Boost Your WordPress Website Speed with these 10 Image Optimisation Plugins
Images often account for a significant portion of your webpage’s weight, impacting both search rankings and user experience. In this article, we explore 10 remarkable WordPress image optimisation plugins designed to swiftly and consistently reduce image size, ultimately improving your website’s speed.
Why Image Optimisation Matters
Page speed is a critical factor in search rankings and user satisfaction, a fact not lost on Google. The search giant continually emphasizes the importance of site speed and performance, even incorporating it as a ranking factor. Google’s Core Web Vitals and PageSpeed Insights tools provide quantifiable metrics to assess site speed and page experience, with image optimisation often ranking among the most impactful insights.Here are 10 WordPress image optimisation plugins to consider:
Imagify:
- Key Features: Imagify is a robust plugin that seamlessly transforms your WordPress website into one that’s optimised for images, resulting in reduced load times and improved overall performance.
- Supported Formats: It supports a wide range of image formats, including WebP, PDF, GIF, JPG, and PNG.
- Compression Levels: Imagify offers various compression levels, allowing you to choose between Normal, Aggressive, and Ultra compression.
- Automatic Resizing: It automatically resizes and optimises images upon upload, saving you time and effort.
- Backup: Imagify includes a backup feature that preserves original images, ensuring you can always revert to the original quality if needed.
- Free and Paid Versions: You can choose between a free, albeit limited, version and a premium version for more advanced features.
- Performance Combo: When used in conjunction with WP Rocket (another plugin from the same company), Imagify creates a potent combination for optimising your WordPress site’s speed and performance.
ShortPixel Image Optimiser:
- Key Features: ShortPixel is a popular image optimisation plugin with a user base of over 300,000, known for its efficiency and effectiveness.
- Compression Options: It offers three different compression levels: lossless, lossy, and glossy, catering to various image optimisation needs.
- Format Support: ShortPixel works with a wide array of image formats, including WebP, PNG, JPG, GIF, AVID, and PDF.
- Automatic Optimisation: The plugin automatically optimises newly uploaded images, streamlining the optimisation process.
- Original Image Preservation: ShortPixel ensures the preservation of original image files.
- Free and Paid Versions: You can choose between a free version (with a limit on optimising up to 100 images) or a paid version for more extensive optimisation.
EWWW Image Optimiser:
- Key Features: EWWW Image Optimiser is a lightweight yet powerful plugin with nearly a million active users.
- Format Support: It covers the most common image formats, including JPG, PNG, and PDF.
- Lazy Loading: EWWW Image Optimiser includes lazy loading and conversion into next-gen formats like WebP.
- Image Dimension Handling: It can automatically add missing dimensions to images, a crucial aspect evaluated by Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.
- Bulk Optimisation: You can perform bulk image optimisation with ease.
- Original Image Preservation: Like other plugins, EWWW preserves the original images.
- No Size Limit: There’s no file size limit for image compression.
- Free and Premium Versions: It offers both free and premium versions, with added features in the premium version.
reSmush.it:
- Key Features: If you’re looking for a free image optimisation plugin, reSmush.it is a viable option.
- Supported Formats: It supports popular image formats like JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF, and TIF.
- Bulk Optimisation: You can optimise multiple images in bulk.
- On-Upload Optimisation: The plugin optimises images as you upload them.
- Size Limit: It works with images below 5 MB in size.
- Compression Control: reSmush.it offers a slider for precise compression adjustments.
Smush Image Compression and Optimisation:
- Key Features: Smush is one of the most widely used image compression plugins for WordPress, with over a million active installations.
- Lazy Loading: It includes lazy loading of images, and improving page load times.
- Compression Results: Smush presents compression results clearly, showing how much space you’ve saved.
- Compression Options: You can choose between lossy and lossless optimisation levels.
- Free and Pro Versions: Smush is available in both free (limited to images under 1 MB) and pro versions, offering advanced features.
Optimole:
- Key Features: Optimole focuses on compressing JPEG and PNG files while maintaining image quality, ensuring faster load times and a better user experience.
- User-Friendly Interface: It offers a simple and intuitive interface.
- Compression Levels: Optimole provides four compression levels: auto, high, medium, and low.
- Format Support: It supports Retina and WebP formats.
- Lazy Loading: The plugin includes lazy loading functionality.
- Free and Paid Versions: Optimole is available in both free and paid versions, with additional features in the paid version.
- CDN Integration: It utilizes a free CDN (Content Delivery Network) for enhanced performance.
Compress JPEG & PNG Images by TinyPNG:
- Key Features: As the name suggests, this plugin specializes in optimizing the two most common image formats, JPEG and PNG.
- Bulk Optimisation: You can optimise all images in your media library in one go.
- Automatic Optimisation: Images are optimised automatically upon upload, reducing the need for manual intervention.
- Custom Image Dimensions: It allows you to set the desired width or height for uploaded images.
- No Size Limits: There are no file size limits for optimisation.
- Multi-Site Support: The plugin works for multiple sites with a single API key.
WP Compress:
- Key Features: WP Compress not only offers image optimisation but also includes agency-focused features such as client reporting, remote configuration, and monthly client quotas.
- Bulk Optimisation: You can perform bulk optimisation with a single click.
- Lazy Loading: The plugin supports lazy loading for images.
- Next-Gen Formats: It can convert images into next-gen formats like WebP.
- Hybrid CDN: WP Compress offers a high-speed hybrid CDN for enhanced performance.
- Free and Paid Versions: It is available in both free and paid versions, with additional agency-focused features in the premium version.
Optimus:
- Key Features: Optimus is a WordPress image optimisation plugin known for its smart optimisation capabilities, claiming to reduce image file sizes by up to 70%.
- Bulk Optimisation: You can optimise all existing images on your website in one go.
- Automatic Optimisation: It automatically optimises images upon upload.
- WooCommerce Compatibility: Optimus works seamlessly with WooCommerce, a popular e-commerce plugin for WordPress.
- Retina Image Support: It offers support for Retina images.
- Free and Premium Versions: Optimus is available in both free and premium versions, with enhanced features in the premium edition.
Imsanity:
- Key Features: Imsanity is a minimalistic and lightweight image optimisation plugin that provides basic optimisation features.
- Automatic Optimisation: It optimises images automatically upon upload.
- JPEG Quality Control: You can set the desired JPEG image quality.
- Original Image Management: It gives you the option to either remove or keep original images.
- Bulk Optimisation: Imsanity supports bulk image optimisation, saving time.
- Simplicity: The plugin offers a simple and straightforward interface.
