If you’re looking for the best WordPress image compression plugins to help manage your images, this is the article for you. Images are an essential part of any website, as they play a significant role in attracting and retaining visitors. However, the downside of images is that when they’re large in size they will take a long time to load, which directly affects your website’s performance adversely.
This is where image optimization plugins come in to play. By compressing and optimizing images, these plugins can significantly reduce the load time of a website, making it faster and more accessible to visitors.
If you are a WordPress website owner, you have a plethora of options when it comes to image optimization plugins. The WordPress community has developed a range of powerful plugins that are designed to help you optimize your images without sacrificing their quality. Whether you are a blogger, an e-commerce store owner, or a photographer, there is an image optimization plugin that can cater to your needs.
Some essential features for WordPress image compression plugins
- Compression quality: The plugin should offer a range of compression levels, allowing you to balance image quality with file size.
- Optimization modes: Look for plugins that offer both lossless and lossy optimization modes, as these can be more effective in reducing file size.
- Image format support: The plugin should support a variety of image formats, including JPEG, PNG, and GIF.
- Bulk optimization: The ability to optimize multiple images at once can save you time and effort.
- Image resizing: The ability to resize images can help you optimize their file size and make them more suitable for your website.
- Automatic optimization: Some plugins offer automatic optimization, which optimizes your images as you upload them, eliminating the need for manual optimization.
- Compatibility: The plugin should be compatible with your WordPress theme, page builder, and other plugins.
- Analytics and reporting: Some plugins offer analytics and reporting features, allowing you to track your website’s image optimization progress and results.
- Support and updates: Look for plugins that are regularly updated and offer reliable support in case you encounter any issues.
By considering these features, you can select a WordPress image optimization plugin that meets your website’s specific needs and optimizes your images for maximum performance.
So, without further ado, let’s dive into the world of WordPress image compression plugins and discover the best tools for improving your website’s speed and performance.
10+ Best WordPress Image Compression Plugin details bellow:
EWWW Image Optimizer
The EWWW Image Optimizer plugin offers a variety of features to optimize images on your WordPress website. This plugin has no speed limits and supports unlimited file sizes, providing smooth handling with pixel-perfect optimization using industry-leading tools and progressive rendering. It offers high torque with the best compression to quality ratio available for JPG, PNG, and PDF files, while also offering adaptive steering, which ensures that it selects the perfect file type that’s needed.
The plugin is one of the best image compression plugins for WordPress and always means to remain free. However, it has paid services offering up to 80% compression and other features. The EWWW Image Optimizer provides comprehensive coverage, optimizing everything on your site, not just the WordPress Media Library. The plugin also prioritizes safety, securing all communications with top SSL encryption.
What’s more, the EWWW Image Optimizer provides a free image backup, which stores original images for 30 days, so no image gets left behind. Overall, this plugin provides a comprehensive and reliable image optimization solution for WordPress websites, with a variety of features to suit different needs and preferences. Additionally, top-notch support is in the DNA of the plugin, and every single support question is answered with care, with API customers receiving top priority.
With the bulk optimizer option, you get to optimize the images you find on single pages. Another feature you can work with is the optimization of any of your folders within your site website, including theme images and Meta Slider slides. The Bulk Optimizer enables you to generate WebP versions of your images and showcase them on all the browsers that EWWW Image Optimizer supports.
Feature Highlights
- Pixel-perfect optimization with industry-leading tools
- High compression/quality ratio for JPG, PNG, and PDF files
- Optimizes everything on the website, not just the media library
- Free core plugin with paid services for additional features
- Adaptive conversion options for optimal image format
- No speed limits or file size limits
- SSL encryption for secure communications
- Top-notch customer support
- Free image backup for 30 days
Imagify
Imagify is one of the most advanced image optimization plugins for resizing and compressing images. Its user-friendly nature enables you to optimize your images easily, and often in just one click. With its asynchronous bulk optimization option, you get to optimize as many images as you want in one go. Imagify lets you compress images automatically to the best level by simply resizing them. What’s more, you can restore the images to their original versions easily.
Imagify allows you to choose a top WebP plugin for your website. Your choice will enable your site to convert your images to WebP format, which is refreshing technology for keeping your it light and fast. What’s more it boosts the overall site’s user experience and its SEO performance. Imagify makes it easy to work with all formats, including PDF and GIF. In case you are busy with other site operations, you can take advantage of its background image compression feature.
One of the most incredible features of Imagify is the one that allows you to choose the maximum width of all your images. Every new image that you upload will be automatically resized so that it doesn’t exceed your chosen width. What’s more, this sort of resize won’t crop your images. Its optimization affects your site’s speed and Core Web Vitals directly and positively. Imagify offers well-laid-out metrics for all that it does on your website.
Feature Highlights
- User-friendly
- One-click image optimization
- Asynchronous bulk optimization
- Resize to compress images
- Easy restoration of images to original
- Option to have original and optimized images
- WebP format support
- Easy to convert GIF format
Smush
Smush is an outstanding way through which you can work with your images for a better overall website experience. With the plugin’s multi-pass lossy compression feature, you can optimize your images twice as much as before. Smush offers lossless compression, which is the seamless compression of images by removing unused data while retaining image quality. In just a single click, you can optimize and compress as many images as you want.
Even if you have many images on your website, Smush won’t let that slow it down because of its Lazy Load feature. You only need to flip a single switch to defer offscreen images. With the powerful optimization features of this best free WordPress image compression plugin for any websites, its features will continue running in the background. Smush reaches far in your site to optimize even the images that aren’t in your media library.
Smush lets you set maximum widths and heights so that your large images will scale down during compression. What’s more, this plugin will even detect the images that are of incorrect sizes, therefore slowing down your website. With its automated optimization feature, works on your attachments asynchronously for the fastest compression as you upload them. The kicker in all this is that you will have no monthly limits to image size or number.
Since it is integrated with Gutenberg blocks, you can see all the smushing stats on the editor’s image blocks. It will even work smoothly with global and individual multisite settings. Smush gives amazing results with all file types, from PNG and JPEG to GIF and PDF. With the PRO version, you can convert and serve images in the WebP format. Other premium features include up to three times parallel compression among many more.
Feature Highlights
- Background optimization features
- Autodetection of images that slow site down
- Lazy Load
- Lossless compression
- Full integration with Gutenberg blocks
- Automated optimization
- No monthly limits on image size or number
- Bandwidth upgrading possibilities (PRO)
ShortPixel
ShortPixel is one of the top WordPress image compression plugin that raise your site’s SEO rankings. It offers both lossy and lossless image compression options for all popular image file types, including GIF, PNG, JPG, PDF, AVIF, and WebP. The plugin also allows you to convert animated files too. With its refreshing smart cropping feature, ShortPixel ensures that all the thumbnails that go on your site are optimized and will showcase their full subject.
If your website has a large media library, you will benefit from the plugin’s support for background processing using WP-CLI. When you exercise the option for automatically converting PNG images to JPG format, you will get smaller files, even with very large images. Since it is compatible with WordPress Retina version 2x, ShortPixel will compress all your Retina images optimally. The options the plugin offers for image scaling work on all images, thus eliminating the need for extra plugins like Imsanity.
The exclusion options that this WordPress image optimization plugin affords you include exclusions based on file size, filename, path, or other complex regex exclusions. If you’re working with NextGEN Gallery or any other image gallery or slider, ShortPixel will still optimize all the images it contains. The plugin is so smart that it will skip all images that are already optimized to prevent redundant time wastage.
Photographers will find ShortPixel a joy to work with, since it lets you remove or keep EXIF data on your images and utilizes the lossless option in compressing your photos. It also utilizes the progressive JPEG format in larger images to speed up the display of images. You can optimize all images in any of your galleries or the Media Library in a single click. It is highly compatible with other plugins and extensions.
Feature Highlights
- Smart cropping for smart thumbnails
- Next-generation image formats (WebP and AVIF)
- Detect and skip already optimized images
- Priority use of the faster JPEG for large images
- Automatic optimization of image upon upload
- Compatible with watermarking plugins
- 2 options for scaling images options
- No file size limit
Imsanity
Imsanity is an excellent tool for resizing many image uploads on your website. All you have to do is select the size and quality that you want and the plugin will do everything for you. It has an automatic resize feature so that you work with “sane” image sizes. With its bulk resize feature, Imsanity enables you to free up space on your site by reducing the size of previously uploaded images. It will replace all original images with optimized ones.
This WordPress image optimization plugin works with the Media Library smoothly so that you can even select the images you want to resize from its list. Alternatively, you can choose to optimize all of the available images at the same time. Imsanity supports the configuration of the maximum width and height of your images, as well as JPG quality. If you want, the plugin will also convert PNG and BMP files to JPG to save you more space.
Once you enable Imsanity, you don’t need to carry out any other actions; it does all the optimization work for you. It comes with inbuilt WordPress-compatible functions for image scaling. Imsanity is translatable into different languages and comes with several ready translations.
Feature Highlights
- Automatic image scaling
- Bulk image optimization
- Selective image resizing for Media Library
- Image conversion to JPG format to save more space
- Totally hand-free
- Inbuilt image scaling functions
- Fully translatable
TinyPNG
TinyPNG is one of the most popular and best free image optimization plugins for WordPress website. As you would expect of such a top plugin, it supports the automatic optimization of newly uploaded images. However, it takes image optimization to the next level with advanced background optimization, effectively boosting the speed of your workflow. TinyPNG comes with progressive JPEG encoding so that your site will display JPEG images faster.
Like Imsanity, TinyPNG allows you to optimize individual images in your Media Library. It also has the option of bulk optimization of the same image collection. Once you set the maximum height and width that consider the best browser displays, this WordPress image compression plugin will resize your images in bulk. TinyPNG has smart optimization so that it retains your copyright metadata, GPS location, and creation date your original images contained.
The capabilities of TinyPNG extend to the compression of animated PNG files. If you want to optimize thumbnails of a certain size, this plugin lets you select the size and have bulk optimization for them. This best free image optimization plugin for WordPress supports multisite use with just one API key. TinyPNG is also compatible with WPML, the translation plugin; this enables you to work with the languages of your choice.
With this and similar WordPress image optimization plugins, your website will become compatible with the WordPress Retina 2X version. TinyPNG enables you to monitor your usage activity on the settings page and as you carry out bulk optimization. Your dashboard will have a widget that displays your total space savings. One of the most outstanding features of this plugin is its automatic translation of CMYK color profiles to the standard RGB colors.
Feature Highlights
- Automatic image optimization
- Easy media library bulk optimization
- WooCommerce compatible
- Retina version 2X compatible
- Automatic CMYK color profile translation to RGB
- WordPress mobile app available for optimization and resizing
- Total savings dashboard widget
- Multisite support using one API key
reSmush.it
reSmush.it is an image optimizer that works with a few advanced algorithms to optimize and resize images extensively. It is a free plugin that works with different file types, including PNG, GIF, and JPG; however, it limits the file sizes at 5MB. Its bulk optimization option only takes two clicks to work.
The options that reSmush.it provides are highly flexible to satisfy your complex needs. Since it can carry out manual and automatic optimization, you can choose to optimize particular images and let it do the rest or apply it to all the images in a particular location. It also has the option for excluding some pictures from optimization.
Feature Highlights
- Support for JPG, GIF, and PNG file types
- Only works with files up to 5MB
- Only 2 clicks needed for bulk operation
- Option to exclude some images
- Support for automatic and manual operations
Optimus
Optimus is one of the most fantastic WordPress image optimization plugins out there. It allows you to reduce the size of the files you upload automatically as you upload them. You can optimize and reduce image sizes by 70%. Optimus works to save those additional kilobytes that, together, work to reduce the strain on your website. As it gives you gains with more image compressions, it will display the progress in the Media Library in percentages form.
You will get to save massive disk space with the progressive JPEGs that Optimus supports. What’s more, you get top optimize the previews of all images along with the photos themselves. One of the optional settings is removing the IPTC and EXIF metadata. If you want to work a WooCommerce website, Optimus will give you the smoothest operation for all shop images.
This WordPress image optimization plugin supports the bulk optimization of all the existing images. It supports WordPress multisite too. The privacy settings of Optimus include the deletion of all temporarily stored files once the optimization and transfer processes are done. The servers of the plugin’s developers are located in Germany, where there is more respect for information privacy.
Even if you optimize your images on your desktop tools before uploading them, you will still benefit from the thumbnail optimization of Optimus. If you aren’t a photographer, you should avoid working with JPEG files and instead stick with PNGs.
Feature Highlights
- Image size reduction up to 70%
- Display of optimization work within Media Library in percentages
- Retention of author, copyright, and EXIF information
- Optional removal of IPTC and EXIF metadata
- Optimization of thumbnails
- Extensive privacy settings
- WooCommerce ready
- Image optimization in the background
Kraken.io
Kraken.io is a superb tool and one of the best free image compression plugin for WordPress websites. It supports both intelligent lossy and lossless image optimization modes. The plugin works seamlessly with different filetypes, including PNG, GIF, animated GIF, and JPEG. As you would expect of free plugins, Kraken.io comes with a maximum file size limit – 32MB. Even if you choose to work with the lossy optimization option, this plugin will always provide top quality results.
With Kraken.io, you can use your API key and keep it private on as many blogs and websites as you need. Once you install and activate this plugin, all images that you upload will be automatically optimized on the fly. What’s more, it’ll optimize all the generated thumbnails. Kraken.io lets you specify the dimensions you want for all your images so that all uploads are automatically resized. The plugin will optimize the resulting image to enhance it for a sharper look.
If you want, you can choose to eliminate or retain any or all of the profile EXIF, copyright, date, orientation, geotag metadata tags. Kraken.io saves you from having to rotate images manually by orienting images automatically based on their EXIF orientation value. Once you have this plugin, you can work with the bulk action, “Krak ‘em all” feature to optimize all the images in the Media Library. Alternatively, you can optimize one image after the other, individually.
Kraken.io doesn’t force you to use command or root-line access, as it requires no compilation or installation of any binary. The free version of this plugin only allows you to work with a limited quota. Although it works with all WordPress website hosts, it works best with those hosted by WPEngine.
Feature Highlights
- Automatic rotation and orientation of images
- On-the-fly optimization of all images
- Resizing of original image uploads
- Restriction of image dimensions for automatic resizing
- “Krak ‘em all” bulk optimization feature
- Optional preservation of different metadata tags
- Multiple times usage of API key while retaining secrecy
WP Compress
WP Compress is an all-in-one WordPress image compression plugin for agency websites. It presents a comprehensive solution for shrinking file sizes, boosting loading speeds, and increasing conversions. Apart from the regular image optimization features, WP Compress supports remote configuration and optimization and bulk website linking. It offers a centralized management portal for all your agency operations. You can even use it to monitor monthly client quotas.
WP Compress supports the traditional local image optimization of your Media Library images and their thumbnails as well as the generation of Next Generation image formats like WebP. What makes it special is its live image optimization, which entails Next Generation image compression and the service of the perfect image 100% of the time. Along with this real-time compression, WP Compress supports adaptive images on a per-device basis.
Apart from the lossless image compression mode, this WordPress image optimization plugin comes with two additional modes in Intelligent and Ultra Compression modes. Since it supports the lazy loading of images, it will ensure that images never make your pages load slower. WP Compress supports devices with Retina displays. Its construction has measures in place to prevent over-compression of images, which would compromise their quality.
With its automatic image resizing, WP Compress takes most of the work out of your hands. Among the single image operations that this plugin supports include compression and restoration from the cloud. What’s more, the same operations on bulk images are just one click away. WP Compress allows you the option of preserving EXIF data.
Feature Highlights
- Retina display support
- Real-time image compression
- Prevents over-compression
- Supports restoration of single images
- One-click image optimization and compression
- Option to retain EXIF data
- Automatic image resizing
Wrap-Up: Separating the Best WordPress Image Optimization Plugins
In conclusion, image optimization is crucial for website speed and overall user experience. The 10 best WordPress image compression plugins we have discussed in this article offer a range of options for optimizing website images to improve performance and load times.
These plugins can help website owners reduce image file sizes without sacrificing quality, which can lead to faster load times and a better user experience. Additionally, many of these plugins offer additional features such as lazy loading, image compression, and automatic resizing, which can further improve website performance.
While each of these plugins has its unique features and benefits, it is important to choose the one that best suits your website’s needs. Some plugins may be more suitable for larger websites with a lot of images, while others may be better for smaller websites with fewer images. They differ in other ways, which we hove have helped your final choice. All the best with your chosen niche and website.
