer compresses your Image files through a lossless algorithm. The compression ratio is automatically selected depending on the format of the image. You have the option to choose whether you want to perform optimization on your server or any other specialized server. It can optimize your images on upload as well as already present images in Media Library.

You can perform Bulk Optimization with the help of just a few clicks which makes EWWW Image Optimizer an easy to use plugin even for the people with less technical expertise.

Features:

• No speed limit.
• Unlimited file size.
• Best compression ratio for JPG, PNG, GIF or WEBP.
• Bulk Optimization
• Everything is secure with SSL encryption
• Free image backup for 30 days.
• CDN Support for Cloud Servers.
• Skips already optimized images
• Compatible with almost every Gallery plugin.

Active installations: 700,000 +

Rating: 4.5 / 5

Pricing: The Plugin is totally FREE.

Compress JPEG & PNG Images

Compress JPEG & PNG Images is developed by the team behind TinyPNG. In order to use the plugin on your website, you have to create an account on TinyPNG. You can compress your image files with Compress JPEG & PNG Images at the time of the upload as well as already uploaded images in bulk.

The plugin uses online services to compress your image files externally. This makes the compression process fast without having any effect on your website speed. The plugin can also convert your images to RGB color profiles.

Features:

• Automatically optimize new images on upload.
• Easy bulk optimization of your existing media library.
• Supports compression of animated PNG and GIF
• No file size limits.
• Multisite Support.
• Woocommerce Compatible
• Supports all gallery plugins
• Colors profile are automatically converted to RGB colors

Active Installations: 200,000 +

Rating: 4.5 / 5

Pricing: You can optimize 100 images per month for free but for extra images, you will have to upgrade to a paid account. You can enjoy compressing 100 images per month for life.

ShortPixel Image Optimizer

Shortpixel Image Optimizer is a freemium image optimizer plugin with all the necessities of image optimization. It is a lightweight plugin with GDPR compliance. It’s easy to use functionality is the reason behind its rapid growth in developers checklist of optimization. Shortpixel Image Customizer utilizes minimum resources from your servers which makes it highly compatible with shared servers, VPS or dedicated web hosting.

Bulk optimization is available for you with a restore option to undo the optimization you applied. It also comes with the option to convert PNG, and JPEG to WebP format.

Features:

• Compress JPG, PNG, GIF (still or animated) images and also PDF documents
• Lossless and lossy comparison algorithms.
• Multisite integration features with a single API key.
• Compatible with most of Gallery Plugins.
• Woocommerce Compatible
• Automatically optimize new images on upload.
• 40 days optimization report with all image details and overall statistics

Active Installations: 100,000 +

Rating: 4.5 / 5

Pricing: You can optimize 100 images per month for free but for extra images, you will have to upgrade to a paid account. You can optimize 5,000 images at $4.99/month, 12,000 images at $9.99/month and 55,000 images at $29.99/month.

reSmush.it

reSmush.it uses reSmush API to optimize and reduce the size of your image files. The API accepts JPEG, PNG, and GIF files. The only drawback of reSmush.it is that it does not allow to optimize images with sizes more than 5MB. Till 5MB plugin is completely free.

The plugin also has the functionality to optimize your image files at the time of upload as well as already uploaded images. You can choose the level of compression of your liking instead of the type of compression which can be helpful when you don’t want to compromise on the quality of the image.

Features:

• Change compression level
• Bulk compression with just two clicks
• Completely Free
• User-friendly
• Saves statistics and logs
• Backs up optimized images, you can undo if needed
• Woocommerce compatible
• Supports all Gallery plugins
• Exclude individual images from compressions

Active Installations: 80,000 +

Rating: 5/5

Pricing: Free up to 5MB.

Imsanity

Imsanity is one of the best plugins for image optimization in the WordPress repository. It automatically reduces large size images to a suitable size for the browser. You just need to configure your desired height and width for image and the plugin will automatically resize the image files at the time of upload as well as already uploaded file in the media library. WordPress experts recommend Imsanity when you don’t need high-quality images for your blog.

Features:

• Automatically scales large images to a suitable size.
• Bulk Optimization
• Compatible with almost all Gallery plugins and woocommerce
• Converts BMP files to JPG
• Uses WordPress built-in image scaling functions
• Available in multiple languages.

Active Installations: 300,000 +

Rating: 5/5

Pricing: There is a free version available which can do the job until the number of images is around 250/month. If you want to optimize 250+/month, you will have to bear a cost $4.99/month.

WP Retina 2x

If you want to make your website look perfect on all devices you need to have WP Retina 2x for image optimization. It creates an image file according to visitors devices and presents it to the browser for High – DPI devices. You can generate your retina images automatically and manually as per your requirements.

As for the ease of use is concerned, you can just plug-and-play. This plugin does not require much of setting things up. The default settings of the plugin are good enough to get the job done but you can always change them according to your needs.

Features:

• Can generate retina images
• Can generate responsive images
• Compatible with woocommerce and gallery plugins
• The plugin does not create anything in the database, reducing database size.

Active Installations: 100,000 +

Rating: 5/5

Pricing: It is available in Free and Premium versions. The premium version adds lazy loading for responsive images and supports retina for full-size images. It may cost $24.00/year for one website.

Optimus

Optimus is one of the plugins which is becoming popular in the developer’s community due to its rich features. You can achieve a 70% reduction in image size without compromising on image quality by using Optimus which is very useful when you want to increase your website’s load time.

You can optimize image file both at the time of upload and already uploaded files in the media library. There is no need of saving author, EXIF and copyright information, but you may save them using Optimus at cost of compressional ratio.

All the process in Optimus is done in the background. And only the percentage of reduction of the image file is shown to the user in the media library. After the optimization, Optimus deletes all the temporary files from the server. No files are stored.

Optimus creators recommend saving optimized images in JPEG format because optimization of JPEG is faster than PNG.

Features:

• Progressive JPEGs
• Optimization at the upload time.
• Bulk Optimization
• Removal of image information is optional.
• Conversion to WebP
• Compatible with woocommerce and Gallery plugins
• Supports Multisite.
• Optimize retina images.
• Supports WordPress Mobile application
• No code or template changes need at all.
• Lossless compression for PNG format.
• Lossy compression for JPEG format.

Active Installations: 60,000 +

Rating: 4 / 5

Pricing: Optimus comes in three different versions, Optimus, Optimus HQ, and Optimus HQ Pro. Optimus is free. Optimus HQ costs $29/year and Optimus HQ Pro costs $149/year. All these versions offer you different services.

Optimole

Optimole can prove to be an all-in-one solution for your optimization requirements. With its rich features, Optimole makes it easier to make your images optimized. It uses a cloud-based system to optimize your website’s image file and speed up your website pages. Optimole provides you to enable lazy loading as well as CDN for your image files. Optimole can change the quality of the image according to the visitor’s device and internet connection. If a visitor has a low – speed internet connection, Optimole downgrades the image quality according to the internet connection and picks the right image size for the visitor’s browser.

Features:

• Format Based Optimization
• No file size limit
• Supports Retina and WebP formats
• Cropping Options
• CDN support
• Compatible with woocommerce and Gallery plugins
• Compatible with page builders like Elementor
• Support Lazy Loading
• EXGIF data is not stored
• Fully Functional Free version

Active Installations: 20,000+

Rating: 5/5

Pricing: Optimole has both a free and paid version. In the paid version, you can choose a plan according to your needs. The free version is completely functional. If you have a website that does not has a lot of images, the free version is good for you. In the free version, you get to optimize 1GB images per month. If you want to optimize more than 1GB, you may need to upgrade to the Pro version. Pro version starts from $9/month to $29/month.

Last Say!

Website optimization is highly dependent upon the size of the images used. You can get a good speed only when you perform necessary optimizations including image optimization. We discussed the features of some of the best image optimization plugins for WordPress. You can achieve better website speed by using one of these plugins. Better website speed results in better SEO of the website. So we can say that image optimization can affect your website’s performance.

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If you want to optimize your website and don’t possess the technical knowledge or expertise, you don’t need to worry. WP inCare is available to do the job on your behalf. Contact us today in order to get your Websites optimization done.