ShortPixel Review: How does it help boost your website performance?

The images in a website give a more engaging user experience and can do wonders for your brand. However, they also take up a large chunk of your storage and bandwidth, thus negatively impacting the page loading speed and consequently decreasing SEO ranking. This is where image optimization plugins like ShortPixel come into action by directly getting installed into your WordPress Dashboard and automatically optimizing your image files into suitable size and format without affecting the quality of the images a great deal. Thus, the website load decreases and performance improves.

ShortPixel: A Background Check     

ShortPixel is a Romanian based WordPress plugin provider for image compression, WebP Compression and global CDN delivery solutions. It was founded in the year 2014 as an API and later developed two WordPress plugins ShortPixel Image Optimizer (SPIO) plugin and ShortPixel Adaptive Images (SPAI). As of today they have optimized more than 1.8million images for over 200,000 plugin users.

How does ShortPixel Work?

ShortPixel Image optimization plugin allows you to compress and resize your images locally. It sends the original images to the image optimization cloud, compresses them there and replaces the original versions of images with the optimized ones.

However, ShortPixel Adaptive images delivers images on your site directly from their fast CDN. The SPAI analyzes the visitor's HTML/CSS and JS code and replaces the original images with the versions optimized in size and format fit for that particular browser and device.

Getting started with ShortPixel

ShortPixel Image Optimizer

SPIO is a much easier and light-weight plugin which you can install using the WordPress Plugin search or the Admin Plugin Upload. Alternatively, you can even install it manually via FTP.

Next add your API key, review settings and optimize all images uploaded earlier. Do not forget to clear the cache of your site once you have done this. All future uploads will be optimized automatically.

ShortPixel Adaptive Images

Install ShortPixel plugin using any of three methods mentioned above. Next, you will be redirected to an Onboarding Wizard that configures SPAI properly So that all images are served from the CDN optimized.

Once this is done all your images will get optimized automatically. However you can fine tune your settings by selecting compression level, WebP support and EXIF removal, smart crop, Lazy load threshold etc.

Key Features:

1. Bulk Optimization

With Short-Pixel you can optimize all your existing media uploaded before installing ShortPixel in just one-click using the Bulk optimization feature.

2. WebP Support

ShortPixel supports the WebP format images which is more compatible with Google and can boost your SEO ranking and speed tests. Since WebP images are up to 25% smaller than the JPEG formats, enabling the WebP conversion in the settings will make the website even lighter.

3. Different Compression levels

ShortPixel lets you choose from three different compression algorithms- Lossy, Glossy and Lossless.

• The Lossy algorithms give you the smallest possible images prioritizing the speed of your site.
• Glossy compression assures top notch image quality with slight compromise in the page speed.
• Lossless images are pixel-by-pixel identical to original images with only a slight reduction in size.

4. Restore and Reoptimize from backups

You can turn on Backup to store the original images in the server space. You may re-optimize them later with a different compression setting or even restore the original version.

5. EXIF Data removal

Using this feature, you can remove the unnecessary data tagged to the images like Camera, location, filters etc. which reduces the image size further.

6. Non-WordPress website optimization

Websites which are not hosted on WordPress can also use this plugin by downloading a zip package and installing in the root directory of the website.

7. API Support

ShortPixel houses several APIs and tools command line tool, Reducer API, Post-Reducer API, PHP Client Library etc.

Pricing

ShortPixel offers both monthly as well as one-time payment plans suitable for a wide range of clients. It even comes with a fully functional free plan with a 100 images/month limit.

ShortPixel Image Optimizer:

The one-time plan ranges from $9.99 to $249 letting you optimize 10,000 to 500,000 images.

The monthly plans start at $3.99 and go up to $1000/month with an allowance of 7000 to 16million+ images. The high-end plans also include additionally dedicated servers ranging from 4crores to 32 crores and CDN traffic/month ranging from 4TB to 24TB/month.

ShortPixel Adaptive Images:

The SPAI also has a free plan with a limit of 500MB CDN traffic/month.

The paid plans start from $3.99/month and range to $83.33/month allowing 35GB of CDN traffic to 1,100 GB of CDN traffic.

The one-time plans start from $9.99(50GB traffic) and scale up to $249/ month (2500 GB traffic).

Support

If you get stuck, there is ample of help documentationa available in the ShortPixel website. You can also contact the support team via mail or contact form.

The Final Verdict

ShortPixel is an easy-to-use plugin to optimize your images to the desired quality in any format and hence lift the load off your website making it lightning fast.

They also have competitive prices meaning you do not have to be stuck with the Free limited plan.