5+ Best Image Optimization Plugins for WordPress

When it comes to Website loading speed, Images play a crucial role. A better compressed and optimized image gives you surprisingly fast results when it comes to providing a better User Experience and SERPs, ultimately giving you more traffic and conversion.

Earlier times you will find many free image optimization plugins for WordPress but things are changed. Now Each WordPress plugin that is available online offers a small quota of free compressions and then you have to pay a little amount of money for more compression.

So, In this post, we will compare 5+ free and paid image optimization plugins that are providing better-optimized images for WordPress.

For small & medium websites Money is more important than time, So they can use multiple plugins for optimizing images in WordPress. But, For larger websites page speed is more important, that’s why they should consider going for a paid option.

List of best Image Optimization Plugins for Wordpress

1. ShortPixel
2. Imagify Image optimizer
3. Smush – Lazy Load Images, Optimize & Compress Images
4. Compress JPEG & PNG images by TinyPNG
5. Optimus
6. ImageKit

ShortPixel

ShortPixel is the best Image compression plugin in WordPress and you will love it as it provides all the basic and advanced Image optimizations options. In fact, I am currently using ShortPixel for all of my websites.

It comes with both free and paid plans and It is perfect for all types of websites. I will show you all the features of Shortpixel along with the difference between free and paid plans. After reading this you will be able to know what is special in it and whether it is worth using on your website.

Features of ShortPixel

• Support Lossy, Glossy, and Lossless compression
• Supports JPG, PNG, GIF & PDF
• Auto compression on image upload
• Compress old images with a single click
• Provide backup of the original image
• No file size limit
• Webp compression support for all images (including thumbnails)
• Remove the EXIF tag of the image
• Cloudflare integration for better caching of images

Free account:

• 100 free image compressions every month.
• Referral program: For every referred user you get another 100 images every month.

Paid Account

• 4.99 $ for 5000 credits per month
• 9.99 $ for 10000 credits (One-time payment)
• The purchased quota never expires.
• Paypal payment method supported

If you are a beginner then you can use the free plans with 100 images per month but If you sign in from my link you will get a 200 images quota per month. You can earn extra credits by inviting your friends and with every successful invitation, your monthly quota will increase by 100 points.

How to setup Shortpixel?

Shortpixel is easy to set up and provides the best compression level like any other paid plugin. You can easily use its free plans for Small and medium websites.

Once you have created your free account on the Shortpixel website, You will get an API key, copy it, and go to the plugin section of your WordPress dashboard.

Here click on Add new button and search for Shortpixel, install and activate the plugin. Now paste the API code as shown in the screenshot and follow the settings as shown in it.

If you have any doubts regarding the Shortpixel plugin ask me in the comment section. If you enjoy reading this article, do share it with your WordPress community and tag us on social media.

Watch this video for step by step setup of the Shortpixel plugin. 👇

If you want better speed in WordPress then you should check out this article on How to enable Cloudflare Automatic platform Optimization.

Imagify Image optimizer

Imagify is one of the popular image compression plugins. Everyone Must have heard of the Caching plugin called WP-Rocket. The developer behind both the plugins is the same.

You will also find three types of compression levels in it.

• Normal (lossless)
• Aggressive (glossy)
• Ultra (lossy)

It also provides a backup option so, you can restore to the previous versions if you are not satisfied with the image quality. You will not find web-p conversions facility till now.

Features:

• Supports JPG, PNG & GIF.
• Resize based on percentage
• Bulk optimization support
• Auto remove EXIF data

Free	Paid
25 MB free every month.	$4.99/month for 1 GB of data.
Bonus 25MB at sign-up.	–

It also provides better compression and has easy to use interface. You can consider this as an option but a free account is not that beneficial.

Smush – Lazy Load Images, Optimize & Compress Images

Smush is a freemium plugin that lets you optimize images efficiently and it has 1 million+ downloads. It has built-in lazyload support and there is no monthly quota for images below 5MB. But there are certain things that you should know before considering this plugin.

As you know Lazyload is supported by default in the latest version of WordPress. In the free version, you only get lossless compression only and if you want glossy and lossless compression then you have to purchase the premium plan for this theme.

Features:

Free:

• Lossless Compression
• Bulk Smush (50 Images at a time)
• No Monthly Limits (images below 5MB)
• Support PNG, JPEG, and GIF files

paid:

• Glossy and lossless compression
• Convert to WebP format
• CDN support

If you want to know more about Smush Pro features then check this below video.

Compress JPEG & PNG images by TinyPNG

Everyone must be heard of the website TinyPNG or TinyJPG. You can use this image optimization tool on your WordPress website.

But, before installing the tinyPNG plugin let’s understand what are the free and paid features of this plugin.

Features:

• Supports JPEG & PNG files only
• No file size limit
• Bulk optimization support
• Resize image
• Automatic compression on upload

Free

• 500 images per month

paid

• 10,000 images costs $85.50

As you can see it is one of the most expensive image compression plugins. If your WordPress website is small then you can consider this plugin.

How to use this plugin?

Download this plugin by searching “tinypng” and activate this.

Get your API key from here and See the below screenshot as a reference. Then add it to your plugin setting.

Now you can compress your images from the media tab.

Create an account on TinyPNG | Download plugin

ImageKit

Imagekit is a unique plugin and it helps you save your server storage by delivering images from its own server. This plugin will helpful for those whose website is images-based like photographers, travel blogs, and vector and image graphics.

It provides an easy-to-understand dashboard and you will see the detailed statistics and you can have the option to purge caches.

It offers 14 days of free trials and after that, you have to pay for this plugin. In the free plans, it offers up to 20GB bandwidth per month which is not sufficient for medium traffic websites.

In the premium plan, you will get 40GB bandwidth per month, which costs you 49$ per month. It will be perfect for larger websites.

You can read more about these plugins on its official website.

There are several other plugins for Image optimization in WordPress like

• Optimus
• ImageRecycle
• Kraken

In my opinion, If you are searching for a free and best optimization plugin then you can go for ShortPixel and want more images for free then you can use Smush or tinyPNG.

Which WordPress image compression plugins are you using & why? Let us know in the comment section.

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