Elementor Image Optimizer Review: Speed Up WordPress Fast

The Image Problem Every WordPress Site Owner Faces

If you've ever managed a WordPress site for a client — or even a well-meaning co-worker — you already know the pain. Somebody uploads a 25-megabyte, 9000-pixel-wide photo straight from their camera, and suddenly the homepage takes fifteen seconds to load on mobile. It happens constantly, and no amount of polite reminders will stop it.

The core issue isn't laziness. Most people building websites with Elementor or any other page builder simply don't know they need to resize and compress images before uploading. They grab a stock photo from Envato Elements, drag it into the editor, and assume everything is fine. Meanwhile, their visitors on a mobile connection are staring at a blank screen.

What you need is a fail-safe — something that catches those oversized images automatically and optimizes them without anyone having to think about it. That's exactly the problem Elementor Image Optimizer is designed to solve.

What Is Elementor Image Optimizer?

Elementor Image Optimizer is a WordPress plugin from the team behind Elementor, the page builder that powers nearly 11% of all websites on the internet. But here's the important detail: this plugin works on any WordPress site, regardless of which page builder you're using. You don't need to be running Elementor at all.

The plugin handles image compression, automatic resizing of oversized uploads, WebP conversion, and EXIF metadata stripping — all processed on Elementor's servers rather than your own. That means your site doesn't slow down during optimization, and your visitors won't notice a thing while hundreds of images get processed in the background.

Plans and Pricing

Elementor offers a free trial so you can test the plugin before committing. Beyond that, there are three paid tiers, all billed annually:

- **5,000 image credits** — $50/year - **20,000 image credits** — $100/year - **1,000,000 image credits** — $200/year

Every plan includes unlimited websites, which is a huge deal for agencies. You can start on the smallest plan and scale up as your client roster grows without ever worrying about per-site licensing. Even the top tier at $200/year is remarkably affordable for managing image optimization across an entire portfolio of client sites.

One thing to keep in mind: each image size WordPress generates counts as a separate credit. So a single uploaded image that gets resized into six different thumbnail and display sizes will consume six credits. It's worth reviewing which image sizes your theme actually uses and disabling optimization for any you don't need.

Why Unoptimized Images Kill Your PageSpeed Scores

To illustrate the problem, Dave set up a fresh WordPress site using an Elementor site kit and swapped out some of the default bread imagery for cupcake photos downloaded from Envato Elements. One of those cupcake images weighed in at 11 megabytes — a file so large it actually broke WordPress's image metadata handling.

Running Google PageSpeed Insights on the unoptimized site returned a desktop score of 93 and a mobile score of just 51. The diagnostics flagged several issues: images not served in next-gen formats, improperly sized images, uncompressed encoding, and enormous network payloads. And this wasn't just the cupcake image — even some of the stock photos bundled with the Elementor kit were larger than they needed to be.

On a fast home connection with gigabit internet, none of this is noticeable. But your visitors on mobile networks — which is the majority of web traffic — will feel every extra megabyte.

Installing and Connecting the Plugin

Installation follows the standard WordPress plugin workflow. Download the zip file from your Elementor billing dashboard, then go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin in WordPress and drop in the file. Activate it, and a new "Image Optimizer" option appears under the Media section in your sidebar.

Before you can start optimizing, you'll need to connect the plugin to your Elementor account. This is a one-click process — hit the connect button, confirm on the Elementor side, and you're linked up. Since every plan supports unlimited sites, there's no reason not to connect every WordPress site you manage.

Dashboard Settings Walkthrough

The settings page is refreshingly simple — everything fits on a single screen without scrolling. Here's what each option does and how to configure it:

**Lossy vs. Lossless:** Lossy compression produces smaller files with a barely perceptible quality reduction. Lossless preserves the original quality exactly but saves less space. For most websites, lossy is the right call. The only exception would be photographers, illustrators, or anyone whose visitors might download and print images directly from the site.

**Optimize New Uploads:** This is the real magic. Toggle this on and every image a client uploads gets automatically optimized — no intervention required. This is the fail-safe that prevents future disasters.

**Resize Larger Images:** Set a maximum width and height for uploaded images. The default of 1920 pixels works well, though bumping it up to around 2400 pixels accounts for retina displays on Apple devices.

**Clear EXIF Metadata:** Strips camera data from images, including potentially sensitive location information. Leave this enabled unless you have a specific reason not to.

**Backup Original Images:** Keeps a copy of every original image so you can roll back if you're unhappy with the compression results. Great for peace of mind, especially when first testing the plugin.

**Convert to WebP:** Enabled by default, this converts all images to the WebP format, which loads significantly faster than JPEG or PNG in modern browsers.

**File Optimization Sizes:** WordPress generates multiple sizes for every uploaded image (thumbnail, medium, large, plus any custom sizes from your theme or WooCommerce). You can choose to optimize all sizes or select specific ones to conserve credits.

Running Bulk Optimization

With settings configured, the actual optimization process is a single click. Hit "Optimize All" and the plugin begins processing every image in your media library. A progress bar tracks how many images remain, and since all processing happens on Elementor's servers, your site stays fully functional throughout.

On the demo site with 137 images, the total media library shrank from 5.15 MB down to 2.36 MB — a 54% reduction in storage and bandwidth. That's not just a storage savings; it directly translates to faster page loads for every visitor on every page.

The bulk optimization moved quickly, processing images in batches without any noticeable impact on the site's responsiveness. Once complete, the dashboard shows a clear breakdown of original versus optimized sizes.

Using Image Optimizer on Non-Elementor Sites

One of the strongest selling points of this plugin is that it doesn't require Elementor. Dave demonstrated this by installing it on a second WordPress site built entirely with the Gutenberg block editor — no Elementor in sight.

The installation and setup process is identical. The plugin detected 199 images on the non-Elementor site, connected to the same Elementor account, and ran the same bulk optimization. The results were even more dramatic: the media library went from 19 MB down to 2.6 MB, an 86% reduction in total image size.

This makes Elementor Image Optimizer a genuine option for agencies managing a mixed portfolio of WordPress sites across different page builders.

Real-World PageSpeed Results

After optimization, Dave re-ran Google PageSpeed Insights on the original demo site. The desktop score jumped from 93 to 98, and the mobile score improved from 51 to 74 — a significant gain on mobile where image weight matters most.

There's still room to improve beyond what image optimization alone can achieve, but the jump from 51 to 74 on mobile from a single plugin is substantial. For most sites, image optimization is the single biggest lever you can pull for better Core Web Vitals scores, and those scores directly influence search engine rankings.

Final Verdict

Elementor Image Optimizer does one thing and does it well. It's not bundled with a CDN, doesn't limit your bandwidth, and won't hold your optimized images hostage if you cancel — the compressed files stay on your server permanently.

The pricing is fair, the unlimited-site licensing makes it a no-brainer for agencies, and the fact that it works across the entire WordPress ecosystem (not just Elementor sites) removes the biggest potential objection. Cloud-based processing means zero performance impact during optimization, and the automatic optimization of new uploads means you'll never have to worry about a client uploading a massive file again.

If you manage WordPress sites — whether one or fifty — and you're tired of fighting the image optimization battle manually, this is a solid, affordable solution worth adding to your toolkit.

Watch the Full Video

Prefer watching to reading? Check out the full video on YouTube for a complete walkthrough with live demos and commentary.