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WPMU DEV Smush Pro Plugin Review



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WPMU DEV Smush Pro Plugin Review

When you're using Wordpress, you might realize your site loads slowly if you have a lot of images.  Well, I came across the WPMU DEV Smush plugin and decided to give it a try.  I installed it on my large multi-vendor eCommerce site that sells physical products to see how well it would perform, and I was pleasantly surprised.

I thought that WPMU DEV was a 100% paid service but realized I could use their Smush plugin for free on my website.  I was able to Smush 50 images at a time, which took a while because I had a decent amount of them, but after doing this manually, it was helping a lot.  I decided to upgrade to the pro version, smushed my images even more, and saved even more space because I put everything on their CDN.


Before I installed and used the Smush plugin, my website was loading around 16 seconds per page, which everyone knows is extremely bad.  The page size was a little over 14mb, which again is horrible, but along came the Smush plugin to the rescue!

*NOTE*  My PageSpeed and YSlow aren't the best, but at least my site loads quickly lol

Below is an image of my results after using the free version of the WPMU DEV Smush plugin on my marketplace.


WPMU DEV Smush Pro Plugin Review

As you can see, my page load times were almost cut in half, and the page size was drastically reduced to 4.19mb.  Now, most people wouldn't be excited about these numbers, but I was since I was dealing with 16 second loads times and 14mb pages lol.


After upgrading to the pro membership on WPMU DEV I was given access to all the premium plugins, not just Smush Pro, and I started to use them.  I also had the option to upload all of my images to the WPMU DEV CDN, which I took full advantage of! 


I went into more of the features on Smush Pro and resized any large images, smushed my directories, super smushed what I could, converted PNG's to JPEG's, and set the plugin to smush any new images that were uploaded since I have it on a multivendor type site.

I used Smush Pro at first, but then I used Hummingbird Pro to help speed up my website as much as possible.  These two plugins pair well together, and here are the results:

WPMU DEV Smush Pro Plugin Review

*NOTE*  I also switched my hosting from a shared NameCheap plan to a Gold level WPMU DEV Hosting plan with dedicated resources.  I would have paid $75 a month for this, but I get a $45 credit towards hosting since I'm a premium member, which means I only pay $30 for my awesome server WPMU DEV Smush Pro Plugin Review

If you compare this image to the first one, I posted you will notice that my PageSpeed and YSlow increased slightly, but my page speed and page size were a homerun!  My pages now load at 3 to 4 seconds on average, and my page sizes are under 1.5mb lol.


Here's a quick glimpse of what my results were after using WPMU DEV's Smush Pro plugin for Wordpress

WPMU DEV Smush Pro Plugin Review
(your dashboard will look a little different.  I removed a lot of white area to fit this image better)


I had almost 80% total savings on my images, which means they were slowing my website a staggering amount.


In conclusion,
I recommend using Smush Pro or even the free version named Smush if you have a Wordpress website and want to speed it up a bit.  I'm sure you could get your load times under two seconds per page if you have a smaller site.  Remember, my pages were a staggering 14mb before I started optimizing, which is enormous compared to most websites, so you might have better results than I did.  I'm not even done optimizing yet; I still have to go through a few more settings on their other plugins to see if I can get under three seconds per page load times lol.


Thanks for reading!

- Tommy
https://www.seocheckout.com/user/TommyCarey

Comments

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Sandos
Hey Tommy. Will you share your website link? I also use Smush and use the free version. I didn't know until recently you can Smush the directories and for free too. How mush was the pro version? It's been a few years since I looked at it and I think you have to buy all their plugins.



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TommyCarey
Hey Sandos,

I don't want to share it publicly because I tend to remove links all the time from the community discussions section and I don't want people thinking I only do that because I want to promote my own sites lol WPMU DEV Smush Pro Plugin Review

The free version of smush is pretty good but you don't get access to the CDN and you have to manually smush 50 images at a time. I actually don't use the CDN anymore because it was conflicting with my "Related Products" images on the product pages. The images would constantly be loading and never show up, so I had to turn off the CDN :'( But, My site is still loading quickly, about 1.5 seconds in pingdom and 3 seconds in Gtmetrix, so I'd say that's still a win in my book lol WPMU DEV Smush Pro Plugin Review

Here's the best I got it to in Gtmetrix:
WPMU DEV Smush Pro Plugin Review

I forgot to check it in pingdom after I hit 1.9s in Gtmetrix, but I'm sure it would have been under 1 second loads times if I did remember to check lol WPMU DEV Smush Pro Plugin Review Now, that image shows my site after I used various plugins from WPMUDEV and also optimizing manually myself. I actually had some homepage images that were 5000x5000 pixels large lol WPMU DEV Smush Pro Plugin Review Now they're 500x500 WPMU DEV Smush Pro Plugin Review


How mush was the pro version?
The pro version is $74.99 a month but you don't just get Smush Pro, you get access to all of their plugins and you can host 3 websites for free with them. You can also upgrade your hosting since they'll give you a $45 credit for being a pro member (3 free website hosting plans x $15 = $45 credit) which is pretty awesome. I have my site on their Gold plan, which gives me 10TB of bandwidth and more storage than I'll ever need, and I'm only paying $29 a month for it because I'm a premium member WPMU DEV Smush Pro Plugin Review

The plugins and hosting are definitely worth it, the only downside is that I had to use a 3rd party service for emailing because WPMUDEV doesn't offer cpanel access for me to create my own emails WPMU DEV Smush Pro Plugin Review Not a big deal for me since I use a ticket system, a detailed FAQ, and a Knowledgebase so I don't have to use Emails lol WPMU DEV Smush Pro Plugin Review



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