Companies Using a3 Lazy Load

I run the crawler behind these numbers. a3 Lazy Load is one of the easier WordPress plugins to count, because when it runs it prints a settings object, a3_lazyload_params, and loads its script from its own plugin folder. Our rule reads both. Our October 2026 crawl finds 27,120 live domains doing that, 15,676 of them matched to a company, 9th of 45 in Performance Optimization.

We also loaded all 90 candidate company pages in mid-October 2026. 71 served the plugin. Two loaded without it, and 17 were behind bot walls, timed out or no longer served a page. One of the 71 was a former Dutch company domain that now redirects to a Vietnamese betting site, which runs a3 too; we took it off the list.

What WordPress already does

The obvious question is why anyone still needs this. a3's own WordPress.org page answers it: WordPress 5.5 added native lazy loading for images in the media library, and 5.7 added it for iframes. a3 lazy-loads what core leaves out, such as images loaded from outside the media library, videos and iframes core doesn't touch, and images on older browsers. It adds fade-in and spinner effects, exclusions by class, URL or page type, and an option to switch core lazy loading off altogether.

It's still maintained. WordPress.org shows version 2.7.9, released on 29 June 2026 with a security fix, after a cross-site scripting fix in May and WordPress 7.0 compatibility in April. It lists 90,000+ active installations.

Sales signal: a site still running a3 in 2026 either needs what core skips, usually embedded video and third-party iframes, or installed it years ago and never looked again. Both are worth a conversation about media performance.

What the count can't see

The rule is close to complete for sites where a3 runs, because the settings object is usually printed inline in the page, so it often survives when a cache plugin combines the script itself. The gap is configuration. a3 can switch itself off by page type (home, front page, posts, pages, archives) or by URL, so a site that excludes the pages we crawl won't appear. WordPress.org counts installations and we count live domains where the plugin ran, so the two numbers measure different things.

The chart is mostly coverage

The chart reads 23,626 in June, 26,418 in July, 26,645 in August, 26,927 in September and 27,120 in October. The June to July step is mostly ours: the set of domains we crawl turns over every month, with dead sites dropping out and newly found ones added, and our detection widens over time. After July the line is nearly flat.

Since we began tracking a3 on 16 March 2026, 3,384 domains have dropped it. A few days after that figure was taken, 328 of 3,386 such domains still ran it on another hostname, about one in ten.

"a3 Lazy Load is a plugin from before WordPress could lazy-load on its own, and its base still looks like it: small companies, many founded in the 2010s, with a flat line and steady churn." - David Thomson, CTO at TechnologyChecker.io

Sales signal: treat a3 as a stable, slowly eroding base of about 27,000 live domains. It's a list of sites to win over. Don't expect it to grow.

Who runs it

66.23% of matched companies with a known size have 1 to 10 employees and 22.03% have 11 to 50. 44.46% were founded in the 2010s, more than on EWWW Image Optimizer's page (34.81%) or Autoptimize's (39.92%), and only 12.82% in the 2020s. The 129 companies with more than 1,000 staff tend to use it on one property: Cisco on its blogs, Glovo on its rider hub, The Home Depot on its Mexican blog, Art of Living on its World Culture Festival site. Ten of the 50 named companies are universities or colleges, from Polk State College in the US to Assumption University in Thailand.

Sales signal: the buyer is a small business, or the team that owns one site at a larger organisation. Universities and their department sites are a pocket worth filtering for.

A European plugin, and an IONOS one

The United States has 3,138 matched companies and Germany 2,530, about four to five. Spain (1,211) is third, ahead of the United Kingdom (1,119) and France (1,084). The eight European countries in the top 15 hold 7,225 of the 15,676 matched companies, or 46.1%.

The host data points the same way. IONOS shows on 17.22% of clean live a3 domains, against 2.38% for EWWW Image Optimizer and 4.06% for Autoptimize. We loaded 20 a3 sites hosted at IONOS: 19 served the plugin, their other plugins varied, and only three showed IONOS's own WordPress assistant plugin. So we can't tie a3 to an IONOS bundle, but its users clearly cluster on that host.

Sales signal: German, Spanish and British small businesses on shared IONOS hosting are a large share of this list. Localised pitches and EU-hosted products fit it better than a US-only campaign.

Used alongside, not swapped

No pair passes our switching tests. 3,472 domains run a3 and Autoptimize today, out of 4,005 ever seen with both. 1,858 run it with WP Fastest Cache (2,159 ever) and 671 with EWWW Image Optimizer (823 ever). Perfmatters barely overlaps, with 32 domains today. In the three larger pairs, more than 80% of domains ever seen with both still run both.

"Sites add a cache plugin next to a3 Lazy Load and keep both. 3,472 domains run it next to Autoptimize today, and the pairing tends to stick." - David Thomson, CTO at TechnologyChecker.io

Sales signal: a site running a3 and Autoptimize together has stitched a speed stack out of free plugins. A paid all-in-one plugin or a faster host can sell consolidation to it.

The stack around it

These percentages are of the 26,635 clean live a3 domains. WordPress is on 99.69%, Elementor on 28.17%, Divi on 9.71% and wpBakery on 4.3%. Cloudflare fronts 22.08%. Google Analytics runs on 57.89%, WordPress.com Stats on 6.99% and MonsterInsights on 5.15%. CookieYes (7.69%), Complianz (5.79%) and Cookie Notice (3.72%) lead consent tools, and Yandex.Metrika shows on 3.17%.

Sales signal: these are self-managed WordPress sites on budget hosting, with Elementor alone on 28.17%. The owner installs plugins personally and is open to the next free-to-try tool.

Key takeaways

1. 27,120 live domains, 9th of 45 in Performance Optimization, on a near-flat line since July.

2. Still maintained, with two security releases in 2026, and still useful where WordPress core doesn't lazy-load.

3. Small, established companies: 66.23% have 1 to 10 staff and 44.46% were founded in the 2010s.

4. European lean: Germany is close to the US, Spain is third, and IONOS hosts 17.22%.

5. It runs beside Autoptimize on 3,472 domains, and no pair passes our switching tests.

How to use this list

Filter by country, starting with Germany and Spain, and by company size. For every a3 Lazy Load domain with company and stack data, explore TechnologyChecker.io. Our guide to technology detection methods explains how rules that read a plugin's scripts work, and where they stop.