Optimole Review PROS & CONS (2023) | Just Another Image Optimization Plugin?

Optimole

8

Easy to use

9.5/10

Settings

6.7/10

Price

8.0/10

Overall quality

7.8/10

Pros

• Free version
• Easy to use
• CDN feature
• Lazy load option

Cons

• Lack of features
• No image backup
• Lack of documentation

Learn More!

Images are core component of any site. Using them, we enhance content and make visitors more receptive to what we have to say. The downside of using many is that they tend to slow down a website. In this Optimole review, I will show how this image optimization plugin can help you.

It is crucial to optimize your images and increase page load time. This process decreases space your images take up and reduces your website loading times. In most cases, it will not noticeably impact the quality of pictures.

A large part of optimizing an image means compressing the file so that it takes up less space. Image optimization tools are designed to decrease the size of images as much as possible but still keep the image quality. Usually, there are three types of image compression.

Lossy compression (recommended) offers the best compression rate. This is the recommended option for most users, producing results that look the same as the original to the human eye.

Glossy compression creates images that are almost pixel-perfect identical to the originals. The best option for photographers and other professionals that use very high-quality images on their sites and want the best compression while keeping the quality untouched.

Lossless compression the resulting image is pixel-identical with the original image. Not a single pixel looks different in the optimized image compared with the original.

Image optimization also includes changing the dimensions of your images, changing the format, and server-side optimization so that images load faster.

If there’s something visitors to site don’t like, it’s a slow-loading site. Let’s be honest, we all leave the site if it takes too long to load. Page load times directly correlate with bounce rate and conversions, so you need to keep your site as fast as possible.

To avoid those negative outcomes, it’s important to optimize WordPress images. You can automate this process using WordPress plugins.

Optimole Review – Image Optimization Plugin

Optimole is an image optimization plugin from the folks at ThemeIsle. Two unique things about this plugin are that beyond the image compression and resizing; it also offers image acceleration through the plugin’s built-in CDN as well as built-in lazy loading.

I don’t know any image optimization plugin that offers CDN in price (ShortPixel also offers it). Both of these features are optional, so you can just use Optimole for compression.

Optimole plugin has a simple and modern interface with most of the tools running in the background without you knowing. It requires a quick account creation and API key insertion.

After that, you can view all optimized images in the dashboard and modify certain settings like image replacement, resizing of large images, compression quality, and lazy loading.

Optimole also has its own dashboard outside of WordPress. On your Optimole account, you can find more detailed information like the optimization sizes and monthly reports.

For image compression, Optimole lets you choose from three different levels of compression quality. Those are Low, Medium and High. I presume there are equivalents to lossless, glossy and lossy.

There is also an Auto option for compression, and you can have the plugin automatically resize images’ dimensions to a certain max height/width.

Optimole does all the compression on its servers, so it won’t slow down your site while compressing images. You can test Optimole and analyze to see how much you can save by entering your website URL on their site.

How Optimole Works?

Optimole comes in the free and paid plan. The number of images that you can optimize depends on your original image size and the number of optimizations you do for it.

Using the Free plan you can optimize up to 1 GB of images, which means around 2000 images at an average of 500Kb per image.

The free plan uses Optimole custom made CDN built with 7 locations around the globe. Paid plans have direct integration with Amazon CloudFront, with more than 130 locations around the globe.

Plugin connects via API to OptiMole image optimization service to send the images to its servers and crop, optimize and process them on-the-fly.

The EXIF data will be stripped, and it is not stored on servers. The plugin will rewrite your image URLs to replace them with Optimole URLs.

For integration with WordPress, you can download Optimole from WordPress repository. There is also an option to integrate using provided a script for HTML and custom integrations. After installing and activating Optimole plugin, you will be asked to enter an API key.

To receive API key, you will need to register for Optimole account which takes only a minute. When you register for an account, take your API key and enter it in required field on your website in Optimole plugin.

After that, you will have a new tab called Optimole under Media. Optimole consists of two tabs called Dashboard and Settings. From Dashboard section you can see all optimized images and by how much were they optimized.

Under the Settings tab, you will see that there is not much to do. Just a couple of features. Optimole is a very simple plugin for image optimization.

I would recommend it for beginners and people who don’t want to mess with many settings which offer most other image optimization plugins for WordPress.

Those settings include:

• Enable image replacement – Replace all the image URLs from your website with the ones optimized by Optimole.
• Admin bar status – Show in the WordPress admin bar the available quota from Optimole service.
• Javascript replacement & Lazy load – Generate images size based on your visitor’s screen using javascript and render them without blocking the page execution via lazyload.
• Resize large images – Resize all images with sizes greater than set values.
• Compression level – A higher compression might result in a small loss of image quality. Select the most appropriate value for your images.

You might be asking what if the website already uses a lazy load like from WP Rocket (see WP Rocket vs Super Cache vs Total Cache) and the user also activates Optimole Javascript replacement & Lazy load? Will there be any conflicts?

I got response from Optimole developer that this depends which plugin registered first their routines for lazy load.  So it will load either the optimole script or the wp-rocket one.

I have tested this with WP Rocket lazy load installed and lazy load from Optimole enabled and there is no conflict. You can check image optimization stats, bandwidth, and traffic from your Optimole website account.

Optimole Pricing Plans

The Free plan allows for 1GB of images per month, a CDN, and 10GB of viewing bandwidth per month. The free plan uses custom-made CDN built with 7 locations around the globe.

Paid plans have direct integration with Amazon CloudFront, with more than 130 locations around the globe.

Be noted that there should not be any conflicts or issues if the website already uses some CDN like Cloudflare and no additional settings are required in that case.

Paid plans are Premium and Enterprise. The premium will cost you 19 EUR/month (currently 9.99 EUR/month) with an option for 10GB of images per month, a CDN with 130+ locations, and 50GB of viewing bandwidth per month.

If you decide to go with Enterprise plan, you will pay 100 EUR/month or more depending on your needs if you go with more than 750GB of images per month, and 2TB of viewing bandwidth per month.

Here are Optimole features:

• Smaller, resized images – Images are processed for best results and automatically resized for any device.
• Image handling – Dynamic manipulation of images and videos (resize, compress and serve via CDN on the fly).
• Tracking and monitoring – Optimization stats are always available.
• Retina – Retina and HiDPI support with dynamic DPR detection and specific image delivery.
• CDN – Images are served by CDN in any location covering up to 110 server locations worldwide.
• Compression levels – Auto, High, Medium, Low

Optimole vs EWWW vs Smush vs Kraken

• Plugin   
• Free Version   
• Auto-Smush Images On Upload   
• Lossy Optimization   
• Backup Original Images   
• Optimize Images Individually   
• Bulk Image Optimization   
• Free Version Optimization Limitation   
• Convert Files To Different Extension   
• Optimize Images Outside Of The Media Library   

  Examples: theme images, BuddyPress, WP Symposium, and any folders that you have specified on the settings page.
• Remove Metadata   
• Offload Image Optimization   

  Let third-party server do optimization to reduce impact on your server.
• Setting Image Optimization Level   
• Scheduled Optimization   
• Disable Automatic Optimization   
• Disable Resizes For Certain Image Sizes   

  Wordpress, your theme, and other plugins generate various image sizes.
• Filter Image Optimization By Folders   
• Skip Images Based On Size   
• Disable Image Optimization Based On Image Format   
• Lazy Load   
• Integrated CDN   
• WebP Format Support   
• Price Of Pro Version   

• EWWW Image Optimizer
• Only in paid version

  Requires a $1 upfront payment (which includes 200 credits) and then charges per image
• -
• Only in paid version

  Requires a $1 upfront payment (which includes 200 credits) and then charges per image
• Requires a $1 upfront payment

  Which includes 200 credits, and then charges per image.

Check

• Kraken Image Optimizer
• Only in Pro version.
• Maximum Image Size 1 MB
• Basic plan $9/month

  There’s also a Advanced $19/month, Premium $39/month, Enterprise $79/month and Micro plan for $5/month.

Check

• WP Smush
• Only in Pro version
• Only in Pro version
• Free accounts are limited to bulk smushing 50 attachments per request. Cant optimize images greater than 1MB.

  You will need to click to start a new bulk job after each 50 attachments.
• Only in Pro version
• $19/month

  Alternatively, with a monthly WPMU DEV membership ($29) you can download Smush Pro along with 150+ other plugins and themes.

Check

• Optimole
• Free accounts are limited to 1GB/month and 10GB bandwidth
• 19 EUR/month

Check

NOTE: Above mention information may not be correct as plugins get updates, changes and additions. Check official sites for most accurate features and settings.

For more detailed comparison between WP Smush vs EWWW vs Kraken, check post where I go into more details.

Optimole Review Final Words

No matter how optimized your website is, images will always be one of the slowest-loading elements on the page. If you want to speed up WordPress website, you need to use a strategy that targets images specifically.

Optimole is a free image optimization plugin which can be downloaded from the WordPress.org repository. Optimole is a somewhat new addition to WordPress, but it is just as good if not better than most image optimization plugins.

Another significant advantage of using Optimole is the dynamic handling of images or videos which will resize and compress them instantly.

Using an API, this plugin rewrites your image URLs and replaces them with the resized and compressed ones from Optimole.

Optimole has options for auto, low, medium, and high compression depending on your needs. You can also choose to resize images above a certain size.

Optimole is intended for users who don’t want to spend much time on settings. Users who want a few simple steps and let the plugin do the work. And Optimole does its job very good.

They don’t delete the original images, so your original images are always secure. They serve the optimized images from their CDN (see best WordPress CDN) so there’s no need to back up your original images.

But some may want more features, and Optimole lack of them could be a no go. Turning on Lazy Load option will for maybe a sec replace images as you scroll with a blurred image.

This speeds up page load, but I don’t like that shadowy solution. I instead prefer that nothing is shown like WP Rocket has it managed.

Though plugin is simple without many settings, it would still be good that they have some documentation which is currently nowhere to be found.

To conclude, I would recommend Optimole as a great image optimization plugin for WordPress if you need a plugin which will do the job and you don’t need to play with settings. But if you need more from image optimization, then Optimole is not the choice for you.

And if you need to organize WordPress media files into folders, then be sure to check my FileBird review to see how it can be done for free.