Grow for WordPress vs Smush – Image Optimization, Compression, Lazy Load, WebP & CDN

Ready to grow your audience, increase engagement, and supercharge your traffic for free? Grow saves independent content creators like you time and money by helping your content stand out to the people who matter most: your readers. PRICE New to Grow? Creating an account is 100% FREE. No hidden costs, subscriptions, or charges. All you have to do is sign up today to start bringing your website to the next level. WHY CHOOSE GROW? Grow is a smarter and more efficient way to grow your audience without the expense and hassle of managing multiple platforms. Streamline your workflow, buy back time, and let Grow take care of email and audience engagement so you can focus on what you do best: crafting killer content. CONNECT WITH YOUR AUDIENCE Build stronger relationships and grow trust and loyalty faster than ever! Features like Spotlight Subscribe and Recommended Content make it easy for readers to find and engage with your content… and keep coming back for more. Spotlight Subscribe: When a user scrolls into view, it darkens the rest of the page, highlighting—or casting a spotlight—on the signup form. In-content calls-to-action encourage readers to sign up for Grow as well. Spotlight Subscribe also provides multiple ways to customize the plugin for your needs. Update images and text, and even use different widgets across different pages using the Category Targeting settings or the Manual Placement option. Recommended Content: Sit back and leave the content curation to Grow! When users log in, they’ll receive personalized recommendations based on things they’ve read, shared, or marked as favorites on your website. Meanwhile, logged-out users receive recommendations based on their browsing content and what other users like them have clicked on. Subscribe: Say goodbye to complicated form building and hello to turbocharged list growth and direct referral traffic from your newsletter with Subscribe. Subscribe allows publishers like you to simultaneously build an email list and encourage readers to sign up for Grow and consent to personalized ads. As a publisher, you get to nurture, connect, and develop growing relationships with your readers all while maximizing your earning potential from digital ads running on your website. ENGAGE YOUR AUDIENCE Customize your feature setup in the Grow Publisher Portal to crush your engagement goals as readers Favorite and Save your top posts. Enhanced Search: Designed with your readers in mind, Grow’s all-new search experience beautifully displays your most popular, latest and recommended content to maximize engagement. Grow’s all-new search beautifully displays your most popular, latest and recommended content to maximize engagement. Exclusive Content: You’re in the driver’s seat with the power to place full recipes, printables, digital downloads and more behind a login. All these benefits are available in one powerful plugin! FAST, EASY CONFIGURATION Activate Grow quickly and easily! Step #1: Start by installing the Grow plugin. If you’ve already installed Grow, go to Step #2. For instructions on how to install Grow on WordPress, visit our help doc Getting Started with Grow’s WordPress Plugin. Step #2: Once the plugin is installed, navigate to Grow in the WordPress sidebar. Step #3: From there, Connect or Create an Account and follow the steps to add the Grow WordPress plugin to your site. MORE INFORMATION ABOUT GROW Getting Started with Grow: A Resource Guide Grow Recommended Content Grow: Introducing Subscribe and the Spotlight Widget Grow’s New and Improved Search Experience Introducing Exclusive Content with Grow 1.5.3 – 2025-04-09 Prevent duplicate script attributes from appearing on Ads Scripts Increase Priority for loading of Ads Scripts Prevent accidental dynamic properties in the Options Class leading to php notices Fix persisting issues with textdomain notice 1.5.2 – 2025-01-08 Fix issue with textdomain debugging notice appearing. 1.5.1 – 2024-12-09 Prevent plugin from being optimized in some third-party site optimization plugins. 1.5.0 – 2024-07-16 Fix issues with blank page appearing when attempting to enable Journey. Fix issues with Redirection plugin when Journey is enabled. 1.4.1 – 2024-06-24 Fix issue with duplicate Journey ad slots with newer versions of Create by Mediavine. 1.4.0 – 2024-06-04 Add Journey ad slot integrations with Create By Mediavine and Trellis. 1.3.0 – 2024-04-18 Add ads.txt troubleshooting for Journey by Mediavine. Update domain for ads.txt. Add CSS class to post articles. 1.2.0 – 2024-03-29 Add support for Journey by Mediavine. 1.1.0 – 2024-03-11 Automatically redirect to Grow login page on activation. 1.0.0 – 2023-10-18 Plugin Released Update plugin assets for parsing Fix type and link for Main Menu and feature link (#83) Add support for validity and connectedness in status api (#82) Update readme and add banner (#81) Pass site path to Grow Auth (#80) fix: WordPress dev container always restarts (#79) Escape the values output in the grow script initializer (#78) fix: feature descriptions URL-escaped (#77) feature: add WP_Mock (#74) feature: add dev container support (#73) fix: non-compliant escaping and file access (#72) move screenshots to correct directory (#71) add screenshots to readme (#70) chore: update readme (#69) feat: Add settings link to Plugins Page and Update Plugin URI feat: Add Support for wp build testing workflow with alternate wp builds feat: Use Custom Lighthouse Orb fix: Update docker image Update docker image Update docker image Update docker image Fix Frontent Test 0.1.7 – 2023-08-11 fix: Adjust Typography on Settings Page fix: Bigger Images for Settings Page 0.1.6 – 2023-07-26 fix: Window Size for site authentication now larger fix: Open Help Doc Links in New Tab 0.1.5 – 2023-07-10 fix: Open Authenticated Link in new tab chore: Add Test for Authenticated View 0.1.4 – 2023-06-26 chore: Remove Author URI 0.1.3 – 2023-06-23 chore: Name changed to Grow for WP 0.1.2 – 2023-06-22 fix: Don’t Stretch Images in Settings page 0.1.1 – 2023-06-20 feat: Add changelog Generation fix: Direct Users to correct Grow Site

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.