EWWW Image Optimizer (original) (raw)

Are you frustrated by a slow website? Do over-sized images make you say “ewww”… Image optimization with EWWW Image Optimizer helps you make your site faster, improve your bounce rate, and boost your SEO. But most importantly, make your visitors happier so they keep coming back for more.

Why use EWWW Image Optimizer?

Get all this for free:

EWWW Image Optimizer is the only plugin that lets you optimize images using tools on your own web server (jpegtran, optipng, pngout, pngquant, gifsicle, cwebp). This requires the PHP exec() function and a compatible Linux, Windows, MacOS, or FreeBSD web server. If your web server is not compatible, we offer unlimited lossless JPG image optimization and WebP conversion via our Compress API **for free*.

Upgrade to Premium for:

Premium plans include SWIS Performance plugin with:

Automatic Everything

Optimize images on your entire site with a single click. With Easy IO CDN, images are automatically compressed, scaled to fit the page and device size, lazy loaded, and converted to next-gen WebP and AVIF formats.

Support

We provide free one-on-one email support to everyone.
Do you have an idea to make EWWW Image Optimizer even better? Share it and vote on future features!

Found a bug? Report the issue on GitHub, and we’ll get it fixed!

You may report security issues through our Patchstack Vulnerability Disclosure Program. The Patchstack team helps validate, triage and handle any security vulnerabilities. Report a security vulnerability.

Bulk Optimize

Optimize images, all from a single page. This includes the Media Library, your theme, and a handful of pre-configured folders (see Optimize Everything Else below). GRAND FlaGallery, NextCellent and NextGEN have their own Bulk Optimize pages.

Optimize Everything Else

Configure any folder within your WordPress install to optimize images. The Bulk Optimizer will compress theme images, BuddyPress avatars, BuddyPress Activity Plus images, Meta Slider slides, WP Symposium Pro avatars, GD bbPress attachments, Grand Media Galleries, and any user-specified folders. You can also use Scheduled optimization or run the optimizer from WP-CLI if that’s more your thing.

Plugin Compatibility

EWWW Image Optimizer has been tested with thousands of plugins and themes, here are just a few of the most common ones: BuddyPress (Activity Plus add-on too), Cloudinary, Easy Watermark, FileBird, FooGallery, GD bbPress Attachments, GRAND FlAGallery, Gmedia Photo Gallery, MediaPress, Meta Slider, Microsoft Azure Storage, MyArcadePlugin, NextGEN Gallery, Regenerate Thumbnails, Weglot, WP Offload Media, WPML, WP Retina 2x, WP RSS Aggregator, WP Symposium, and more…

WebP Images

If you want simple, get automatic WebP conversion with Easy IO, and be done with it! Otherwise, you can generate WebP versions of unlimited images with the Bulk Optimizer. Deliver them to supported browsers with Apache-style rewrite rules, JS WebP Rewriting, or Picture WebP Rewriting. EWWW Image Optimizer even works with the WebP option in the Cache Enabler plugin from KeyCDN.

AVIF Images

AVIF conversion is built into the Easy IO CDN. Once your site is setup with Easy IO, edit the site settings to enable AVIF, and you’re done!

WP-CLI

Allows you to run all batch image processes from the command line, instead of the web interface. Optimize images even faster, run it in ‘screen’ or via regular cron (instead of wp-cron, which can be unpredictable on low-traffic sites). Install WP-CLI from wp-cli.org, and run ‘wp-cli.phar help ewwwio optimize’ for more information or see the Docs.

CDN Support

WP Offload Media is the officially supported (and recommended) plugin for uploads to Amazon S3, Digital Ocean Spaces, and Google Cloud Storage. Check our compatibility list for details on other plugins. All pull mode CDNs like Cloudflare, KeyCDN, Bunny CDN and Sucuri work automatically, but you will need to purge the CDN cache after you optimize images with bulk optimization.

Translations

Huge thanks to all our translators, see the full list!

If you would like to help translate this plugin, join the team.
Signup to receive updates when new strings are available for translation.

Credits

Written by Shane Bishop with special thanks to my Lord and Savior. Based upon CW Image Optimizer, which was written by Jacob Allred at Corban Works, LLC. CW Image Optimizer was based on WP Smush.it. Jpegtran is the work of the Independent JPEG Group. PEL is the work of Martin Geisler, Lars Olesen, and Erik Oskam. Easy IO and HTML parsing classes based upon the Photon module from Jetpack.

  1. The plugin will attempt to install jpegtran, optipng, and gifsicle automatically for you. This requires that the wp-content folder is writable by the user running the web server.
  2. If the binaries don’t run locally, you may sign up for cloud-based optimization: https://ewww.io/plans/
  3. Visit the settings page to customize the plugin for your site.
  4. Recommended Activate the Easy IO CDN and/or run the bulk process to compress your existing images.
  5. Done!

If these steps do not work, see the additional documentation. If you need further assistance using the plugin, please visit our Support Page.

Webhosts

To find out if your webhost works with the EWWW Image Optimizer, you can check the official list.

Does the plugin remove EXIF and/or IPTC metadata?

EWWW Image Optimizer will remove metadata by default, but if you need to keep the EXIF/IPTC data for copyright purposes, you can disable the Remove Metadata option.
EXIF data does not impact SEO, and it is recommended by Google (and just about everyone else) to remove EXIF data.

Google Pagespeed says my images need compressing or resizing, but I already optimized all my images. What do I do?

Try this for starters: https://docs.ewww.io/article/5-pagespeed-says-my-images-need-more-work

The plugin complains that I’m missing something, what do I do?

This article will walk you through installing the required tools (and the alternatives if installation does not work): https://docs.ewww.io/article/6-the-plugin-says-i-m-missing-something

Does the plugin replace existing images?

Yes, but only if the optimized version is smaller. The plugin should NEVER create a larger image.

Can I lower the compression setting for JPGs to save more space?

Our premium compression can determine the ideal quality setting and give you the best results, but you may also adjust the default quality for conversion and resizing. Read more…

The bulk optimizer doesn’t seem to be working, what can I do?

See https://docs.ewww.io/article/39-bulk-optimizer-failure for full troubleshooting instructions.

What are the supported operating systems?

Free mode using local server compression is supported on Windows, Linux, MacOS, and FreeBSD. The Compress API and Easy IO CDN will work on any OS.

I want to know more about image optimization, and which options I should choose.

That’s not a question, but since I made it up, I’ll answer it. See this resource:
https://ewww.io/2026/01/12/ewww-whose-images-are-those/

I noticed a significant slowness in loading the site’s pages, but only if the admin section was loaded. I deactivated the plugin and everything went back to normal. I don’t know what could have happened, but it’s unusable like this.Regards,Umberto

Thank you to the developers for your great work.

Great add-on, I use it in two places, because teachers post a lot of pictures, I had to use some optimizer. I tried a lot, but I found this to be the best. It saves a lot of space on the storage.

I have only used the free version of this plugin so far and it was fast & easy to use. I tried multiple other plugins to auto convert media to webp and had lots of issues breaking code or not displaying images after converting and after 6 plugins later I came across Ewww Image Optimizer and it worked great!

Optimizing Pictures, thats enough!

Read all 1,816 reviews

“EWWW Image Optimizer” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

8.4.0

Release Date – February 11, 2026

8.3.1

Release Date – December 4, 2025

8.3.0

Release Date – November 19, 2025

8.2.1

Release Date – August 27, 2025

8.2.0

Release Date – July 15, 2025

8.1.4

Release Date – May 15, 2025

8.1.3

Release Date – March 26, 2025

8.1.2

Release Date – March 6, 2025

8.1.1

Release Date – February 26, 2025

8.1.0

Release Date – February 18, 2025

8.0.0

Release Date – December 11, 2024

7.9.1

Release Date – October 31, 2024

7.9.0

Release Date – September 12, 2024

7.8.0

Release Date – July 25, 2024

7.7.0

Release Date – June 6, 2024

7.6.0

Release Date – April 24, 2024

7.5.0

Release Date – March 26, 2024

7.4.0

Release Date – March 6, 2024

Earlier versions

Please refer to the separate changelog.txt file.