What Does Image Optimization Mean?
Image optimization is reducing the file size of the images you will use on your website without losing the image quality. Reduced image file sizes load faster and increase user experiences.
Image optimization is also vital for image SEO. Google favors high-quality, fast-loading images, which means that your product images or content images can be more likely to rank higher in Google and other image search engines.
Apart from compressing the file size and preserving quality, the image optimization process covers correct file names, file types, thumbnails, and alt attributes as well.
So, if you ever asked yourself, "how do I optimize images for the web without losing quality," then that's where image optimization tools come in. Image optimization tools mainly aim to compress the image file sizes without sacrificing quality.
Some image optimization tools provide additional features that will make the overall image management on your website flow easily. That being said, let's make the benefits of image optimization clearer.
Benefits of Image Optimization
Today, the internet is crawling with graphics, images, and photos. The demand for visuality in marketing and in every corner of the digital world is growing faster and more intensively than ever. This demand requires sites to give place to more images while more images mean a slower website.
However, every problem comes with a solution. Image optimization tools allow optimizing images and photos so that websites can load faster. There is a fine line between optimizing an image while minimizing the file size and reducing the file size while damaging the quality.
This is where image optimization tools come to rescue website load speed. In other words, you would optimize the images on your website because images affect;
User Experience (UX)
First things first, page load speed is one of the top priorities to be dealt with if you want to provide a better user experience. Large-size images considerably drop the loading speed. A slow-loading website hurts the UX and causes losing potential repeating visitors and customers.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Google’s guidelines emphasize the importance of website page speed. So, page load speed can be a factor for websites’ rankings. It means that optimized images are better for search engine optimization and higher traffic.
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Average Pageviews and Session Duration
Think about it, if a web page takes ages to load, wouldn’t you leave and try another? Visitors tend to leave slow-loading websites and never come back. Optimizing images increases website speed and contributes to higher average page views and session duration.
Best Image Optimization Tools
Now that you know how vital image optimization is, we can take a look at the best image optimization tools. There are multiple ways of optimizing or compressing images such as with standalone tools or plugins.
Standalone Tools
1. Image4.io
The number one image optimization tool in our list is Image4.io. It speeds up the images’ load time, provides optimization, delivery, and storage in one platform.
Image4.io Capterra rating: 4.8/5
Outstanding Features
- Smart detection: detects users’ device, network status, browser, and location to serve optimized images in the fastest way.
- Increase conversion rate and Image SEO
- Full access with API
- Image CDN (content delivery network) and image manipulation
- Image optimization for websites and mobile apps
- Integration with WordPress, Zapier, Slack, Cloudflare
- It can be used for SaaS, B2B, and e-commerce
Pricing: Free for 15 credits, priced plans starting at $39/m.
2. Imagekit.io
Imagekit.io is an image optimization tool that provides image CDN with automatic optimization, real-time transformation, and storage.
Imagekit.io Capterra rating: 4.7/5
Outstanding Features
- Image transformation
- External storage integrations
- Global CDN
- Automatic image optimization
- Performance monitoring & analytics
- Watermarking and text overlays to modify images
- Thumbnail creation
Pricing: Forever free plan, premium plan starting at $49.
3. TinyPNG
TinyPNG is an online smart JPEG and PNG compression tool. This image size compressor reduces the file size of image files with lossy compression techniques. It selectively decreases the number of colors in an image and this way, it cuts down the storage data to fewer bytes.
What is cool about TinyPNG is that it stores partially transparent images. Additionally, TinyPNG provides image shrinking for apps as well as websites, and thus, the images load faster and use less bandwidth. Animated PNG images can also be optimized.
As for its downsides, although this tool is super simple, it does not deliver the advanced optimization and CDN features that are required for business websites.
Pricing: Free with limited features, pro plan starting at $25/year.
4. Kraken.io
Another useful image optimizer/compressor tool is Kraken.io. It helps to save bandwidth, storage space, and also improve website load speed. It is an easy-to-use tool and it also has a WordPress plugin available.
Here are some of Kraken's best features:
- Image optimization API
- Zip uploader and image resizing
- Freedom to change your CDN provider
- Cloud storage and web interface
- Lossy optimization & optimization statistics
- WordPress & Magento plugins
Pricing: Starting at $5/m for 500 MB of images a month. You can add additional GB to the premium plan quotas.
5. Compressor.io
Compressor.io optimizes PNG, JPEG, SVG, GIF, and WebP images to provide faster website speed. You can choose between lossy or lossless image compression to get the best result between image quality and file size.
This tool has a drag-and-drop feature with which you can drag and drop images and compress them easily. With the Pro plan, you can fix the orientation of photos and a prefix or suffix to the
All in all, it is a simple tool with fewer features and capabilities compared to other options, but it does the job without making things too complex. It doesn't have a developer API and WordPress plugin yet while they hint at the upcoming of these options as well.
Pricing: Free up to max. 10 MB. Pro plan starting at $50/year.
6. ImageRecycle
ImageRecycle is an image and PDF compressor. It also offers free analysis and a report for your website about the images that require optimization.
To access its advanced features, the pricing starts at $10 for 10,000 images. Some of its pro features are:
- JPG, PNG, GIF, and PDF support
- Unlimited websites
- WordPress, Woocommerce plugins
- Joomla, Magento extensions
- Shopify app
- API and free sub-accounts
- 1-month backup/restore
7. Optimizilla
Optimizilla is a free online image compressor that optimizes images by combining the best optimization and lossy compression algorithms. It allows uploading up to 20 images only in JPEG and PNG format.
This is a quite simple online image size compressor so it does not offer any other features. However, if what you are looking for is simple, and if you have relatively few files, Optimizilla is a practical option.
WordPress Image Optimizer Plugins
EWWW Image Optimizer
EWWW Image Optimizer is one of the best image optimizer plugins for WordPress that helps to reduce image sizes and improve website speed.
- Unlimited file size
- JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP
- Allows optimizing images using tools on your own server
- Bulk optimization
- Compatible with a lot of plugins and themes
- If you purchase Easy IO, it comes with CDN
Pricing: The core plugin is free. Paid services offer up to 80% compression. Compress API keys are $0.002 / image. Easy IO features are for $5-10 a month.
ShortPixel
Another image compression plugin for WordPress is ShortPixel. It supports PDF files as well as JPG, PNG, GIF, and WebP files.
Additionally, this plugin allows optimizing thumbnails and any image on your site. Other outstanding features include;
- CMYK to RGB conversion
- You can run the ShortPixel plugin on multiple websites or a multisite with a single API Key
- ‘Bulk’ optimizing
- No file size limit
Pricing: 100 images/m for free. Priced plans start at $4.99/m.
Imagify
Imagify optimizes images, reduces their file size without losing quality to increase website speed. Once you enable Imagify, it automatically optimizes all your images and thumbnails that you uploaded to WordPress.
- It is compatible with WooCommerce and NextGen Gallery.
- Optimizes JPGs, PNGs, PDFs & GIFs
- Resizes images
- Includes API
- Has a simple and easy-to-use interface
Pricing: You can optimize for free 20MB of images (about 200 images) every month and convert WebP for free. Priced plans start at $9.99.
Wrap-up
You should optimize your images to have fast-loading websites and provide a better UX. There are dozens of image optimization tools available, however, I tried to shorten the list and give you the best ones out there.
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That's it for image optimizers! Are there any other image optimization tools that you use and love? Tell us in the comments.
Thank you for your time.
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