This article was published 2 years ago, therefore the contents of this post may be out of date.

Your website may have dozens of hits each month. Higher numbers in the hundreds, thousands, or millions may appear. Given that your website likely serves the same or similar content on a regular basis. Wouldn’t it be nice if the server could remember these files and serve the website each time? Huh?

Short explanation of Caching

This means that every web page you visit on your website requires a request to your server, processing by that server including database queries, and the final result being sent from the server to the user’s browser. The result is a complete website with all the files and elements that make up the look and feel of your website. For example, you have headers, images, menus and a blog. The server has to process all these requests. So it takes time before the entire web page is delivered to the user.

That’s where selecting a WordPress caching plugin comes in. The cache plugin tells the server to save some files to disk or RAM, depending on your configuration. Therefore, you can memorise and re-produce the same content that you have provided in the past. This greatly increases the speed at which web pages are loaded directly from cache. Essentially, caching reduces the amount of work required to generate page-views.

When Do You Need a WordPress Caching Plugin?

Above I talked a small amount about speed. But are WordPress caching plugins always necessary? And what are the benefits with caching?. So, if you manage a server or even use shared hosting. A caching plugin will makes perfect sense.

The disadvantage of WordPress caching plugins

However, sometimes you don’t need a caching plugin at all. If you choose a managed WordPress host like FastComet, they have out of the box WordPress Optimisation for you. Caching is done at the server level and is much faster in most cases.

But, you do need some type of Caching

Whether you have a server-level cache or use plugins. You will always need some form of caching. So what are some other benefits of caching?

  • Make your website faster for your users.
  • It’s improves overall user experience. Users are more likely to look around because the site moves faster for them. Faster websites are known to lower bounce rates because people don’t care about waiting 10 seconds for a page to load.
  • The server uses fewer resources. This is related to speed, as less resources means a faster site. Also, it reduces the load on your web server. Which is very important when it comes to highly dynamic websites.
  • Search engine optimisation could improve – Once again, this relates to speed and the user experience. But all these improvements these areas will give search engines the ability to to index your site higher.
  • See a lower TTFB (Time To First Byte) – Caching is one of the easiest ways to lower your TTFB.

Find The Best WordPress Caching Plugins

If you manage your own server or use shared hosting, try these caching plugins. As some of them are more intuitive than others. They all have great reviews. Many caching plugins posts compare the speed of caching plugins and try to sell you which one is the best.

However, this is nearly impossible as these plugins behave differently depending on their own servers, configurations, resources and even physical location. I love it so much, but it’s also unfair to plugin authors to consider plugins to be “fastest”.

Not to mention that there are hundreds of different settings that can be enabled or disabled. Therefore, you should always test your WordPress cache plugins yourself.

So lets start looking at 8 WordPress caching plugins that I consider “best” for you to test to see which one would help you and your website.

1. Comet Cache

Comet Cache

Comet Cache is another popular caching plugin with over 40,000 active installs of the free version. Unlike the other caching plugins. Comet Cache offers the ability to cache logged-in users as well. That said, if you run a membership site, eCommerce site, or any other site that requires user registration. Comet Cache is a must-have plugin.

This plugin uses the WordPress browser cache on the Apache server. Which means you can speed up your pages by avoiding multiple round trips between the server and browser.

You can also serve all cached files on your website through a Content Delivery Network (CDN) of your choice. This plugin support CDN networks such as CloudFront, MaxCDN and others.

To avoid generating a new version of the cache when the server is busy, the plugin monitors server load and temporarily disables cache expiration.

The plugin also displays cache statistics to help you understand the status of your site cache.

Highlights:

  • Control automatic cache clearing behaviour
  • Developer friendly
  • WP-CLI compatibility
  • Easy and well documented configuration

Price: Free version available. Comet Cache has a premium version with more features starting for a one time fee of $39.00.

2. WP-Optimize

Wp Optimize

WP-Optimize is a freemium caching plugin developed by the same people behind the backup plugin UpdraftPlus. It has over 1 million active install. So it’s one of the most popular performance plugins that you should try.

This plugin helps speed up your WordPress site by cleaning up your database, compressing images, and caching pages.

It’s a simple but yet powerful caching feature which allows you to automatically generate a cache each time a user visits a page or post on your site. It has lots of useful features like cache preloading, device specific caching, browser caching and more.

This plugin helps you optimise your site database by removing all unnecessary data such as post revisions, trash/spam comments. It also comes with an image compression tool that greatly reduces server resources and improves page load times by converting large images into compressed files.

The premium version of the plugin gives you access to more features such as multisite support, lazy loading and priority customer support.

Highlights:

  • Image compression
  • Minify and combine scripts (CSS and JavaScript)
  • Gzip compression which reduce site load speed
  • Optimisation of Google Fonts and Font Awesome.
  • This plugin is good for both beginners and advanced users

Price: A free version is available on wordpress.org. The paid version starts at $49.00 per year.

3. WP Rocket

Wp Rocket

WP Rocket is a popular premium caching plugin for WordPress. The ease of configuration sets WP Rocket apart from the competition. As soon as you activate the plugin, page caching takes effect immediately.

The plugin have extended functionality. The crawler automatically fetches your pages and builds a cache. It also comes with preset cache settings like gzip compression, page caching, cache preloading, etc.

Another great function with WP Rocket is its lazy loading feature. This ensures that website images and media only load when the visitor scrolls. It helps to further improve the speed and performance of your website.

This plugin is optimised for eCommerce sites. So important pages like the ‘Checkout’ and ‘My Account’ are removed from cache. This ensures that your shopping process at the store is unaffected.

With this plugin it’s packed with features and very easy to use. Arguably one the best WordPress caching plugin that you should test out.

Highlights:

  • Easy to Set Up and Use
  • WordPress Database Optimization
  • Developer Friendly Tools
  • Minification of HTML, JavaScript and CSS Files
  • Object Caching and Pre-loading
  • Works with many Themes and Plugins

Price: Starts at $49.00 per year

4. WP Super Cache

Wp Super Cache

WP Super Cache is yet another popular caching plugin for WordPress. Loved by over 2 million active users. It’s maintained by Automattic, the same team behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, and more.

With the WP Super Cache plugin it helps you generate static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress site. After processing heavy WordPress PHP scripts on your website. It serves static HTML files to the majority of his website visitors.

WP Super Cache offers three cache modes. The first is called simple mode and is the most recommended method for caching files. No need to edit PHP files, no need to configure .htaccess files.

The expert mode is also available, which is the fastest caching method to serve HTML files to users. However, you will need to modify your .htaccess file.

There is also a WP Super Caching method used to cache pages for known users (those who log in to the site or leave comments). Most flexible caching method, but slightly slower than other methods

Highlights:

  • It’s has a beginner-friendly interface
  • Cache re-building feature
  • Garbage collection to clean out old files and optimise your site
  • Integration with CDN services

Price: Free

5. W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is one of the oldest and well popular caching plugins for WordPress. It improves server performance by caching all aspects of your website and also provides content delivery network integration.

This plugin is used and recommended by countless companies and blogs. Whether your website is hosted on a shared hosting network or a dedicated server. This caching plugin can help improve web server performance and reduce page load times.

They claims that this plugin can save up to 80% bandwidth through minification the process of reducing the size of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and feeds without any negative impact.

Highlights:

  • 10X Speed Improvement
  • Easy Setup With Hosting
  • Content delivery network integration
  • Improved web server performance
  • Sustain high traffic periods

Price: Free version is in the WordPress repository. While the pro version starts at $8.25 per month which is billed annually.

6. LiteSpeed Cache

Litespeed Cache

LiteSpeed ​​Cache is a free plugin for WordPress sites with dedicated server-level caching. It has a number of website optimisation features to speed up page load times.

Switching to LiteSpeed ​​Cache is easy as you can also import/export settings from other caching plugins.

In addition to caching, the plugin offers integrated image optimisation and lazy loading capabilities. This allows us to optimise website images to improve website speed and performance

Highlights:

  • Multiple CDN support
  • WebP image format support
  • PageSpeed score optimisation
  • Cloudflare API
  • Heartbeat control
  • Single Site and Multisite (Network) support

Price: Free

7. WP Fastest Cache

Wp Fastest Cache

WP Fastest Cache has few caching configuration settings. Which makes it one of the easiest WordPress cache plugins available from the official WordPress plugin repo.

Like other plugins it creates a static HTML file from a dynamic WordPress site. Like any other caching plugin. Every time a user visits her website, they see a cached version of her webpage, which makes it load faster.

The Plugin minifies HTML and CSS files to reduce file size. You can also disable emojis on the website. It effectively implements WordPress browser caching to speed up page load times for returning visitors and combines many CSS files into one to reduce the number of HTTP round trips.

While the premium version offers many unique features that improve page speed, such as image optimisation, database cleaning, caching for mobile, and more.

So, just install the free WP Fastest Cache plugin and then if you like it you can purchase the premium version directly from your WordPress dashboard.

Highlights:

  • Admin control to delete cached files
  • Enable/Disable cache option for mobile devices
  • SSL and CDN support
  • Pre-load cache and WP-CLI cache clearing

Price: Free and premium plans start at $49.99

8. Hummingbird

Hummingbird

Hummingbird is another powerful caching plugin for WordPress. It was developed by the same WPMU DEV who created the Smush image optimisation plugin.

After you set up the plugin, it scans your site, identifies what’s slowing it down, and provides one-click fixes to improve your site’s performance. This improves results in performance testing tools.

Hummingbird gives you access to world class caching features including full page, browser and gravatar caching. It provides a suite of tools that help you reduce page load times and give your visitors a fast browsing experience.

Apart from that, the plugin offers options for file compression, CSS and JS minification, and lazy loading.

Highlights:

  • Gzip file compression
  • Performance report dashboard
  • Cloudflare integration
  • Image optimisation with the Smush WordPress plugin

Price: Free, while the pro version start at $7.50 per month for 1 site license.

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WordPress Wednesday – 8 Best WordPress Caching Plugins