Free Downloads WooCommerce vs Smush – Image Optimization, Compression, Lazy Load, WebP & CDN

Free Downloads WooCommerce is the definitive plugin for offering free downloads on your WooCommerce store. It allows users to bypass the checkout to download your free products, supports single and multiple files, works with WooCommerce Memberships, and is highly customisable. This plugin has been designed for content creators and distributors to fully take advantage of their digital store. Whether you sell audio files, course documentation, themes and plugins, or just want to offer digital catalogues for your tangible products, Free Downloads WooCommerce allows your visitors to get to your free downloads with ease. This plugin is safe and rock-solid secure, and everything is handled by your server including authentication, so you don’t have to worry. Free Downloads WooCommerce is also fully integrated with the official Memberships and Subscriptions plugins for WooCommerce. Basic Edition What you can expect in the basic free version. Free digital products can be downloaded by your users without going through the checkout. Supports downloading products straight from the shop listings pages. Allow free downloading of customer owned digital products from product pages Custom WooCommerce Quick View feature Built-in support for PDF files. Built-in support for WooCommerce Memberships and Subscriptions, allowing you to tailor the plugin to your needs. Fully supports products with multiple files, with several layout options to choose from. Download buttons and links will automatically style to match your theme. Add custom CSS and HTML classes to the download buttons and links for extra visual customisation. Pro Edition Buy Free Downloads WooCommerce Pro today and get access to these amazing features! Advanced Product Restrictions: Restrict free downloads by products, categories and tags. Variable and Grouped Products: Full support for grouped and variable products. Multiple Download Delivery Methods: Option to serve your downloads after redirecting to a page or emailing a link. WooCommerce PDF Watermark: Compatibility with the official WooCommerce PDF Watermark plugin. Download limitations: Restrict your users to a set number of free downloads per day/week/month/year. Users with WooCommerce Membership plans can have custom download limits, as well as specific user roles and user accounts. Download tracking with reporting: Keep a record of every free download showing the product, variation (if applicable), date, user, email address and IP address. Account download history: Show a list of the user’s free download history on their WooCommerce account page. Email capture: Ask your guest users for their email address before downloading, including subscribing them to your MailChimp newsletter! Paid Member Subscriptions: Compatibility with Paid Member Subscriptions plugin by Cozmoslabs. Woocommerce Products List: Compatibility with Woocommerce Products List plugin. Premium support: You never have to worry about plugin support. We’re here when you need it. One-click updates: Enjoy the simple, one-click updates that you’re used to with WordPress plugins. Get it here How it works By default any downloadable products that are free will be affected by this plugin. There is an option in the plugin settings if you would like to include paid items that are on sale for free, by default they aren’t. However, the plugin works right out of the box as it should, and only requires customising if you want to. Rather than the Add to Cart button showing on product pages, site visitors will be presented with a download button, or for multiple files on a single product a set of links to each individual file will show. You can customise the experience for your visitors with several display options from links, to buttons, and even checkboxes. Once clicked the file will be securely downloaded automatically. For multiple files, the plugin dynamically creates a zip file that includes all the files for that product, and downloads that instead. Customisation The plugin can be customised in several ways including how the download buttons or links are presented, their appearance, should users be logged in, and more. Check out the plugin settings page for everything. Support Full supporting documentation is included with the plugin, available on the plugin settings page. There’s a user guide, explanation of every setting, and FAQ with support forum links.

Compress images, optimize images, and enable image lazy load automatically with the powerful Smush image optimizer to keep your WordPress site fast, without losing quality. Smush makes it easy to optimize images, compress images, and deliver images faster across your entire WordPress site. This all-in-one image optimizer automatically reduces image file sizes, enables image lazy load, and serves modern formats like WebP and AVIF, all without breaking image quality or adding extra work. Whether you’re running a blog, store, or portfolio, Smush helps you optimize images at scale and keep your site fast with a trusted WordPress image optimizer. Trusted by 1+ Million Sites | 4.8/5 Star Rating Get everything you need to optimize images and speed up your site. Smush works out of the box with no complicated setup – just install and let it handle the rest. Compress images without losing quality Reduce image file size automatically while keeping your images sharp and clear. Smush is an easy-to-use image optimizer which let’s you compress images using both lossless and lossy compression, giving you the best balance of quality and performance without extra work. You can also compress images outside the media library using Directory Smush, making it easy to optimize images stored in theme folders, plugins, or other directories on your server. Lazy load images for faster pages Enable image lazy load across your site so images load only when needed. This image optimizer improves initial page speed and creates a smoother experience for visitors without extra configuration. Serve WebP and AVIF images automatically (PRO) Convert images to WebP and AVIF and serve them automatically to supported browsers. Smush helps you optimize images using next-gen formats to reduce file size and improve load times across your WordPress site. Deliver images faster with an Image CDN (PRO) Serve images through a global image CDN to reduce latency and improve load times for visitors around the world. 119 global CDN servers Up to 500 GB of bandwidth Faster image delivery based on visitor location Improved performance for image-heavy and high-traffic sites Automatically resize and fix image dimensions (PRO) Eliminate common PageSpeed warnings and improve layout stability with automatic image sizing. Smush dynamically resizes images to perfectly fit their containers, regardless of original size, helping fix the “Properly size images” warning in Google PageSpeed Insights. It also automatically adds missing width and height attributes to your images, improving rendering speed and reducing layout shifts. This helps you meet the “Ensure images have explicit width and height” recommendation without any manual work. Optimize your entire site, automatically Smush works across your whole site as a powerful image optimizer to optimize images as you upload them and maintain performance over time without manual work. Optimize images automatically on upload Compress images in bulk or individually Works with your existing media library No need to re-upload images Enable image lazy load across your site Convert images to WebP and AVIF Deliver images with an integrated image CDN Automatically resize and serve correctly sized images Optimize images outside the media library with Directory Smush Built for performance Smush improves page speed and overall performance by reducing image weight and improving how images are delivered. Reduce page load times Improve user experience Better performance for image-heavy pages Supports image lazy load and preload images (PRO) for faster perceived performance Works with your existing setup Smush is built to work with your current WordPress setup, including popular themes, page builders, and plugins. Compatible with Gutenberg, Elementor, WPBakery, and more Works with WooCommerce stores No need to change your workflow Easy to enable and configure Designed to be simple You don’t need to be a performance expert to optimize images with Smush image optimizer. Works out of the box Simple settings when you need them No technical knowledge required Safe to use on any site Why choose Smush? There are plenty of image optimization plugins, but Smush focuses on making it easy to optimize images, compress images, and improve performance without complexity. As a leading WordPress image optimizer, Smush gives you powerful optimization tools without the technical hassle. Trusted by over 1 million WordPress users Built specifically for WordPress Regular updates and improvements Backed by the WPMU DEV team Get started in minutes Install Smush, activate it, and start to compress images, optimize images, and enable image lazy load right away. This easy-to-use image optimizer helps most sites see improvements immediately without changing how they upload or manage images. About Us WPMU DEV is a premium supplier of quality WordPress plugins, services and support. Learn more here: https://wpmudev.com/ Don’t forget to stay up to date on everything WordPress from the Internet’s number one resource: WPMU DEV Blog Hey, one more thing… we hope you enjoy our free offerings as much as we’ve loved making them for you! Contact and Credits Originally written by Alex Dunae at Dialect (dialect.ca, e-mail ‘alex’ at ‘dialect dot ca’), 2008-11.