Hello @jeffinho2016,
Thank you for taking the time to leave a review for our plugin.
ShortPixel has been supporting WebP generation, for free, for years. And, from what we know, ShortPixel has been the only image optimization plugin offering WebP creation and optimization in the cloud.
We started offering this for free, years ago, when WebP was barely supported by 5% of the browsers out there. Currently, according to Can I use…, about 95% of the browsers support this format and we also generate more than 5 million WebP images each and every day! On top of that, with our latest plugin version, we started offering AVIF image generation/optimization as well. You can read more about AVIF on our blog.
Both these “next-gen” image formats, while being greatly appreciated by Search Engines, require a lot of resources to be created. AVIF, in particular, requires anywhere from x10 to x100 more CPU to be generated when compared with a JPEG :-O
We didn’t want to charge x10 credits for each generated AVIF image so we decided to expand our infrastructure (yet again!) and start to also charge for WebP images to make the whole operation sustainable for the years to come.
Also, please notice that before you were not able to deliver your WebP files without creating them first, but with the most recent update we have separated the two features: you can create your WebP files with any other tools and choose to deliver them with ShortPixel. This way you will not spend any additional credits.
Thank you for your support and feedback. As you can see, we’re doing our best to offer a valuable service in the best possible prices.
Kind regards,
