EWWW Image Optimizer vs External Images Plugin
Want faster results? Try External Images on your store.
Get External Images →Comparing EWWW Image Optimizer with External Images? This page breaks down the key differences and similarities so you can find the best fit for your WordPress or WooCommerce store.
Overview of EWWW Image Optimizer
EWWW Image Optimizer compresses your images using powerful compression tools and APIs. It converts images to next-gen formats like WebP and AVIF and supports bulk optimization of your entire media library.
How External Images differs from EWWW Image Optimizer
All plugins from Super Speedy Plugins share a SQL-first architecture and an uncompromising focus on performance — and External Images is no different. Here is what sets it apart:
Store your images anywhere – a CDN, Amazon S3, a Digital Ocean space or your affiliate feed – and serve them straight through WordPress. Nothing gets downloaded to your server, so imports run faster and your disk stops filling up. Works with any post type and every WooCommerce product type, including variations and galleries.
Rated 4.65 out of 5 across 26 reviews.
- Import products without WordPress downloading or resizing a single image
- Scale to millions of products on low-cost hosting, with no image storage to worry about
- Works with WP All Import, Datafeedr and any tool that can set a custom field
- Cut disk usage and the CPU normally spent generating 20+ thumbnail sizes per image
How to choose between EWWW Image Optimizer and External Images?
If EWWW Image Optimizer has ever caused your site to slow down after an update, or if you have noticed performance degrading as your catalogue grows, External Images offers a genuinely different approach. Built on a SQL-first architecture and stress-tested against a one-million-product WooCommerce store on every release, it is designed to hold up as your store scales. Migration is simpler than most expect, and a free trial means you can validate the improvement on staging with no financial commitment.
What do others say about External Images?
I'm impressed. I wasn't sure I would be able to accomplish what I needed with my images. I'm hosting images on my site for SEO purposes. On product upload, I don't need WP to download those images and create multiple versions that a browser could serve (more images served = slower website load). Since I've optimized my images I want WordPress to use those images. With the external images plugin, I'm able to upload my images via FTP. Then I upload a reference to those images in the product upload file. Also, support is fantastic. My theme had a slight issue with external images. Dave personally looked into it and was able to quickly resolve the issue for me.
External Images allowed me to import products at 6x the speed! Great plugin as are Dave's other plugins, and fantastic support. He will make updates to the plugin within days to fix any issues you may run into. 5/5, highly recommend.
Great plugin that saves a huge amount of diskspace on your server. And the support is great and impressively fast 🙂 Thank you very much 🙂
External Images Knowledge Base
View full Knowledge Base →Articles about External Images
View all articles →- December Development Update
- More speed, more updates, and a bit of a roadmap for our plugins
- More beta updates available
- Dev Diary #7
- Dev Diary #6
- Dev Diary #4
- Dev Diary #2
- External Images 1.97 released
- External Images upgrade released – gallery support added
- External Images upgrade released
What's new in External Images?
3.35 (26th May 2026)
- Added new postmeta filter to add front-end gallery compatibility to latest Houzez theme – they no longer use metabox for their metadata
3.34 (20th May 2026)
- Updated the Super Speedy Settings page: added a "Recheck Licenses" button above the licence table so customers have a clear way to refresh licence status after a renewal or upgrade without scrolling down to the licence-key field. The button is disabled until a licence key is entered/saved and re-enables as you type.
- The Recheck flow now also force-bypasses the auth-server's own 1-hour licence cache (via a `force=1` flag on the `wpiapi/check_product_key` call), so renewals/upgrades that completed less than an hour before a recheck no longer show as expired/exceeded. Normal admin page loads continue to use both caches as before — only an explicit Recheck click bypasses them. (Lives in the `super-speedy-settings` submodule, so the change propagates to every Super Speedy plugin.)
3.33 (18th November 2025)
- Added full namespacing for plugin update checker to prevent conflicts with 3rd party plugins
3.32 (27th May 2025)
- Removed code for checking for and deleting orphans – this can be handled through a KB article instead as it's a one-off job to clean up data
Want faster results? Try External Images on your store.
Get External Images →