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Best Image Optimization Plugins In 2025

on 16 Apr 2025, by Bogdan, in Blog, WordPress, Guides

by Bogdan

Did you know that your site performance greatly affects how your website is perceived by users and how it is ranked on search engines?

The reason many websites have slow loading speeds is the images and how they are compressed and optimized. Images aren’t the only reason for a website's page speed. If you want to read more on this topic, check out this article.

Page speed is an important metric to look after while building your website. Services like Brizy Cloud or Brizy WordPress are a huge deal because they optimize your website in the background, sparing you the time and headaches of this tedious process.

Brizy WordPress is a drag-and-drop builder that replaces the default WordPress editor with a live front-end editing experience. It enables you to create complex layouts in real time while taking advantage of the full capabilities of the Brizy AI builder within the Brizy Cloud. Brizy Cloud is a standalone platform, helping people like you create websites with AI.

How can you improve your website's page speed with image compression?

A straightforward solution to improving a website’s speed is image optimization. Nowadays, there are many tools that can help. These tools may be image optimization plugins or services with built-in solutions like Brizy Cloud and Brizy WordPress for automatic compression, lazy load, and CDNs.

Cloud Delivery Networks, or CDNs, are networks of servers optimized to deliver the content fast based on the zone you live in. Let’s say there are 2 clients, one from the US and one from China. The client from US will acces the website thru a US-based server and the Chinese one from a Chinese-based server, thus ensuring fastest delivery across the globe.

What are image optimization plugins?

Image optimization plugins are tools that help optimize your website with image optimization, lazy loading, and much more. Such tools are of great importance when it comes to using a bunch of images on your website while maintaining a great user experience and loading speed. As we all know in the attention economy, speed matters a lot. Even a second or two in addition to the page speed can increase your bounce rate.

Below is a table with the results of the compression of 4 image optimization plugins on a 1.6 MB image.

Compression Size Comparison

Let’s talk about each plugin, starting with the ShortPixel.

ShortPixel

As you can see, ShortPixel is the best WordPress image optimizer regarding image compression in our tests. It offers 100 credits per month for the free tier. If you need more, you have to buy a license. It can also be seamlessly integrated into Brizy Wordpress to simply optimize the images used in it.

The ShortPixel plugin supports different types of compression: lossy, glossy, and lossless. As you can see above, lossy has the best compression, taking a 1.6MB image down to 334KB. It’s the best option for most websites if page speed is a must and you don’t need the maximum quality.

Glossy offers a more moderate compression, offering good page speed while maintaining quality. A great choice for photographers or professionals working with high-quality images. And lossless image compression is the best choice if you want your images intact.

It also supports WebP and AVIF image formats. These modern image formats were created with the goal of optimizing and improving a website’s speed with image optimization, taking up less storage than old formats like JPG or PNG at the same time, and maintaining the same quality.

To install and configure the ShortPixel plugin, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Plugins -> Add New Plugin

2. Search for ShortPixel with no spaces in between or you may not find it.

3. Click install and activate

4. After that, you’ll be redirected to the Installed Plugins page where you will click on settings

5. Here you should create a new account or use an API Key if you already have one

6. Here you can configure the plugin to your needs

Short Pixel has a free plan, an unlimited plan that costs 9.99$/month, and 4 different plans varying from 30k credits per month to 250k credits per month. In the free plan, you get 100 credits per month equal to 100 image compressed, SmartCompress, all types of compression, image and automatic conversion to JPEG, and bulk optimization.

The 9.99$ plan includes all the free features, plus unlimited credits/month, unlimited domains, image conversion in WebP or AVIF and SmartCrop.

Imagify

Imagify is another easy-to-use plugin for image compression. It automatically compresses all the images on your WordPress while converting them in WebP format. It also lets you pick the type of compression. Imagify allows you to tweak all these features in the plugin settings, having the option to choose between multiple image formats or compression rates.

Imagify offers you 3 pricings. A free plan, one for $5.99 a month and another for $11.99 a month. With the free plan, you get 200 image compressions per month, unlimited websites, images up to 2MB, and storage capped at 20MB/month.

The 5.99 plan includes 5000 image compressions a month, unlimited image upload size, 500MB/month storage with $5 per additional GB of storage, and the 9.99 plan includes all the features in the other 2 plans and unlimited storage.

The installation process is very similar to Shortpixel plugin in Wordpress admin.

Another 2 great image optimization plugins in 2025 are Smush and EWWW Image Optimizer.

Smush

As with other plugins, Smush has a few distinct features that may come in handy at times. One of these is Bulk Smush, a feature that bulks all your images and then compresses them. It also has Directory Smush if you need to compress certain folders of pictures. These features are available in the free version, along with lazy loading. Furthermore, Smush has a few more capabilities, such as converting images to WebP format or CDN, available in the Pro version.

Smush has a free plan and 4 more paid plans. The free plan includes image size limited to 5MB and batch optimization limited to 50 images per bulk. The basic plan is $15 a month and offers 5GB backup storage, 5GB on CDN, and the image size can be up to 256MB with 1 site license. The Standard plan is $25 a month and gives 10GB of storage with 10GB on CDN and 3 sites license. The Plus plan is $50 offers 20GB of storage with 20GB on CDN and 10 sites license and the premium plan is $100, offering 50GB of storage with 50GB on CDN with unlimited sites license.

EWWW Image Optimizer

EWWW Image Optimizer, besides basic compression, comes with a “Ludicrous Mode” where you can schedule image optimization for the new ones, sharpen them after compression, and change the resulting quality as shown below:

As you can see, you choose ranges of values for different image types, which may come in handy at times.

The free version offers unlimited image compression with no size limits, with the best compression, image conversion to WebP and AVIF, and image backups. The $8 plan offers automatic image conversion to WebP and AVIF with CDN delivery, unlimited sites, 25k requests per month, and 50GB bandwidth speed. The $16 plan offers 100+ CDN locations, 50k requests, and faster 200GB bandwidth delivery. The $32 plan includes the fastest internet speed, with $400 GB bandwidth and 100k requests.

To install the other 3 plugins, you can repeat the same 4 steps implemented in the installation of the ShortPixel.

Not using Wordpress? Here's a simple alternative with included image optimization by default - Brizy Cloud

Mentioned earlier, Brizy Cloud is a no-code website builder that helps you create a personalized website with the help of AI. Brizy WordPress is a plugin that uses the Brizy Cloud technology to replace the default WordPress editor with a modernized one.

The features included in Brizy Cloud are available in Brizy WordPress, which include:

Automatic resizing and compression
Automatic image conversion

Let’s talk about each in part. Automatic resizing adjusts the image pixel size to a lower one, trying to both make it smaller in size and also maintain the original details in the image. It also automatically applies compression to all the images uploaded on the web, freeing you from the hassle of doing it manually.

The other functionality automatically converts all the images from PNG, JPG, JPEG, and more to the WebP file format. As you use more and more images, this capability will show it’s power because, as discussed above, WebP is a modern format, and it’s great when it comes to retaining the quality of the image while being smaller than other formats.

What is the difference between Brizy Cloud and the other plugins?

Besides the fact that Brizy Cloud offers the same capabilities as the other plugins, it also does it in the background without the need for configuration. What this means is that Brizy Cloud image optimization doesn’t need to be set up before usage; it compresses your images automatically and converts the images so your users can enjoy the best performance without much effort from your side.

What to look for when you choose the desired image optimization tool?

Choosing the optimal WordPress image optimizer in 2025 is a must because everyone has a different need when it comes to images and website speed. If you want control over how your images are compressed, you should look after ShortPixel.

We recommend ShortPixel when it comes to using it in combination with Brizy WordPress. Both provide seamless integration and are best suited together. If you are a photographer or someone who wants their images preserved, you should look at ShortPixel because it offers multiple image compression types.

Another solution is Brizy Cloud. This platform offers the best hassle-free approach for those who want to skip the configuration part and focus solely on the website creation. It’s a ready-to-go solution with built-in image optimization.

Below you can see a comparison between all the solutions we’ve talked about so far:

If you neither use Brizy WordPress nor Brizy Cloud, and if you are someone who doesn’t care about controlling how the images are compressed, you need to look after Imagify or Smush or EWWW Image Optimizer. Imagify automatically compresses your images, and it works without any prior configuration, while EWWW Image Optimizer offers unlimited compression with self-hosted options.

Final Words

Whether you are a photographer that has a portfolio website, a company that has it’s own website for their products, or someone wondering how to improve his website’s loading speed, image optimization is the key.

Solving this problem is easy, and you have to do it now because of the impact the loading speed has on the results of your website. The fastest and easiest way to do this is to use Brizy Cloud with its built-in solutions for image optimization or Brizy WordPress together with ShortPixel. It’s the best choice for those who want a quick website and high-quality images.

There are other plugins like Smush, Imagify, or EWWW Image Optimizer, each coming with their own set of functionalities.

Creating websites in 2025 is a complex topic, and staying ahead of the competition is a must.

Want to easily create new pages or optimize your website effortlessly? Make sure to check Brizy WordPress, a no-code interface builder that lets you easily and rapidly create website interfaces in WordPress, or Brizy Cloud, a platform that let’s you build new websites in a breeze with built-in image optimization

Article by Bogdan

Co-founder & Head of Design, Bogdan has a passion for everything that works great and looks awesome. Guilty for most of the UI and UX around this place, you can say "Hi" to him at bogdan at brizy dot io