Speed Mode vs Bulk Optimize

Pixy uses hybrid approach to image optimization, where your website images can be optimized in real time when they are loaded in the browser of your visitors (Speed Mode), or via the traditional approach (Bulk Optimization). Both options will convert your images to AVIF and WebP formats, and will compress them to make them light. Which approach you choose would depend on your preferences, with Speed Mode being the default approach when Pixy is activated.

What Speed Mode does

Speed Mode automatically fetches your images from your site, runs them through Pixy’s image optimization servers, sends them to the Pixy CDN and rewrites the image links on your pages so that visitors load the optimized images directly from the CDN at high speed.

In Speed Mode:

• Images are optimized on-the-fly for maximum speed. The optimized images are then cached and each next visitor loads the cached optimized version at high speed.
• The image links to your website are changed to the Pixy CDN.
• Optimized versions are stored in the CDN cache.
• Optimized images take no extra space in your media library.
• Original images remain in your media library
• The visitor loads the optimized image in AVIF format if their browser supports AVIF. If it does not, they load a WebP version, or finally, a re-compressed image in the original format.

What Bulk Optimize does

Bulk optimization is the traditional, well known approach where a process runs and optimizes the entire media library. Just like Speed Mode, it uses Pixy’s servers to perform the conversion and optimization of images, but there are some key differences.

In Bulk Optimize:

• Pixy will send your images to the Pixy servers for optimization, one by one.
• The optimized versions of each image will be stored next to the original images in the media library, and will take space.
• You can then toggle OFF Speed Mode, and Pixy will start serving the optimized versions to your visitors directly from you own website (local delivery).
• Images optimized in bulk have worse compression and are heavier than images optimized with Speed Mode.
• Image links on your website will not be rewritten.

Which one should I use?

Use Speed Mode for best compression and website loading speed. Use Bulk Optimize and turn Speed Mode OFF if you prefer to store the optimized versions of your images and want them served directly from your website.

Notes and caveats

Speed Mode works across all web servers (Apache, LiteSpeed, Nginx) out of the box. Local delivery with Speed Mode toggled OFF works with Apache and LiteSpeed web servers, but not with Nginx. For local delivery to work, the Apache or LiteSpeed server also needs to support configuration from the .htaccess file that Pixy creates, and the web server may need to be restarted.