QuickWebP – The Essential Image Optimization Plugin for WordPress

QuickWebP is, without exaggeration, the best image optimization plugin currently available in the WordPress ecosystem. It is so effective that I consider it an absolute must-have for every new WordPress site. In my professional opinion, it should be among the very first plugins installed and activated on any fresh WordPress installation.

Most commercial image optimization plugins on the market fail to address a critical issue: they do not automatically delete the original uploaded image after successfully converting it to WebP. As a result, websites gradually accumulate hundreds or even thousands of unused original files that are never served to visitors. Over time, this silently inflates hosting usage, leading to unnecessary storage consumption and significantly higher renewal costs—often without the site owner even realizing it.

QuickWebP takes a far more intelligent and efficient approach. It converts images to WebP format, intelligently resizes them according to the maximum dimensions you define, and automatically deletes the original uploaded file once the optimized version is ready. This single feature delivers substantial long-term savings on hosting expenses and prevents pointless storage bloat.

In an extensive evaluation, we thoroughly tested more than ten popular image optimization plugins. The majority follow a similar pattern: they retain the original image, create a backup of it, generate optimized versions (WebP and/or AVIF), and serve the optimized files via .htaccess rewrite rules. Consequently, for every single uploaded image, the server ends up storing the original, a backup, and one or more optimized versions. Most site owners remain unaware of this accumulation. While many of these plugins claim the ability to delete backups, very few — if any — offer the crucial option to remove the original uploaded file.

This makes such plugins useful for retroactively optimizing existing libraries, but counterproductive — even harmful — for ongoing content creation. From the moment you decide to maintain an optimized website moving forward, these solutions become storage killers rather than helpers.

As a WordPress specialist and business consultant who has supported over 100,000 WordPress websites, if I am asked which plugins should be installed first as the essential foundational plugins on a new site, my answer is clear: QuickWebP is one of the top 3 primary and must-have plugins that every WordPress site should have installed from the very beginning of its life.

It ensures that every image uploaded from day one is properly optimized and that no redundant original files are retained. This level of intelligence and efficiency is rare and genuinely valuable.

A heartfelt thank you to the developer of QuickWebP. You have made a significant and practical contribution to the WordPress community by solving a real, often overlooked problem with elegance and effectiveness.