Comparing ImageRecycle and Imagfy – Which is Better?

ImageRecycle and Imagfy both can be used to optimise the images. And the following is my experience of using both services.

File Extensions Support

ImageRecycle supports JPEG/JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG and PDF.
Imagfy supports JPEG/JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG but not PDF format.

Image Optimisation

It is not easy to compare this since images are different. One might do better in one case than the other.

but ImageRecycle is able to optimise this image further by 100K.

API

ImageRecycle provides API and rich documentation, which makes it more powerful to use the services. AFAIK, Imagfy doesn’t expose API usages to users. – Imagify has just released the new version so they have API as well.

CMS integration

Both integrates well with the WordPress blog. However, ImageRecycle can integrate with Joomla, Shopify and Magento.

Storage on Server

ImageRecycle stores files on the server unless you delete them manually (or using API) and the images expire in a month. The images uploaded via APIs are also stored and can be viewed easily on the website. On the other hand, Imagfy keeps images only for 24 hours for free accounts and the images optimised via WordPress are not stored on the server.

Prices and Packages

Both service provides one-time package or monthly/yearly subscription.

One-time Package:
ImageRecycle has a few plans: https://www.imagerecycle.com/prices. For $10 you can optimise 10K images and maximum 1GB of content.

For Imagfy, the same 1GB content costs the same (9.99$) however, it does not expose a limit on the number of images to optimise. Imagfy provides smaller plans for 250M ($3.49) and 500M ($5.99) while ImageRecycle has bigger plans: 3GB, 10GB which costs $20 and $50 respectively.

Subscriptions
If you subscript yearly to ImageRecycle for 1GB, 3GB or 50GB per month, it will cost you $77, $154 and $550 respectively. Imagfy seems cheaper in this category. They offer LITE subscription, which is 1GB per month and $49.90 annually. Imagfy does not have a 3GB/month plan but their STANDARD 5GB costs $199.90 per year. The ENTERPRISE (50GB per month) costs $699.90 which is more expensive than ImageRecycle.

ImageRecycle has a 15-day trial and Imagfy has a free plan which gives you 25MB per month.

To sum up, I think ImageRecycle is a bit better. But in my opinion, I like Imagfy’s website, more user friendly.

PS: Imagfy keeps all original images on your server at a separate folder /wp-content/uploads/backup but ImageRecycle keeps all original images at their server, which you have to be careful because after images expire, you can’t revert them back! And it is painful if you have several thousands of images and decided to revert them all because reverting images also require connecting to ImageRecycle servers for retrievals of original images.

PPS: ImageRecycle sometimes does too much optimization on small images using ‘Best Savings’ (so you should experiment a bit more) – ‘Original Quality’ seems a lossless compression of images.

PPPS: would it be better to keep the original images locally as backup in a separate folder, this is what currently Imagfy does and users would have confidences in using your products if he/she knows that images can be reverted anytime.

and also, it would be better to set a pagination number in bulk optimization page, now the 30 images per page is not efficient if you have a lot of images.

and, if the concurrent API calls on that bulk optimization page exceeds e.g. 100, the APIs will return failure (with messages ‘An error has occurred’)

Final Thoughts

Restoring to original images should not expire. Otherwise, many users won’t use the your wordpress plugin at all. Just imagine, I optimize images using ‘best saving’ and maybe two months later, I decide to revert to original quality but couldn’t do so because images expire and I don’t have original copies locally.. I am switching to Imagify plugin (they keep all the original images on your server at a separate folder, I won’t worry about losing original images at all). The users have ownerships of the original image. It just doesn’t make sense that he/she can’t revert to original images after 1 month.

Join ImageRecycle and use the coupon IR-PARTNER-20 to get 20% off on first invoice, exclusive for my readers!

–EOF (The Ultimate Computing & Technology Blog) —

1093 words
Last Post: How to Compress Images using ImageRecycle API (The PHP Script)?
Next Post: Case Study - Use ImageRecycle to Save Over 2GB Storage on VPS