How to choose the Best speed-up Cache Plugin for WordPress website

Do you know that according to a recent KissMetric infographic, a 1-second delay in page loading can result in a 7% decline in conversion rate? Moreover, if an e-commerce website’s yearly turnover is 100,000, then a 1-second delay in page-loading could cost you heavily more than $200 million per year.

Imagine if you could not get the visitors’ attention right away; within 3 seconds, you will lose them. You will lose there, even before you started!

You burned the midnight oil to establish your WordPress business Website. Right? You lucubrate web content wisely; you worked like a dog to put all the spices your visitors would love to know about. But if your website’s speed sucks, all of your hard work will be ruined.

Every WordPress business site owner’s dream is to achieve a high conversion rate, attract more visitors to attain high sale-goal and get a better Google search engine ranking. conversely, to get loyal customers who love to visit your website, you need to master the art of “speed-optimization of your website.” 

So, are you excited to know?

The process is simple, all you have to do is to install the best WordPress cache plugin, and this plugin will do wonders to speed- optimize your WordPress Website. Sound good? Now the question would be, “how do we know which is the Best WordPress cache plugin out there among several others? Let me share with you how you can speed-optimize your website by choosing the best WordPress cache plugin.

Table of Content

• Why do we need a WordPress Cache Plugin?
• WP Speed of light – Freemium
• Key Feature
• Free Version Features:
• Pro Version Features:
• Pros and cons of WP speed of light WordPress plugin
• Pros
• Cons
• Pricing:
• WP Fastest Cache – Freemium
• Key Features
• Pros and cons of using WP Fastest Cache plugins
• Pros
• Cons
• Pricing
• W3 Total Cache – Freemium
• Key Features
• Pros and Cons of W3 cache plugin
• Pros
• Cons
• Pricing
• WP Super Cache – Free
• Key Features
• Pros and cons of wp super cache
• Pros 
• Cons
• Pricing:
• WP Rocket – Premium
• Key features
• Pros and cons of WP Rocket
• Pros
• Cons
• Pricing
• Wrapping up

Why do we need a WordPress Cache Plugin?

Why am I unable to get enough conversion rates? Well! I think we both know what the reason behind it is. Of course, it is the website speed that is behind these phenomena. The higher the page loading speed, the better would be the conversion rate.

So, yeah, it’s true that page speed is the backbone of an unbeaten site.

Once you speed optimize all the images, pages, and files on your website, you will offload all the excess cache, and your WordPress website would be speed optimized immediately. All you have to do is to choose the Best WordPress cache plugin, which will ease your life by doing all the necessary steps to speed-optimize your site.

That would be pretty impressive! Let’s dive into details on how these plugins work amazingly by saving your precious time and money.

WP Speed of light – Freemium

Your WordPress site’s speed depends upon your WordPress hosting to some extent. Moreover, most web hostings offer an integrated caching feature, but it would be great if you install a plugin to speed up your WordPress website. 

WP Speed of Light is a small plugin that offers an all-in-one solution to optimize the speed of your site. You can download it from wordpress.org, where it is available in two variations, one is a free version, and the other is paid Add-on.

Key Feature

To help you better grasp the main feature highlights of WP Speed of Light, we have divided this segment into two sections. First, we will go over the main free features for all of you who are interested in the base plugin. And then, we will discuss the pro features available with the premium version of the plugin.

Free Version Features:

• Page caching: you can speed optimize your site by using page caching and removing cache in your back-up.
• Gzip compression: this type of compression can increase your load time up to 70% by reducing the file size.
• Minimise resources: this process minifies JS/CSS files to compact sizes to squeeze out speed optimization.
• Database optimization: this plugin automatically removes all spam comments, unused drafts, cluttered contents, and clean unnecessary trackbacks.
• Leverage Browser cache: save time by storing static files on the user’s local system hence boosting the speed up process.
• Get the privilege of WooCommerce integration.
• Database cleanup: this feature comes up with freedom of using automatic cleanup or manual cleanup option. Where you can remove junk from your database using this feature.
• CDN integration: you can use this feature to rewrite the URL on your site to use the content hosted on your CDN.
• Compatible on multiple WordPress sites: optimize multiple WordPress sites with one domain.
• Equip with speed test tool: this tool allows speed loading test and comparison.

So, these are some of the top free features which are remarkable to get top-notch speed optimization. Are you getting inspired to know more? Here are some more features beyond your expectations with Paid Add-on version!

Pro Version Features:

• Image compression: this service includes 1GB to 3GB quota for image compression.
• Image lazy loading: this feature allows the images to load below the folder until the visitor scroll down on your site; this will lead to speed up your website.
• Font optimization: allow Google font optimization
• Cache preloading: this feature speed up the website by allowing the visitors to see the static cached version.
• Allow file exclusion for minification: you can exclude some JS/CSS files from being cached out to allow the visitors to enjoy the latest version.
• DNS pre-fetching: this feature allows you to resolve the domain name before a visitor follow the link.

Pros and cons of WP speed of light WordPress plugin

WP speed of light WordPress plugin is a 4.5 star rated plugin with more than 10,000+ active installations. So, why do people tend to like this plugin more than other WordPress plugins? Let’s find out. 

Pros

• Its user-friendly installation is one of the key features.
• For a video, demonstration click here
• The only WordPress plugin allowing comprehensive optimization (WordPress optimization, Image compression, CDN integration, speeds testing) in a single membership.
• Most of the features come up in a free version, where users can enjoy exciting feature free of cost. The Add-on feature allows much more convenience of advanced features at affordable prices.

Cons

• The premium version is a bit costly for $44/year. But if you love to enjoy the exclusive feature, this is not a big deal.

Pricing:

The basic version is free of cost, but the premium version comes available in two packages.

First, you have the $34 plan, which gives you 6 months of support and access to plugin updates. It also gives you up to 1GB in image compression quota.

And then, at just $10 extra for $44, you get full-year access to plugin updates and technical support. The image compression quota is also increased to 3GB.

WP Fastest Cache – Freemium

Here is another excellent plugin with a 4.9-star rating and over 1+ million active installations. This plugin speeds up your page loading speed by creating a static HTML file, so when the visitors come to your site, they reach to static HTML page; hence your rank gets better once the page load time is improved. 

The developers of WP Fastest Cache plugins admire that this plugin is user-friendly because of its simplest up to snuff interface. This is true because you don’t need to modify the .htaccess configuration file; it will be adjusted automatically upon installation. 

Key Features

• This plugin uses Mod_Rewrite, which is the best ever method to Rewrite URLs.
• Once the post or a page is created, all of the cache files are removed right away.
• Supports CDN and SSL.
• Supports Cloudflare
•  Enable/Disable cache option for mobile devices
• preload Caches of all the sites automatically

Pros and cons of using WP Fastest Cache plugins

Pros

• Allow Gzip compression to reduce the file size to speed up the website.
• Minify Html pages and CSS files sizes.
• Combines JS and CSS resources into one.

Cons

• This plugin does not support multiple websites on one domain.

Pricing

This plugin is available on wordpress.org for free, and you can get more exciting features for a paid version.

W3 Total Cache – Freemium

W3 Total cache plugin is one of the most widely used cache plugins because of its high-performance framework that boosts the website speed and user experience by providing high-quality cache solutions. There is no doubt in its credibility because most top hosting providers recommend it to speed optimize your website. Some of these host providers are SiteGround, Page.ly, and Bluehost.

Key Features

• Gzip compression which minifies the HTML files, CSS, JavaScript, saving bandwidth up to 80%.
• Improves overall SEO ranking by improving site speed especially mobile-friendly sites with SSL
• caching of minified pages, and posts to a local drive or CDN
• The setting area allows a full range of customization that is spread over 16 pages. Giving freedom for every kind of cache solution customization.
• With W3 total cache plugin, you can leverage browser cache  by enabling ‘browser cache’ in
• Make sure that all of these settings are check marked. As shown in the picture.       

Pros and Cons of W3 cache plugin

This plugin stands out with over one million active installations. This is the reason behind its second-most downloaded plugin in WordPress.

That’s pretty overwhelming! Why is it most recommended? Let’s find out!

Pros

• Allow freedom of customized cache solutions to a great extent.
• Mobile-friendly, also AMP support. 
• Compatible with Cloudflare and CDN

Cons

• A wide range of customization options is highly irresistible even for some developers, but the good thing is you don’t need to customize options to make this plugin work- and the default setting is enough for getting required results.

Pricing

You can download it for free from wordpress.org, Or a premium version is available at $99.

WP Super Cache – Free

WP super cache plugin can be downloaded for free from wordpress.org. It provides a caching solution for all types of caching in one place; that is why its active installation is over 1million. This plugin is highly configurable and super fast optimizing your WordPress site.

The plugin offers 3 options for caching solutions. One is using a – mod-rewrite or by using static pages and legacy caching. Or you can use advanced options in the setting area to choose a type of preferable caching.

Key Features

• A scheduler can manage time intervals for deletion and activation of caching.
• Supports CDN
• Gzip compression and dynamic caching

Pros and cons of wp super cache

Pros 

• User-friendly installation
• Caching for Mobile-friendly sites.
• Customer support is awesome

Cons

• Does not allow caching if the user has logged in
• Not compatible with a few themes

Pricing:

It is available for free at wordpress.org.

WP Rocket – Premium

Alright! So this WP Rocket plugin is the last addition to our list of best WordPress cache plugins. Unlike other free cache plugins we mentioned in this article, this plugin comes at an affordable price. However, it offers plenty of exclusive features to speed optimize your site within minutes.

The most impressive feature is it is easy to configure, and its setup takes only 3-4 minutes.

Key features

• Once you configure the WP Rocket, page caching instantly starts working, hence improving SEO of your site.
• As we know the rule the lighter the size of the file is, the faster will be load time, and WP Rocket does this immensely by reducing the size of javascript, CSS files and HTML through minification.
• Lazy image loading: Images will load once your visitor scroll down to your site, this feature improves the load time of your page.

Pros and cons of WP Rocket

Pros

• Setup is easy to configure
• Cloudflare integration
• Lazy image loading feature enables the fastest  page load time
• Page caching starts immediately after activation

Cons

• No free version is available
• Very expensive for multiple website

Pricing

WP Rocket is a premium plugin and has no free version. It is available in three different licensing plans. 

For $49/year, you will get access to all its features but only restricted to 1 website. For $99/year, you can extend that license to use it on 3 websites. And finally, there’s the $249/year plan for which you can use the plugin on unlimited websites.

Wrapping up

So, these were our picks for the best cache plugins for your WordPress website. We hope you found this read useful and that it helped you find the perfect WordPress caching plugin to boost your site’s speed and performance.

That being said, if you are asking us, then we would recommend going with WP Speed of Light. It comes with a free version for users who are currently on a budget and a premium version for users looking for advanced bells and whistles.

We personally use the plugin on our own website and love its impressive feature set like “Speed of Light page loading,” top-class customer support, and its intuitive user interface. However, the most useful feature for us is its multisite compatibility, with only a single domain, which most plugins don’t do.