Images play a crucial role in website design, but they can also significantly slow down your website if not optimized correctly.
Slow loading times can lead to poor user experiences, higher bounce rates, and lower rankings on search engines. That’s where image optimization plugins come in.
By compressing images without sacrificing quality, these plugins improve your site’s performance, ensuring fast load times and better user engagement.
In this blog, we’ll explore the top 10 image optimization plugins for WordPress in 2024 to help you boost your website’s speed and efficiency.
We’ll start by sharing details for each image optimization tool along with its individual performance.
Table of contents
1. Smush Image Compression and Optimization
Smush is one of the most well-known image optimization plugins in the WordPress ecosystem.
The plugin offers both lossless and lossy compression methods, which can reduce the file size of your images without compromising quality.
Smush’s bulk optimization feature allows you to optimize all images on your site in just one click, saving time and improving your website’s speed.
Additionally, Smush provides automatic image resizing and the ability to perform lazy loading, which improves performance by only loading images when they come into view.
Smush is perfect for users who want a reliable, easy-to-use plugin that requires minimal setup.
How did the plugin do?
| Image File Type | Compression Type | Original Size | Reduced Size | Percentage Reduced |
| JPG | Lossless | 271 KB | 268 KB | 1% |
| JPG | Lossy | 271 KB | 224 KB | 17.5% |
| PNG | Lossless | 416 KB | 320 KB | 23% |
| PNG | Lossy | 416 KB | 74 KB | 82.3% |
2. ShortPixel Image Optimizer
ShortPixel is a comprehensive image optimization plugin that caters to both beginner and advanced users.
It supports lossy, lossless, and glossy compression modes for a wide variety of image formats, including JPG, PNG, and GIF.
One of its standout features is the ability to automatically convert images to WebP, a next-gen image format that offers superior compression.
ShortPixel also optimizes PDF files and images on external URLs, making it a versatile solution for any WordPress site.
With its user-friendly interface, ShortPixel ensures you get the best compression while maintaining a high-quality visual experience for visitors.
How did the plugin do?
| Image File Type | Compression Type | Original Size | Reduced Size | Percentage Reduced |
| JPG | Lossless | 271 KB | 268 KB | 1% |
| JPG | Lossy | 271 KB | 125 KB | 54% |
| PNG | Lossless | 416 KB | 312 KB | 25% |
| PNG | Lossy | 416 KB | 142 KB | 65.8% |
3. EWWW Image Optimizer
EWWW Image Optimizer is an image compression plugin designed to reduce the size of images without affecting quality.
The plugin supports automatic compression on upload and provides an option to bulk optimize existing images.
EWWW stands out with its flexibility — it allows you to convert images to WebP, a modern format known for its smaller file sizes.
Additionally, EWWW provides a CDN (Content Delivery Network) for faster image delivery.
It’s a great choice for those looking for a no-nonsense plugin with robust features and minimal impact on site performance.
How did the plugin do?
| Image File Type | Compression Type | Original Size | Reduced Size | Percentage Reduced |
| JPG | Lossless | 271 KB | 271 KB | 0% |
| JPG | Lossy | 271 KB | 151 KB | 44.2% |
| PNG | Lossless | 416 KB | N/A* | N/A* |
| PNG | Lossy | 416 KB | 105 KB | 74.8% |
4. Imagify
Imagify, developed by the team behind WP Rocket is an intuitive and powerful image optimization plugin.
It supports both lossy and lossless compression and can optimize images in bulk, making it easy to manage large image libraries.
Imagify also includes a feature to convert images into WebP format, reducing file sizes while maintaining image quality.
The plugin has three levels of compression (Normal, Aggressive, and Ultra), allowing users to choose the balance between image quality and compression.
Imagify is an excellent option for those looking for an automated and efficient image optimization tool.
How did the plugin do?
| Image File Type | Compression Type | Original Size | Reduced Size | Percentage Reduced |
| JPG | Lossless | 271 KB | 271 KB | 0% |
| JPG | Lossy | 271 KB | 201 KB | 26% |
| PNG | Lossless | 416 KB | 318 KB | 24% |
| PNG | Lossy | 416 KB | 112 KB | 73% |
5. TinyPNG
TinyPNG is a popular service/plugin that, despite the name, can optimize all types of image formats – not just PNG files.
You can either optimize images directly via the website or you can install the TinyPNG image optimization WordPress plugin to automatically optimize images as you upload them to WordPress.
However, TinyPNG only supports lossy compression – it doesn’t give you a lossless option like many of the other plugins.
There’s also a beta feature that lets you serve your site’s images up via a CDN, though we didn’t test that part of the plugin.
How did the plugin do?
| Image File Type | Compression Type | Original Size | Reduced Size | Percentage Decrease |
| JPG | Lossless | 271 KB | N/A* | N/A* |
| JPG | Lossy | 271 KB | 148 KB | 45.4% |
| PNG | Lossless | 416 KB | N/A* | N/A* |
| PNG | Lossy | 416 KB | 123 KB | 70.4% |
6. Lazy Load by WP Rocket
Lazy Load by WP Rocket is a minimalist plugin that focuses solely on lazy loading images.
With this plugin, images are only loaded when they are about to enter the browser viewport, reducing the number of requests made when a page is initially loaded.
This leads to faster load times, especially for image-heavy pages.
Lazy Load by WP Rocket integrates seamlessly with other image optimization plugins, ensuring that even after optimizing your images, the page still loads as fast as possible by deferring image loading.
7. Optimole
Optimole is a cloud-based image optimization plugin that works seamlessly in the background to automatically optimize and resize images.
The plugin reduces image sizes and automatically serves them in WebP format to ensure faster loading. Optimole uses a cloud service to serve images from servers close to the user’s location, further improving site speed.
The plugin also supports lazy loading, which ensures that images are only loaded when needed.
Optimole’s real-time image optimization and resizing makes it a great option for high-traffic sites that need to reduce the load time without compromising on quality.
8.WP Rocket
WP Rocket is the best WordPress caching plugin in the market. It’s very beginner friendly and will help to make your site blazing fast.
There are image optimization features within WP Rocket, like lazy loading, which will only load images when they are viewed.
They also developed a plugin called Imagify. This plugin lets you optimize all of your images with a single click. It will also resize your images on the fly and lets you restore your images to their original size.
You also have full control over your image optimization and compression settings. All of your images will be optimized to your preferences. You can learn more in our Imagify review.
9. ReSmush.it Image Optimizer
ReSmush.it is a free image optimization plugin that provides both lossy and lossless image compression.
The plugin integrates with the ReSmush API, allowing users to optimize images in bulk or as they are uploaded to the site.
ReSmush.it supports multiple image formats, including JPG, PNG, and GIF.
One of its unique features is that it allows users to set an image compression quality percentage, providing control over the balance between image quality and file size.
ReSmush.it is a great option for those looking for a straightforward, no-cost solution to image optimization.
10. WP-Optimize
WP-Optimize is a powerful all-in-one WordPress optimization plugin designed to enhance site speed and performance.
It offers a comprehensive solution by combining image compression, database cleaning, and caching features into one tool.
The plugin automatically compresses images during upload and supports bulk optimization for existing media files.
Additionally, WP-Optimize cleans your database by removing unnecessary data like spam comments, post revisions, and expired transients, ensuring your site runs efficiently.
Its built-in page caching and Gzip compression further reduce load times, while lazy loading ensures images only load when they’re needed.
WP-Optimize is an excellent choice for website owners seeking a versatile tool to boost their WordPress site’s performance.
Conclusion
Image optimization is a crucial aspect of improving website performance, and WordPress offers several plugins to help you achieve faster load times. Whether you’re looking for a free or premium solution, the top 10 image optimization plugins listed above provide excellent features to enhance your site’s speed and user experience. Choose the one that best suits your needs and start optimizing your images for a better-performing website!
