Best Image Optimization Plugins for Your WordPress Website
An image is worth a thousand words, indeed. We all know that images add value, information, and context to a web page. It is one of the best ways to keep the users engaged with your webpage and help you get the maximum goals converted for your business.
Images make the website appealing, on the other hand, it also makes the website perform slowly. So, how can we make our website interesting as well as fast? The answer is Image Optimization.
Image optimization helps in faster website loading, improves the user experience, and makes the website appear more credible. Optimizing images can be complicated but with the right strategy in place, you can take your organic traffic to the next level. But many marketers, businesses, and freelancers are not aware of the importance of image optimization in their websites. This blog post will get you a clear picture of image optimization. You will be able to understand
- What is image optimization?
- Why is image optimization important?
- Different image optimization plugins.
Without further ado, let’s get started…
What is Image Optimization?
Image optimization is the process of decreasing the file size of an image while retaining its quality. Three main factors play a vital role in image optimization:
Compression
It reduces the file size of the image without losing the quality of the image. There are two types of compression: Lossy compression and Lossless compression
Lossy Compression
- Advantages: It can reduce the file size to a very large extent. Lots of tools, plugins, and software support Lossy compression
- Disadvantages: The quality of the image degrades with the smaller size. Can’t get the original back after compressing.
Lossless Compression
- Advantages: The quality of the image will not be lost.
- Disadvantages: There is only a slight decrease in image file size.
Image format
The widely used image format is JPEG and PNG format. Image size is smaller in JPEG as compared to PNG but the image quality is better in PNG.
Image dimension
The dimensions of the image will affect the file size of the image. The smaller dimension will result in a smaller image file size.
By finding the balance between the three, you can reduce image size and improve website performance.
For Example:
If you look at the two images below. The quality of the left image is poor whereas the quality of the right image is good. This is because the size of the left image has been reduced whereas the image is optimized on the right side picture.
How Does Image Optimization Impact Your Rankings?
In a class, students were given ranks according to their marks. Similarly, websites are given ranks according to their performance. In class, teachers evaluate the students whereas SEO ( Search Engine Optimization) evaluates the website.
In website ranking, the first rank means that your website is on the top page and rank 15 means your website is on the second page of the google search results. Your goal should be that your website is on the first page of the google search results. As we all know that users mostly get their queries resolved on the first page itself. So how can we achieve this?
Page load speed is an important element in determining the ranking of the website. If a site has a lot of images, it will take a long time to load. This can frustrate users and lead them to exit the page. Image optimization plays an important role in improving page load speed.
Image Optimization Plugins
An image optimization plugin is a tool that helps to optimize and compress JPEG, PNG images without losing quality. A WordPress image optimizer plugin automatically compresses the images on your website to an optimum size without compromising the quality of the image. The WordPress image compression plugin finds the best size and resolution for the image and optimizes it accordingly.
Here is the list of the 10 best plugins for image optimization:
Smush
Smush is best known for its speed and quality. It is the award-winning image optimization & image compression plugin for WordPress. It provides all the features in a user-friendly interface.
The regular price is $99 per month (with options for quarterly and annual payment as well, and there are often discounts on the first payment). If you don’t want or need all those other plugins–or the associated expense–you can also subscribe to just the single WP Smush Pro plugin, which is $19 per month.
Number of Active Installs: 1+million
Compatible with WordPress version: 5.3 or higher.
It is available in 40 languages.
Download Link: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/
Optimus
Optimus reduces the file size of uploaded media files automatically. Depending on the image and format, reductions in the size of up to 70% are possible. Several kilobytes can be saved per image—these savings contribute positively to the performance of the blog website.
The paid version is called Optimus HQ and costs $19 per year. It gets you: 5 MB max file size. Unlimited use on personal sites (if you’re a developer, they have a license for you, too).
Number of Active Installs: 10+
Compatible with WordPress version: 4.4 or higher.
Download Link: https://wordpress.org/plugins/optimus-price/
EWWW Image Optimizer
EWWW Image Optimization Cloud is a very effective and very powerful tool for speeding up your WordPress site. If you’ve been disappointed with WP-Smush.it, I highly recommend taking a look at EWWW Image Optimization Cloud.
EWWW Image Optimizer’s price starts at $7 per month for a singular website. The price will scale up if you’re planning to use ii on more WordPress websites, with the bandwidth limit increasing on bigger plans.
EWWW Image Optimizer has a lifetime deal that starts at $99
Number of Active Installs: 900,000 +million
Compatible with WordPress version: 5.6 or higher.
It is available in 28 languages.
Download Link: https://wordpress.org/plugins/ewww-image-optimizer/
ShortPixel Image Optimizer
A freemium, easy-to-use, comprehensive, stable, and frequently updated image compression plugin supported by the friendly team that created it.
This plugin is also available for free for personal use and if you want to go for paid membership, it starts with $ 29 to $ 249, or custom pricing are also available according to your work (for ref you can visit on this link)
Number of Active Installs: 300,000+million
Compatible with WordPress version: 4.2 or higher.
It is available in 16 languages.
Download Link: https://wordpress.org/plugins/shortpixel-image-optimiser/
TinyPNG - Compress JPEG and PNG Images
Make your website faster by optimizing your JPEG, PNG, and WebP images. This plugin automatically optimizes all your images by integrating with the popular image compression services TinyJPG and TinyPNG.
In a default WordPress installation, you can optimize around 100 images for free each month. WordPress creates different thumbnails of your images which all have to be compressed. Some plugins even add more sizes, so take a look at the Settings > TinyPNG – JPEG, PNG & WebP image compression page before you start optimization. After that, you have to pay a certain amount.
Number of Active Installs: 200,000 +million
Compatible with WordPress version: 3.4 or higher.
It is available in 16 languages.
Download Link: https://wordpress.org/plugins/tiny-compress-images/
Imsanity
Imsanity automatically resizes huge image uploads down to a size that is more reasonable for display in the browser, yet still more than large enough for typical website use. The plugin is configurable with max-width, height, and quality. When a contributor uploads an image that is larger than the configured size, Imsanity will automatically scale it down to the configured size and replace the original image. Imsanity also provides a bulk-resize feature to selectively resize previously uploaded images to free up disk space.
As mentioned, Smush is a free image compression and optimization plugin for WordPress… All of these features combine to help web pages load faster, without any reduction in image quality – the only thing you have to do is install the free plugin. The regular price is $99 per month (with options for quarterly and annual payment as well, and there are often discounts on the first payment). If you don’t want or need all those other plugins–or the associated expense–you can also subscribe to just the single WP Smush Pro plugin, which is $19 per month.
Number of Active Installs: 300,000 + million
Compatible with WordPress version: 5.1 or higher.
It is available in 19 languages.
Download Link: https://wordpress.org/plugins/imsanity/
Imagify
Imagify is the best WordPress image optimizer. The plugin lets you optimize images in one go with its bulk optimization option. You can resize your images on the fly and, with 3 compression levels to choose from, your images are automatically optimized in the selected compression level. If needed, you can always restore your images to their original versions.
You can optimize for free 20MB of images (that’s about 200 images) every month. You can also convert to the next-gen WebP format for free. If you want to go with the paid version it starts at $ 4.99
Number of Active Installs: 600,000+million
Compatible with WordPress Version: 5.3 or higher.
It is available in 14 languages.
Download Link: https://wordpress.org/plugins/imagify/
reSmush.it
reSmush.it Image Optimizer allows the use of free Image optimization based on reSmush.it API. reSmush.it provides image size reduction based on several advanced algorithms. The API accepts JPG, PNG and GIF files up to 5MB after that you have to get the paid version.
This plugin includes a bulk operation to optimize all your pictures in 2 clicks! Change your image optimization level to fit your needs!
Is Resmush.it free?
reSmush.it is a FREE API that provides image optimization… Moreover, reSmush.it is the most used image optimization API with more than 7 billion images already treated, and is still totally Free of charge! if you want to go with a paid version that starts with $ 29.
Number of Active Installs: 200,000 +million
Compatible with WordPress version: 4.0 or higher.
It is available in 10 languages.
Download Link: https://wordpress.org/plugins/resmushit-image-optimizer/
Kraken Image Optimizer
Kraken.io is a robust, ultra-fast image optimizer and compressor with best-in-class algorithms.it saves you bandwidth and storage space and will dramatically improve your website’s load times.
Sign Up for Kraken.io Free and integrate with our API using the developer sandbox. No credit card is required and you will receive 100 MB of FREE quota to perform real optimizations. The paid version starts with $5 to $79 per month
Download Link: https://kraken.io/
WP Compress
The WP Compress plugin gives you a powerful yet easy way to optimize the images on a WordPress website for faster loading times… One of the best ways to speed up a WordPress website is to optimize its images. Once an image has been optimized, its file size will be smaller, and therefore, quicker to load.
Download Link: https://wpcompress.com/pricing/
Conclusion:
Every website needs image optimization. It enhances the performance of the website thus improving the ranking of your website.
Hopefully, this article helped you to understand the importance of image optimization as well as give you a basic idea about the different plugins available. You can use any of these plugins as per your requirements and witness the improved performance of your website.
