Smush.it may not work. Here are some alternatives.

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You may or may not be surprised to learn that WP Smush.it is an image optimization plugin for WordPress that uses Yahoo! to run its services.

With the popularity of WordPress and the plugin — which is at time of posting active on over 300,000 websites — it is safe to say that Yahoo!’s servers were getting taxed to perform the operations on your images.

In fact they were getting taxed so much that there is concern that the server load is too much for Yahoo! to continue with the service it offers. It is time to look for alternatives before it becomes difficult to optimize your images.

How does the Smush.it change affect my website performance?

Images are some of the major killers of page load speed. The entire purpose of using a tool like Smush.it is to take images that are too big and modify them to be smaller files.

In another article we posted, we talk about the specific standards you are looking for when optimizing your images on WordPress.

WP Smush.it Alternatives

The most direct alternative to WP Smush.it is the other free WordPress image optimization plugin, EWWW Image Optimizer. The plugin functions like Yahoo!’s service except it can pull from your local server to optimize the images when you need.

No external services or servers to worry about.

How to use EWWW Image Optimizer

You use EWWW Image Optimizer like you would install any other plugin on WordPress.

Once the plugin has been installed you can tweak the more technical settings by navigating to Settings > EWWW Image Optimizer on WordPress.

If you just want to use the plugin to compress your existing images, you can go to Media > Bulk Optimize and start optimizing all of the images on your website. You can also scan for new images that need to be optimized if you just switched over from Smush.it (image above).

Optimize images on Mac or Windows

Beyond WordPress plugins and solutions, there are lots of options that you can use outside of WordPress to optimize your images before you upload them to your WordPress website.

ImageOptim

ImageOptim is a free image optimization plugin you can download for Mac that allows you to easily drag and drop photos or folders of photos into the program.

What ImageOptim does is create new, optimized versions of your photos exactly where they were in your folders and sends the original version to the Trash. You can upload these new photos to WordPress.

Apple Preview

Using a Mac? Did you know that you can use Apple’s built-in Apple Preview application to reduce the size of images?

Simply go to Tools > Change Size… and change the resolution to 72 pixels/inch. You can also adjust the size of the image to fit in your website’s container in width or height. You can also go to File > Export and change the file type and quality (hint: use JPEGs at medium quality).

RIOT: Radical Image Optimization Tool

If you are using a windows computer, the best free image optimization tool is RIOT: Radical Image Optimization Tool, which can be downloaded here.

Using this tool you can resize an image, change the file format of the image (GIF, PNG, JPEG), and optimize the image. You can also batch optimize like in the ImageOptim application.

Optimize your WordPress website again!

Looking for more information about how to optimize your website? We have a complete look at WordPress optimization tips, including image optimization at this resource.

Check it out and make sure to download the complete checklist you can use when building your site or client sites!

Know of any other great software or have questions? Leave a comment below!

We hope that you enjoy our content. If you decide to make a purchase after clicking on one of our affiliate links, we’ll earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks for reading! View our Affiliate Disclosure

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lisa b. snyder

March 25, 2015 at 4:59 pm

How to prepare and manage images (aka compress/optimize) is one of the issues that I need discuss with my most of clients early in the project creation process. Thank you for providing a few alternatives. I had not heard of RIOT but will add to my collection of resources.

slocumstudio
March 26, 2015 at 8:24 am

Glad we could help Lisa!

Greg Davis

March 26, 2015 at 2:20 pm

Looks like EWWW Image Optimizer is on the ‘disallowed’ list at WP Engine. I notice you didn’t include WP Smush Pro from WPMU Dev. Wouldn’t that be the next logical alternative?

Dan Zarzycki
March 26, 2015 at 2:40 pm

Hi Greg, thanks for reading!

I can understand why EWWW would be disallowed from WP Engine, as you can user your own server to compress the images. Restrictions like these are why we sometimes recommend other partners like Siteground for hosting.

WP Smush Pro still leaves you at the mercy of a third party server, but WPMU is a respectable service and a great alternative. I will post a link to their plugin here: https://premium.wpmudev.org/project/wp-smush-pro/

Thanks!

Datson

March 27, 2015 at 7:47 am

Really good!

Cyprus Architect

March 30, 2015 at 9:15 am

Dan, there is a very good free image optimization tool – check it out:
http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/

Dan Zarzycki
March 30, 2015 at 3:16 pm

Thanks Cyprus! That is actually already included in the article, but thanks for the tip!

Paul
June 23, 2015 at 10:39 am

Riot Radical Image Optimization Tool works great. It reduces the size of images drastically and the quality is almost the same. Thanks, Paul.

David Fønsbo

April 25, 2022 at 6:35 am

Had a lot of problems with Smush. Broke my sites. Will try something new – Going with Riot!

Thanks for the tip!