Shortpixel is an image optimizer that improves website performance by resizing, compressing and serving images from a content delivery network or CDN.

One of biggest challenges faced by content creators is with managing good loading speed and file sizing of images on the website. Without images, content would be implicitly dull. But with them, unless they are well optimized, done at the right file sizing against acceptable quality, images could cause problems when visitors load your web pages for viewing. Striking good balance between quality and speed has always been a challenge, both to the amateur and professional content creators alike.

Research have proven that over 40 percent of people would abandon websites if it takes more than several seconds to load. That’s equal to a few eye blinks and if content creators fail to address this technical issue, losing visitors to a constant complication such as loading speed will hamper all efforts in building a successful website with healthy followings.

In our own web space, we have been spending much time to keep images well below 100kB in order to motivate web pages to load faster. On top of that, we regularly experiment with services from various Content Delivery Networks (CDN), to push the files and directories serving our web pages closer to visitors in other continents.

Although there is no one method that fits all websites, but the basic rules to engage best practices and good delivery are identical, regardless of whether you are a digital news provider or you own a gallery site showcasing good quality images in high resolution formats.

Most of us are already familiar with image optimization or compression technology. There’s a garden variety of plugins you can choose from to automate image file conversions to WebP and AVIF formats before rendering them to your visitors. ShortPixel Image Optimizer is one of the popular paid services out there, with thousands of of satisfied customers, and coupled with excellent and responsive after-sales support.

In this article, we will take a look at another service by ShortPixel, known as ShortPixel Adaptive Images (SPAI). It is a content delivery network, a CDN service like CloudFlare, but having its focus with edge distribution of image files.

ShortPixel Adaptive Images processes and serves images on the fly via a fast CDN with strong global presence. Unlike conventional image optimzation tools, SPAI does not optimize the physical files on your server but processes your images at the edge.

SPAI only processes your images if they are viewed at least once from your front-end. Until that happens, the image will remain un-processed. Processing an image means smart-cropping (if chosen), resizing, and optimizing it. Once the image is processed, it is stored on the ShortPixel CDN servers and it can be served to your clients using the CDN traffic quota you purchased. As long as there is enough CDN traffic quota available, your optimized images will be served from ShortPixel’s CDN.

Now how does this benefits the content publisher? By off-loading large image files to be stored at various cache servers around the world, your web visitors will not be directed back to your web hosting provider, to fetch large image files from your website directories. This is significant, if you are on a bandwidth limited hosting package, particularly for high traffic sites driven from costly VPS or dedicated servers.

By off-loading to ShortPixel CDNs, allows lesser computer resource usage at your local providers. By using ShortPixel’s Adaptive Images CDN services, it will promote long term savings particularly with high traffic sites. It saves the hassle of constantly becoming arrested with upgrading resources to keep traffic to your website at healthy levels and to prevent undue delays which potentially annoy visitors with longer loading time.

To compare the difference and the benefits of ShortPixel Adaptive Images SDN services, take a look at their pricing models below, and compare it against the annual cost of hosting your website on VPS or dedicated server platforms.

How Much CDN Traffic Equals a Credit?

• 1 credit = 5 MB of CDN traffic
• Free plan = 100 credits = 500 MB of CDN traffic = ~500 visits/month
• $4.99/month plan = 7,000 credits/month = 35 GB of CDN traffic = ~35,000 visits/month
• $9.99/month plan = 16,000 credits/month = 80 GB of CDN traffic = ~80,000 visits/month
• $29.99/month plan = 55,000 credits/month = 275 GB of CDN traffic = ~275,000 visits/month
• $49.99/month plan = 100,000 credits/month = 500 GB of CDN traffic = ~500,000 visits/month
• $99.99/month plan = 220,000 credits/month = 1.1 TB of CDN traffic = ~1,100,000 visits/month

And ShortPixel Adaptive Images CDN have a free plan for you to get started, to test out the resilience of their CDN networks, allowing you up to 500MB worth of free to use monthly CDN bandwidth. With ShortPixel you have a two in one solution from a single provider.

If you are new to website image optimization services, check out their pricing plans. ShortPixel is certainly a company you need to take a look at when shopping for tools to optimize website.