ImageRecycle review, the best image and PDF optimization service

Website speed is very important. One of the of Google ranking factors is Speed. Let me tell you how your website can benefit from the speed in an ImageRecycle review. If your website is slow for visitors, it means that they could flee from a potential sale before the page would open. Image size is one of the reasons why many websites are very slow. A reason is so simple you can’t believe.

Human nature. Yes, you read it right. Why?

From my experience, when we opened a web store, we had many people who were creating products in the system. They had to create a product description – text, product information, linked products and finally, they had to attach a picture to the product. Some were using pictures from suppliers, some were using pictures found on the Google search and some copied images from a competitors website. What stunned me was, how big were some pictures. Especially pictures that were used from the suppliers. They could easily range from 8MB to 20MB. Imagine of a visitor has to download such pictures… I also noticed on some computer websites that their website size was 8MB while it could be easily 1.2MB or even less. If only they optimized pictures properly.

ImageRecycle to the rescue

I have been using various tools in the past, Kraken.io was one of them. But all the services lacked in features. Kraken, for example is a bit limited with pricing and it has occasional problems with upload speed. ImageRecycle is also the first service I found that has support for WordPress, Magento, Joomla and so on.

ImageRecycle is fast, I mean really fast. Imagine that you upload several pictures inside your article and you have to wait a minute or even more. ImageRecycle does not have such problems.

I also like that supports files with up to 30MB in size. Other services may not work with big files.

How does ImageRecycle compare to a competition?

I have tested compared several files with it’s main competitor Kraken.io. All tests show that ImageRecycke produces a better result. For example, below is a comparison of 2 files is tested.

First image original size is 161.88KB. ImageRecycle managed to save 53.07%. Image size after optimization is 85.92KB. Kraken, on the other hand managed to save only 30.82% with new file size being 111.99KB.

The Second example is a file with the original size of 130.28KB. ImageRecycle managed to save 51.96%. New file size was 67.69KB. Kraken, on the other hand, managed to save only 31.69% with a new file size of 88.99KB.

While ImageRecycle may not win in all scenarios, the test shows that it has great potential.

Upload types and history events

You can upload the image via a plugin installed in one of supported CMS. You can also upload a file via website uploader, you can use URL optimizer or even Page optimizer.

Another feature which is not present in competition is online PDF optimization. PDF file can be very big in size. For example, scanned documents saved in PDF, various marketing materials and the list goes on. I know several companies which could reduce file size on their file shares a lot. PDF optimization for companies is not only useful for the sheer file size but also because enterprise storage is so expensive. You could easily save some money.

When you create an account, you gain access to history events. You can access the original image of every image you optimized plus you can download optimized image.

WordPress and plugins have defined many image sizes. When you upload a picture, WordPress creates several images with different sizes in the background. Images are displayed in widgets or on blog page as a featured image. It’s good to know that all the images are optimized.

Pricing

ImageRecycle has one of the most affordable pricing plans. I really like One-time plans. This is especially useful for bloggers who don’t use that many pictures. Either post frequency is not daily or they don’t used as many photos like on Photography and Fashion blogs. You are able to buy $10 plan (1GB) with about 10.000 images optimization service, $20 (3GB) plan with about 25.000 images optimization service or $50 (10GB) plan with about 100.000 images optimization service. One time plan is not available with all competition. I also noticed that ImageRecycle is the most affordable.

In addition, you can select one of the monthly plans: $7 for 1GB per month, $14 for 3GB or $50 for 50GB per month.

Conclusion

During the test, I discovered how I really like ImageRecycle. It really has some great features. I build websites for friends. One feature that is not available in other services is a sub account. I can give my customers an option to used image optimization service. I can offer them a 100MB quota for free for example. When they reach that size, I can offer them to upgrade to additional MB and earn some additional money. What a great idea.

If you build websites, you will love a report feature. Let’s say that you are creating a preliminary website report. This report includes current state, SEO situation, site speed and so on. Why not include image size report? You see, ImageRecycle has a report functionality. Just add a website for a review and it will list all the images it will find on the page, it will show you current size and savings you will get by using the service. How cool is that?

Let me assure you that your preliminary report will rock. Look at the picture below how great it looks.

Why would you optimize images in addition to website speed? Another benefit of optimized images on the website is a size. Backup will be faster and your account will use less space (some image-heavy websites pay a lot of money for storage)

All in all, I really like ImageRecycle. I like that the service is fast, has great support, very affordable. Like it should be.