Images act as digital road bumpers, jolting us awake when everything else feels still and numb from reading endless lines of text. They must be tuned, appropriately placed, and in non-disturbing internals to be effective and refreshing. That’s precisely what Image Optimization Plugins do! They assist in framing the right balance between image numbers and sizes before WordPress websites devolve into disastrous examples of how to misuse images!
These useful plugins allow us to edit, resize, optimize and recolor images to our liking. They are inextricably linked to any website design and SEO effort, and they help increase viewership on these digitally coded sheets. Furthermore, they assist in having the ideal easy-to-load. These not-too-heavy pages bring smiles to the faces of bloggers and webpage owners while piquing viewers’ interest, especially in this age of “everything virtual.”
The Best Image Optimization Plugins for WordPress
So, here’s our pick for the best image optimization plugins for WordPress 2022, which will help you put the best photos on your digital tabloids.
Smush
Smush is the long-awaited Messiah for image-optimization newbies who find themselves helpless and frustrated when dealing with WordPress images. ACCORDING TO REPORTS, another WPMU DEV family member focuses on making every WordPress image process non-manual, and it has over one million installations.
Smush stands tall above many WordPress image optimization plugins in 2022, with over one million installations likely for years. It’s free, easy to use, quick, empowering, and highly beneficial. The only major flaw in its system is that almost all WordPress image optimizations are restricted because the image-size threshold is less than 5MB.
Features
We can’t begin talking about Smush without first covering the basics: it can help with resizing, compressing, coding, and anything else an image optimizer can do. When the software is queued, it starts by optimizing existing images and then moves on to bettering new photos as soon as you upload them.
It also supports lossy and lossless image transactions with no time or speed penalty. Another excellent feature is the ability to remove metadata from images after they have been created.
- Automatic lossless compression
- Automatic resizing (Up to 5MB)
- Thumbnail size selection
- Gutenberg block integration|
- Multisite compatibility
- Strip EXIF metadata.
- Lazy-loading functionality
- Image resizing support
- Bulk optimizer (up to 50 photos at the same time)
- Detection system for unoptimized pictures

Interface
As is customary, the journey begins with integrating the provided API into your WordPress dashboard. You now have access to one of the best WordPress image optimization systems.
Following installation, you’ll be greeted by a delightful yet massively impactful user dashboard with clear options, large enough buttons to be missed blindfolded, and everything feeling meticulously planned out.
Pricing
The free Smush does the job, and most users have never complained about anything in the free version. For those interested, the premium feature is called “Smush Pro” and comes with a slew of modern and intriguing advanced features, including the ability to remove size boundaries.
The Smush Pro is also available as part of the complete WPMUDEV development package for $82.50. Other features that are only available with paid-method purchases include:
- Image serving from a CDN
- Back up the original image.
- Automatically convert PNGs to JPEGs.