10 Best Free WordPress Image Optimizer Plugins for 2022

Are you searching for the best free image optimizer WordPress plugin to compress the image without losing its quality? If so, this article listing the best WordPress image optimizers is just for you. 

Using images to visualize, advertise and portray various information is the best way to let the audience know the content better. But using too many images may open the door to numerous other disadvantages.

From slowing down your WordPress site’s speed to losing the qualitative user experience, all might occur when using large and multiple images. So, we’ve come up with the 10 best WordPress image optimizers to compress images on your WordPress site.

Let’s start by knowing why you need WordPress image optimizer plugins. 

Why Do You Need WordPress Image Optimizer Plugins? 

First, using large images decreases the free space on your server. Next, too many images on a single post and page can also increase your site’s loading time. This discourages the audience from spending time on your website. Since the loading time is also directly related to ranking on the search engine, it’s a huge disadvantage. 

Therefore, you should optimize your site’s images as much as possible without reducing their quality. And for this, you could use some image editing software before uploading the images to your WordPress site. But that’s a hassle because not everyone is comfortable using the software.

Therefore, the best option is to use WordPress image optimizer plugins. It’s an easy approach to image optimization that you can use on any WordPress site. From image resizing to changing image extensions, you can do it all using the plugins.  

So, without further ado, let’s look at the best free image optimizer WordPress plugin available on the WordPress market


10 Best Free Image Optimizer WordPress Plugins

1. Optimole

Optimole Best Free Image Optimizer WordPress Plugin

Optimole is the best free image optimizer WordPress plugin that makes your site lightweight by reducing images’ size without visually altering them (the images will look just the same, only their size will be smaller). It resizes, compresses, and serves your images via CDN in any location.

Furthermore, Optimole works on autopilot, which means that once installed, it’ll do its job all alone – you don’t need to do extra work. Though you can track and monitor its activity via a modern and user-friendly interface. 

Optimole also has three premium plans that offer even more viewing bandwidth, disk space, CDN locations, priority support, and custom CNAME. The images are processed through lossless and lossy optimization techniques. 

Key Features: 

  • Images are served via CDN, covering more than 110 server locations worldwide 
  • Automatic optimization 
  • Retina and HiDPI support dynamic DPR detection on all devices 
  • Easy tracking and monitoring of the stats/results via a modern dashboard 
  • Uses lazy loading to display images 

2. Smush

Smush

Smush is one of the most popular and best WordPress image optimizers, created to compress and optimize images. This  award-winning WordPress image optimizer takes pride in its capability of compressing images on your server automatically with minimal loss of quality.

Furthermore, image optimization doesn’t occur on your servers, which also drops the load on your website. The plugin scans all images on your website, monitors future uploads, and quickly strips unneeded data from the images, compresses them, and even resizes them if necessary.

Smush can also compress images specified in a given folder. Additionally, it’s entirely compatible with NextGen Gallery, WPML, WP Retina 2x, and many other premium image-related plugins. 

Key Features: 

  • Lossless and Smush lossy image compression for optimizing image sizes with no slowdown 
  • Compatible with JPEG, GIF, and PNG image files 
  • Lets you set maximum width/height for images, and images larger than the parameters will be automatically rescaled 
  • Automatic optimization on image upload 
  • Allows image optimization on the entire network and easily compresses images on multiple websites with global and individual settings 

3. EWWW Image Optimizer

EWWW Image Optimizer

EWWW Image Optimizer helps you improve your website’s reception and popularity using the power of image compression. These WordPress image optimizer plugins allow you to compress your images on the best compression ratio for JPG, PNG, GIF, and PDF files.  

The correct compression is automatically selected based on the file format as well. The plugin is also completely free, and while a paid service exists (exclusive for API use only), it’s entirely optional. The plugin also comes with complete SSL protection for your files. 

Moreover, you can also choose between image optimization to be done on your server or a specialized server. Besides, you can bulk optimize images, from a large number of images to entire folders. EWWW image optimizer is also fully compatible with WP Image editor, WEBP images, WP-CLI, etc. 

Key Features: 

  • Unlimited file size for compression, no speed limits, background optimization 
  • Free image backups save your original images for 30 days 
  • Automatic image resizing with basic retina support and automatic lossless compression 
  • Compress images from plugins as well, BuddyPress avatars and images, Meta slider slides, GD bbPress attachments, and user-specified folders 
  • CDN support for uploading to cloud servers 

4. Shortpixel Image Optimizer

ShortPixel Image Optimizer

Another top-of-the-line best free image optimizer WordPress plugin is ShortPixel Image Optimizer; this GDPR-ready plugin is a lightweight plugin that prominently features the concept of automation. Install and forget about image sizes, as it automatically compresses and resizes older images while scanning for newer ones.  

ShortPixel Image Optimizer takes minimal resources to drop the load on your web servers and works great on a shared cloud network, VPS, or dedicated web hosting. You can also optimize images on your media libraries or any images sent through FTP. 

Bulk optimization is also freely available for all users with the restore feature, in case the compression is not to your liking.  Furthermore, you can easily test your images’ optimization parameters and quality with a single click. It also provides you with a 40-day optimization report that includes image details and more. 

Key Features: 

  • Bulk optimization option for existing images in the media library or in any gallery 
  • PNG to JPG auto-conversion 
  • Compatible with WebP, WP Retina 2x, various image galleries, WooCommerce, and WooCommerce plugins 
  • Multi-site integration with a single API key 
  • Compatible with watermarking plugins 

5. Imagify

Imagify

Imagifyis a powerful and best WordPress image optimizer plugin available on the web. The plugin lets you compress images usingthree different compression methods with varying degrees of image size optimization and quality change. 

Along with your media uploads, you can also optimize thumbnails and retina images as well. It’s fully compatible with WP Retina x2, WooCommerce, and various media gallery tools. 

The tool lets you delete or preserveEXIF data if necessary. It even has a backup option to automatically save your optimized images if you’re unsatisfied with the image optimization. This extremely beginner-friendly plugin ensures that you don’t have to do anything at all; use the plugin and watch as your site optimization soar. 

Key Features: 

  • Lossless, Lossy, and Ultra lossy compression algorithms for varying degrees of image optimization 
  • Automatically backs up optimized images for restoring or re-optimizing 
  • Supports PNG, JPG, and GIF formats 
  • Provides multi-site support 
  • Directly resizes images before upload, saving time and space 

6. TinyPNG

TinyPNG Free Image Optimizer WordPress Plugin

TinyPNG is a free online image compression tool. However, it’s also available as the WordPress plugin. The plugin compresses your images, thus optimizing your images and gallery without affecting your overall site speed.

It allows automatic image optimization for your newer uploads and bulk optimization for compressing older images. A strong point about this plugin is, that it preserves metadata, creation dates, copyright information, and GPS location, ensuring that you can take full credit for all the images uploaded on your website.

You can also monitor your image compression data and statistics using the Dashboard Widget offered by the plugin. Furthermore, the plugin is also made to optimize color profiles. It converts images to standard RGB color profiles to conserve space and maximize compatibility. 

Key Features: 

  • No file size limits for image optimization 
  • Copyright metadata, creation date, and GPS location are preserved after conversion 
  • Supports animated PNG and GIF formats 
  • Supports multi-site optimization through a single API key 
  • Provides a dashboard widget to monitor usage and compression statistics 

7. Imsanity

Imsanity Free Image Optimizer WordPress Plugin

Imsanity is another best free image optimizer WordPress plugin that automatically resizes huge image uploads. You can choose whatever size and quality of the image and the plugin does the rest of the task.

Whenever a contributor uploads an image to your site, Imsanity automatically brings it down to the configured size and replaces the original image. You can also resize the images that have been previously uploaded to your site using bulk-resize features and free up your disk space.

On the other hand, you can also resize individual images through the Media Library’s List View. The plugin is perfect for blogs that don’t use original high-resolution images. It’s also ideal for those who don’t want to scale each image before uploading. 

Key Features: 

  • Allows to set the configuration of maximum width, height, and JPG quality 
  • Converts BMP and PNG images file to JPG for more savings 
  • No further attention is required on the part of the user after the installation  
  • Includes WordPress built-in image scaling functions 
  • Available in several languages 

8. Optimus

Optimus Best Free Image Optimizer WordPress Plugin

Next on the list, we have Optimus, an outstanding WordPress image optimizer plugin. It’s developed by KeyCDN, a global content delivery platform. Optimus can reduce the image size up to 70%. It not only optimizes the images but also the thumbnails and preview images.  

On top of that, the overall quality of the images is always maintained by the plugin. Every file you compress with Optimus is followed by an instant deletion from its server; you don’t have to worry about your data being stored on its server.  

Apart from the free version, it also provides premium versions with expanded functionality; you can choose the plan accordingly. Overall, optimization with Optimus is quick and easy. 

Key Features: 

  • Reduces file size during upload 
  • No adjustments to code are required 
  • Compatible with WooCommerce and WordPress multi-site 
  • Transparent data privacy policy 
  • Supports WordPress Mobile Apps and Windows Live Writer 

9. WP Compress 

WP Compress

WP Compress has also grabbed a position on our list of best free image optimizer WordPress plugins. It’s an all-in-one image optimization plugin that automatically reduces image size in WordPress sites, shrinks file size, and improves load times to boost conversions. 

Further, based on the visitor’s device, it’ll adapt your images to be in the right size without any visible quality difference. Also, it supports retina devices and generates retina images whenever possible to serve the retina images to supported devices. This provides a high-resolution experience to the users.  

You can simply start by linking your website, and that’s all; you don’t have to worry about the maintenance after setup. With its ultra-premium infrastructure, the plugin promises load time to be as fast as 7ms.  

Key Features: 

  • Live image optimization 
  • Lossless, intelligent, and ultra-compression modes are available 
  • Prevents over-compression 
  • One-click bulk optimization and restore 
  • Regular updates 

10. resmush.it

reSmush.it

reSmush.it is a free WordPress image optimizer tool based on the API with the same name. The plugin can help you reduce the size of your images, animated or not, through several algorithms. It allows you to optimize images, individually or in bulk and allows optimization on upload. 

Instead of choosing between different algorithms, you can define the compression level simply using the optimization level feature. Moreover, this best free plugin for image compression works by creating a copy and working on it, thus providing you with backups to restore.  

Furthermore, the plugin is a complete package for image optimization, with its only restriction being its 5MB file size limit. 

Key Features: 

  • Completely free and easy-to-use design 
  • Supports compression individually, in bulk, as well as automatic compression on upload 
  • Choose optimum compression level as necessary using the image quality value setting 
  • Saves statistics and logs on image compression 
  • Saves the backup on optimization for restoration if needed 

Wrapping It Up!

Thus, you can use any of these best free image optimizer WordPress plugins, to easily compress images and improve your website performance without any image editing skills. You can also upgrade your plan from free to premium in some plugins if you want to add other functionalities.  

We hope we’ve made your task less tiring and more productive with our list of best WordPress image optimizer plugins. If you have any confusion or queries, you can leave your comment below.  

You can also explore more articles on WordPress-related topics through our blog. We have amazing articles on how to speed up your WordPress site, boost WordPress site speed using CDN, and many more. 

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