Are you looking for the best WordPress image compression plugin for your website? Image compression plugins allow you to easily optimize images in WordPress for better speed and performance. In this article, we have compared the best image compression plugins for WordPress.
When Do You Need a WordPress Image Compression Plugin?
Images are larger in size than plain text which means they take longer to load and can slow down your website.
However you’ve probably heard the saying: “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Images make your content more engaging and interactive.
To improve your WordPress website speed, you need to optimize your images for the web. The best way to do this is by using Photoshop or another image editing software before you upload the image to WordPress. This gives you a lot more control on the quality of images on your website.
However, not all users are comfortable working with image editing program. For some optimizing every single image they upload sounds like a lot of work.
Luckily, there are several WordPress image compression plugins that can help you with that. These plugins optimize your images by automatically compressing them and using the smaller sized version on your website.
That being said, let’s take a look at the best WordPress image compression plugins, and how they stack up in terms of image optimization, performance, and quality.
1. reSmush.it
reSmush.it is the best WordPress image compression plugin. It allows you to automatically optimize images on upload as well as offer a bulk optimization option for older images.
It uses the reSmush API to optimize images and allows you to choose the optimization level for your uploads. The downside is that it doesn’t have different compression levels. It also limits optimization to uploads lower than 5MB in size. You can exclude individual images from compression in case you need to add an image in full size.
2. EWWW Image Optimizer
EWWW Image Optimizer is a great option for WordPress image compression plugin. It is easy to use and can automatically optimize images you upload on the fly. It can also compress and optimize your previously uploaded images in bulk.
It performs all compression on your own servers which means you don’t need to sign up for an account to get an API key. It can also optimize images generated by other WordPress plugins and stored outside your media library folders. It doesn’t require an account to use the plugin, but you can sign up for their API to get additional features.
3. Compress JPEG & PNG images
Compress JPEG & PNG is created by the team behind TinyPNG, and you will need to create an account to use the plugin. You can only optimize 100 images each month with the free account. It can automatically compress images upon upload, and you can also bulk optimize older images.
The plugin settings allow you to choose which image sizes you want to optimize. Additionally, you can also set a maximum size for your original uploads. Images larger than that size will be automatically resized by the plugin.
4. ShortPixel Image Optimizer
ShortPixel Image Optimizer is another useful WordPress image compression plugin. It requires you to get an API key by providing your email address. The basic free account allows you to compress up to 100 images per month, and you will need to upgrade to their paid plans to increase this limit.
It starts compressing images as soon you as activate plugin and stores your original images in a separate folder. It also allows you to compare the original file with the compressed version to see the quality difference. ShortPixel is packed with advanced features and gives you the ability to choose comparison formats.
5. WP Smush
WP Smush is another popular WordPress image compression plugin. It automatically compresses images on upload and can also be used to compress and optimize your older image files. You can also set maximum image resolution, and your images will scale down to more reasonable sizes while being compressed.
The free version of plugin doesn’t require you to create an account to use their API key. The bulk optimization feature allows you to optimize up to 50 images at a time, and you can rerun the bulk optimizer to compress more images.
The free version of the plugin doesn’t perform that well. See our review of WP Smush with pros and cons.
Comparison Test Scores for Image Compression Plugins
Now that you know about the different WordPress image compression options, let’s take a look at how they compare against each other in terms of performance.
To measure this, we ran test by uploading the same image using each of these plugins.
Testing JPEG Image Compression
We used the following JPEG image for our tests, it is 118 KB in file size.
We didn’t touch any of the plugin settings and tested the compression with out of the box settings. Here are our test results:
| Plugin | Compressed Size | Saved (%) | Method |
|---|---|---|---|
| reSmush.it | 76 KB | 30.59% | Lossless |
| EWWW Image Optimizer | 112 KB | 5% | Lossless |
| Compress JPEG & PNG images | 114.7 KB | 2.8 % | Lossy |
| ShortPixel Image Optimizer | 69.2 KB | 41.94% | Lossy |
| WP Smush | 112 KB | 5% | Lossless |
Testing PNG Image Compression
Next we wanted to test a PNG image to see how our contenders optimize it.
We used the following PNG image for the test, and it is 102 KB in file size.
Here are our test results:
| Plugin | Compressed Size | Saved (%) | Method |
|---|---|---|---|
| reSmush.it | 36 KB | 63.8% | Lossless |
| EWWW Image Optimizer | 97.5 KB | 1.9% | Lossless |
| Compress JPEG & PNG images | 34.3 | 64% | Lossy |
| ShortPixel Image Optimizer | 37 KB | 63.5% | Lossy |
| WP Smush | 99 KB | 2.9% | Lossless |
Which is The Best Image Compression Plugin for WordPress?
If you are not looking for flexible options in your image compression plugin, then reSmush.it gives you the best results in terms of performance by making the real difference in image file size.
If you are willing to pay for image compression, then you can try ShortPixel which performed really well in our tests.
EWWW Image Optimizer is a great plugin with flexible settings, but you will need their paid API key to get access to compression levels which make the real difference.
We hope you found this comparison of best WordPress image compression plugins useful. You may also want to see our list of common image issues in WordPress and how to fix them.
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