Optimizing WordPress images has always meant installing a separate plugin and running a bulk job over your whole library. Infinite Uploads now compresses and converts to AVIF and WebP at the CDN edge, with three quality levels and your original files left untouched.
Getting a media library to load quickly has always been a separate job from getting it organised. I can attest to that with over 25,000 files in the WP Mayor library alone.
The usual approach is another plugin. You already have something to offload your media to cloud storage, and since April 2026, you may have dropped a folders plugin and a search enhancement in favour of a single tool. Image optimization was the piece still sitting outside all of that, with its own subscription, its own credit system, and its own queue.
Infinite Uploads has now brought it into its suite of tools.
Image Optimization in the WordPress Media Library
Optimization applies to every image your site serves, with no bulk job to run and nothing to install alongside it. It’s included on the Infinite Uploads Business plans, so if you’re already on one, it’s sitting in your settings waiting to be switched on.
What makes it worth sharing here rather than just keeping it as a changelog entry is where the work happens, so let’s take a closer look at that.
The Work Happens at the Edge, Not on Your Server
Most optimizers work on the files in your uploads folder. They process them, rewrite them, and ask you to trust that you will never want the originals back. You run a bulk job, you wait, and you keep a backup somewhere yourself, just in case.
On the contrary, Infinite Uploads optimizes on the way out. When a visitor requests an image, the CDN checks what their browser accepts, serves AVIF or WebP where it can, resizes down to the maximum width you have set, compresses it, strips unnecessary metadata, and caches the result.
Your original file is never touched, and what follows from that is the interesting bit.
There is no queue chewing through 40,000 images over a weekend, because nothing is processed ahead of time. A library with 200,000 images is covered the moment you flip the switch, so you can change the compression level or turn optimization off entirely without having lost a thing.
For anyone who has ever run a bulk optimization job on a client site and then spent the following week fielding emails about a logo that looks slightly wrong, that difference is worth noting.
Three Optimization Levels
Infinite Uploads provides three levels of image optimization.
Maximum compression gives you the smallest files and the fastest loading, though very detailed images may soften slightly. Balanced is the default, applying strong compression with no visible difference on almost any image. Highest quality preserves fidelity at the cost of larger files, which is the one photography portfolios will want.
Since a news site and a wedding photographer want opposite things from the same setting, the optimization levels give you the option to get what works best for you. Since optimization happens at delivery, you can try one, look at your images, and try another without touching your source files, all within a couple of minutes.
Alongside the optimization level, you get a maximum image width of up to 2560px, a metadata stripping toggle, path exclusions for the files you want left alone, and a Purge CDN Cache button for re-applying settings to images already sitting in the cache.
One Subscription Instead of Five
Optimizers have historically been the most annoying line item in a WordPress media stack, because they are the one you have to think about. Storage is storage, a CDN either works or it doesn’t, and an optimizer has a credit balance, a monthly allowance, and a bulk job that needs babysitting whenever you migrate a site or add a few thousand images.
Infinite Uploads now covers all of it in one subscription, with cloud offloading, CDN delivery, video hosting, folders, sorting, enhanced search, and image optimization. Plans start at $8.25 per month (billed yearly) for the Starter plan, with image optimization included from the Business tier upward at $24 per month (billed yearly).
For agencies, the unlimited sites model still matters most. You’re not paying per site or tracking licences across a client portfolio, and optimization applies to every site on the account.
From Four Plugins Down to One
Earlier this year, I wrote that Infinite Uploads stopped being a media offload plugin with extras. Image optimization is what now finishes that argument since it’s the piece that turns a purely storage product into a performance product.
If you’re still running a separate optimizer on top of a separate offload plugin, you’re maintaining a stack that one subscription would now cover. You can learn more about Infinite Uploads and start a free 7-day trial on their site.
