Need some guidance on gzip compression...

Ok so I ran a number of speed tests (first via pingdom, then https://www.dotcom-tools.com/ and finally google page insights) on a new site I am just starting, after I put a bit of content on it (not much at all frankly.) The site is a blog; it has wordpress installed on it.

Now to be fair I have maybe 3-4 massive images on this site (no more than 1 on a page) which I have not optimized yet. So I fully expected to get flagged by any decent speed test for those.

However... that's not what they bitched about!

Pingdom's first complaint is "compress components with gzip"

I don't know much about gzip so I researched it a bit. I reached out to my host, and asked them if it is turned on for my server/site, and if not could they turn it on.

They responded:

gzip is already enabled, but is limited to certain MIME types. the list is below:

text/*
application/x-javascript
application/xml
application/javascript
image/svg+xml

Click to expand...

Now to be blunt I don't comprehend much of that response. But I found it confusing since pingdom gave me a grade of "F" / "0" for 'compress components with gzip' which led me to believe NOTHING was being "gzipped" on my site. Also, I thought from my prior research that one of the benefits of using gzip is that it compresses CSS... which I have a decent amount of on my site. Is it just me, or is it odd that the list my host sent of things gzip is enabled for, does not include CSS?

So a bit more research, and I found this tool which says it will check whether you have gzip active on your site: https://www.giftofspeed.com/gzip-test/

When I enter my URL there, it gives me this result:

"Brotli is enabled"

WTAF? I thought brotli was an alternative to gzip?

Can some please help un-retard me?

I would set up Cloudflare tbh, it deals with a lot of stuff.

I also have both brotli and gzip.