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WordPress cache plugins are one of those essential and complex plugins for any website. But why the complexity? Caching is complicated, and even the simplest caching plugins aren’t always as simple as they seem.
When it comes to the best cache plugin, most of the WordPress users choose one plugin and suggest it for each website that it is better to use this plugin. why Because, for example: its settings are easier, or, for example, because it is installed on a website and it has given a very good speed to their site, or, for example, this plugin is the best possible plugin because it has the ability to create webp images.
Using this method to choose the best WordPress plugin in any field is wrong because the conditions of each website are different and you need to see which plugin to use for what. Therefore, we want to choose the best cache plugin for WordPress according to the different conditions of each website. The most important thing to choose the best WordPress speedup plugin is what kind of web server architecture this website has.
In this article, we’ll take a look at the best WordPress cache plugins and how they can help speed up your website. In the following, we will introduce you to the best WordPress cache plugins.
What is WordPress cache plugin?
Caching means storing frequently used data so that it can be accessed quickly.
The concept of caching is simpler than you might think. Think of the cache this way: You’re in your high school math class and the teacher asks, “What’s 349,218.45 divided by 54.39?” Everyone looks around confused. Some kids pull out a calculator and finally, after a few minutes, someone shouts out the correct answer. Now the teacher asks the same question to the class again and this time everyone answers in unison.
It is similar to the same process in the cache. A request is sent by a visitor to the browser with the content “Please load this web page.” The web server answers that “Yes, of course!” After a few seconds, the page is delivered to the visitor.
When someone visits a WordPress site that does not use a cache, the server must send a request to the WordPress database and go through several processes to load each page. This can lead to less than optimal loading speed (remember, about 87% of users will leave your site if it takes longer than two seconds).
A caching plugin allows your web server to cache your website pages. When someone visits your site, the server loads these cached versions into your browser. This allows the browser to offload the database and other related processes from the cache, resulting in your site loading in a fraction of the time.
5 best wordpress caching plugins
Any plugin we use in WordPress will work depending on the structure of our server. In general, the plugins that work in the WordPress cache are in such a way that when you open a page and want it to be cached, you must save an html file from this page and keep it in a folder on your host. It is sent and reads and uploads the file from that folder. Some plugins also store the cache on the RAM of the web server, not on the site panel!
You know that RAM is faster than hard drive. So, those files can be read very easily. This is where we say that depending on the type of web server we use, you can use cache plugins that are suitable for the web server. You can use any cache plugin on any web server.
We’ve tested countless WordPress cache plugins and rounded up the speed-boosting plugins we think are the best for speeding up your WordPress website.
1. NitroPack
This plugin removes stuff from the main thread which gives you great scores (because most tools like Page Speed Insights don’t detect it) but load times are much slower than other cache plugins.
If you google “nitropack review” and see Matthew Woodward’s #1 result, the SEO title literally says, “How we got great page speed scores.” If you look at his test, he says NitroPack eliminated 2/3 requests and reduced page size by 82%. This is what I call too good to be true.
Features
- GZIP and Brotli compression
- Smart cache invalidation
- Automatic cache warmup
- Device and cookie-aware caching
- Browser and session-aware caching
- Built-in global CDN
- Advanced image optimization (WebP support, Lossy, and lossless image compression, preemptive image sizing)
- Lazy loading (including background images defined in the CSS)
- HTML, CSS, and JS minification & compression
- Deferred JS Loading
- Critical CSS, DNS prefetching, and preloading
- Deferred loading of fonts
Price
The plugin itself is free, and you can also create a free account for one website, 5,000 page views, and 1.00GB CDN bandwidth per month.
A monthly subscription starts at $17,50 per month for one website, 50,000 pageviews, and 25GB CDN bandwidth and includes customer support.
2. LiteSpeed Cache
LiteSpeed Cache has one of the highest ratings on WordPress (4.8/5) with over 3 million installs, so why is it #2?
Mainly because you need to use the LiteSpeed server to access all the features. Additionally, configuring settings can be difficult. And actually, most people don’t configure them properly because it gets technical. But if you’re using a LiteSpeed server and you know what you’re doing, you should definitely use it.
Features
- Built-in page cache (LSCache)
- Free QUIC.cloud CDN Cache
- Image Optimization (Lossless/Lossy)
- Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
- Minify inline & external CSS/JS
- Combine CSS/JS
- Automatically generate Critical CSS
- Lazy-load images/iframes
- Load CSS Asynchronously
- Defer/delay JS loading
- Database Cleaner and Optimizer
- DNS Prefetch
- Cloudflare API integration
- Single Site and Multisite (Network) support
- Lean interface
- WebP image format support
price
It’s a free plugin, but a LiteSpeed server is required for the cache features, and fees are associated.
3. WP Rocket
WP Rocket is the only cache plugin on this list that doesn’t have a free version on WordPress.org, but it makes up for it with a user-friendly interface and decent feature set.
WP Rocket is a powerful plugin that applies caching in one click. It comes with many features, such as CSS/JS optimization and lazy-loading, which further boost the performance of your WordPress site.
Features
- Preload cache (two different methods)
- Browser cache
- GZIP compression
- Database optimization
- Minimize and join
- Defer JavaScript loading
- Initial DNS fetch
- Lazy loading
- Deferred loading of images (LazyLoad script on images)
- WebP compatibility (next-gen format created by Google to serve smaller images)
- Deferred loading of JS files and Delay JavaScript Execution
- Database optimization
price
WP Rocket starts at $59/year, including support, updates, and a license for one WordPress site.
4. W3 Total Cache
Active on over a million sites, W3 Total Cache is one of the most popular caching plugins on WordPress.org. In terms of depth of functionality, W3 Total Cache has the most options of any cache plugin on this list.
Features
- miniaturization
- Opcode cache
- Database cache
- drag object
- Browser cache
- CDN integration (for example, serve static files from your CDN instead of the WordPress server)
- fragment cache
- Full Site Delivery via CDN (premium)
- Lazy Loading for Google Maps (premium)
- Fragment Caching (premium)
- WordPress Rest API Caching (premium)
- Eliminate Render Blocking CSS (premium)
price
To access more optimization features and customer support, you have to upgrade to Premium and pay $99/year for one website. W3 Total Cache premium is only available from within the admin interface of the plugin (not the WordPress one).
5. WP Fastest Cache
WP Fastest Cache is another popular option with a much simpler interface than W3 Total Cache. While it lacks the advanced settings of W3 Total Cache, it still gives you options that go beyond page caching.
There is a free version that offers basic features. For additional options, you’ll need to upgrade to Pro:
Features
- Minimize and join
- GZIP compression
- Browser cache
- Cache Preload – Typically, your site only creates a cached version of a page after someone visits it for the first time. Prefetching allows you to build the cache without waiting for hits.
- Image optimization (premium)
- Convert WebP conversion (premium)
- Cache statistics (premium)
- Widget cache (premium)
- Mobile cache (premium)
- Delete cache logs (premium)
- Google fonts async (premium)
- Lazy load script (premium)
- Database Cleanup (premium)
price
WP Fastest Cache is based on a one-time fee package. The price varies according to the number of licenses you need and goes from $49.99 (1 license) to $300.00 (10 licenses). Important: neither the free nor the premium version offers customer support.
Why should we use the WordPress cache plugin?
Simply put, caching makes your site load faster and improves WordPress SEO. Since cache plugins are only intended to increase the loading speed of your website, perhaps the question should be, what are the benefits of a faster website loading?
- High speed and improved position in search results is one of the Google speed ranking factors that affects your SEO.
- Increase revenue for your business, did you know that a 1 second delay in loading time can result in a loss of 2.5 million dollars per year!
- Users will be satisfied with your website. In this regard, just think of the novel where you tried to load a website and were frustrated by its slowness.
How to test WordPress cache plugin speed?
The best website speed test tool can allow you to increase the speed of your web pages to help users and search engines more. Website speed testing has become increasingly important for marketing and web development.
A website speed test tool helps evaluate and pinpoint aspects of a site that slow down loading. Analyzes total load time, load speed from multiple server locations, HTTP headers, etc.
A website’s loading speed is a critical factor that affects site traffic. The slower the loading speed, the more likely visitors are to leave the website.
When does a page need to be re-cached?
There are two cases, either you specify in the plugin settings that, for example, delete the cache after 24 hours and create a new page with the first request, or we say delete it, we put a button in the plugin cache settings, which is usually in all plugins, to delete the cache. We hit the page and the saved version of this page that we had is completely deleted and the next person who comes to our site, a copy of it is saved on our server.
Therefore, general cache means saving a page to show to other people or to the same person in the next time, which is very easy without our web server getting involved, with a very simple request, it shows the saved page, and this makes the speed Our site will increase several tens or maybe hundreds of times.
If, for example, the pages of your site used to load in ten seconds, using the cache plugin for WordPress, you can load the page in one second. This is what the cache plugin does.
last word
Many optimization techniques can be used to reduce page load times, although page caching is undoubtedly one of the most effective ways to provide fast pages to visitors because there is no need to retrieve data from the WordPress database.
We hope you enjoyed our list of the best caching plugins for WordPress in 2024! If you are not sure which one to use, get expert advice by entering the Dux Center and communicating with our experts.
So stay in touch with us.
