Short Pixel Review: Shortpixel Image Optimizer vs Adaptive Image Plugin 59
  • Quality - 9.2/10
    9.2/10
  • Price - 9.1/10
    9.1/10
  • Support - 9.1/10
    9.1/10
Comments Rating 0 (0 reviews)
Overall
9.1/10

Summary

Short pixel plugin reduces the image size, which means faster loading time for your visitors and the second plugin is called the short pixel adaptive images plugin which resizes the images to fit in the same placeholder.

Pros

Best quality optimization

Cheap and affordable

Image CDN facility

Cons

Consume more credits.

Short pixel is a set of two WordPress plugin(s) to optimize images. The first short pixel plugin reduces the image size, which means faster loading time for your visitors and the second plugin is called the short pixel adaptive images plugin which resizes the images to fit in the same placeholder.

Balance Between Size and Quality

So, when you upload the plug into your WordPress dashboard, shortpixel will automatically compress your images according to the settings that you set. Short pixel has three different compression levels that you can use to balance between size and quality. There are some other helpful options such as saving your original photos, automatic resizing of images and converting PNGs to JPEGs, all within the shortpixel admin dashboard.

Automatic Compression

As you upload an image, shortpixel automatically compresses the images and changes the file size of the picture. And if you’ve already had images in wordpress library that you would like to compress, you can do so by using the shortpixel bulk uploader in the media library tab.

Shortpixel Optimize options

Shortpixel Adaptive Image Plugin

The adaptive image plugin uses smart cropping to resize your image to fit in the exact location. For example, if you have a blog header for the image size 12000 by 400 pixels, but your image are 2200 by 1600 pixels. The adaptive image plugin will resize your picture so that it fits inside of that 1200 by 400 space without any distortion. So, if you are ready to reduce your image size for faster loading, then you’ll want to try out shortpixel.

Difference between Shortpixel Image Optimizer and Adaptive Image Plugin

Shortpixel has two plugins: the Adaptive Image Plugin and the Image Optimizer Plugin.

Shortpixel is the image optimization service, and they have two different plugins. It leads to some confusion because the one that was first released is called sharp pixel image optimizer. As you upload an image, it compresses the picture, and it shows that compressed image to your visitors. So, it dramatically reduces load time on your site.

It is freemium plugin meaning there are a free version and a paid version. For free, you have 100 image optimizations available per month.

It does just optimize your images; you can have different levels of optimizations. You can undo your optimization, if you want to it stores the original image.

Adaptive Image Functions

Now, an adaptive image was a new plugin, and it does something else. It optimizes your images. But, it also scales them to the appropriate size. If you have a big size image for a bigger screen, smaller for a tablet or a phone, it rises images perfectly to space which makes your images load even faster. It does optimization on the fly as the image is loaded and it makes your site’s load even more quickly than their original plugin called image optimizer.

You can use one or the other on in your site, but they don’t recommend both same times.

Shortpixel tools

ShortPixel Credits Counts:

Both the plugin are on the same account. So, all the credits count for both of those no matter which one you use. The difference is when you upload an image with image optimizer, it will be optimized the picture with one credit, and it stays on your site forever.

However, Short pixel adaptive images shrink the images to be the perfect size requires more credits. For example, if you upload one photo to your site, it will be optimized for desktop, tablet and phones on the fly. So, one image will use more credits using adaptive images.

Shortpixel CDN

To reduce the number of credits that are used regularly, short pixel also includes a CDN with adaptive images. Therefore, the images are served from a remote server that potentially makes it faster for the images to load as there servers all around the world and they will serve the images from servers closer to visitors. So, they will load faster not only because of the right size for the page but also CDN servers. It helps the use of the image credits because the image is stored on the CDN servers for 30 days. So, if you optimize image today, pictures will make a whole set of pictures for different visitor types as they visit your site. Those will all be stored for 30 days on the CDN server. When 30 days is over, those images will be then optimized again for new visitors. So, with adaptive images, you are going to use credits over and over again for the same image. For image optimizer, you will not use credits over and over again.

Use of Optimization Credits

So, those are the two significant differences with these plugins. The image optimizer useless optimization credits in the long run and adaptive images use more optimization credits. Still, your site will load a little bit faster, because the pictures are perfectly sized for the visitor screens.

Shortpixel API key

For image optimizer, you input an API key. For adaptive images, you need to add the domain name of your website, and then click on Add domains and that will add the domain as an adaptive images domain, where images are serving in perfect size using CDN. You don’t use the API for adaptive images. So, you can install either or for any of your websites.