Last updated - November 10, 2023
It is said that more than 57% of visitors leave a website if it takes more than three seconds to load. Just “three seconds” — doesn’t it sound cruel? Well, as cruel as it may be, that’s the kind of fast-paced world we live in. You should understand that website speed is an extremely important and non-negotiable aspect of running a successful online business.
But the problem is that there are several factors that hinder the website’s speed. While it is recommended to take care of all those factors to speed up your website, data caching is an untold factor that must be applied if you want to easily and quickly speed up your website.
In this article, we will focus on some of the best WordPress cache plugins, but first, let us look into the definition of the term cache and why it is important in speeding up the website.
What is Caching?
The act of collecting and keeping an interim database full of static copies of the files on your website is known as caching. It may take some time for a website to load the first time you view it. However, if it’s a typical website that you frequently visit, you’ll notice that it loads considerably faster, and the main reason for this is caching.
How Does it Work?
- When a user accesses a website, they request a page.
- The web service examines its cache to see if a cached version of the page is already present.
- If a copy is available, the server provides the user’s browser with the cached copy.
- If the requested page cannot be located, the server creates it, caches a copy, and transmits it to the user.
- The server returns the quicker cached version the next time a user requests the same page.
If your website employs caching, certain data from its web pages will be kept locally on the user’s computer or device. Some of the data is pulled from the user’s computer’s internal storage rather than your web server the next time they visit a page on your website. As you might anticipate, accessing information from a cache is quicker than getting it from a remote web server.
How to Set Up Caching in WordPress?
While caching is frequently used on websites to increase performance, it is not a basic element of the WordPress content management system. Your website’s hosting company might enable caching, in which case you might not be able to install any or all cache plugins. If not, you can activate caching on your own.
While you may manually set up caching on your WordPress website, doing so will require you to either add code to the cache.php file or construct a SQL query. The simpler option is to use a WordPress plugin if you lack the technical know-how to feel confident using either technique.
Top WordPress Cache Plugins
WP Rocket
A broad set of functions are available with the premium caching plugin WP Rocket. Users can simplify and consolidate CSS and JS files, lazy load images, get rid of render-blocking JavaScript resources, remove unused CSS, and schedule automatic database cleanups using WP Rocket, in addition to the features of cache preloading and GZIP compression. It’s the ideal solution for enhancing your Core Web Vitals scores and quickly speeding up your website.
Additionally, it is tailored for eCommerce sites and therefore automatically eliminates the “Cart”, “Checkout”, and “My Account” pages from the cache to prevent obstructing the purchasing process.
WP Rocket helps you improve your loading speed so that your visitors stay interested. Due to the fact that site speed is one of the most significant ranking elements, you will also please Google and perform better in search engine results.
Rating: NA
LiteSpeed Cache
LiteSpeed Cache is one of the top-rated caching plugins for WordPress. Your CSS and JavaScript files can be minified and combined, images can be loaded slowly or automatically optimized, and more.
Being a server-level cache, which is known to be quicker than a PHP-level cache, is what distinguishes LiteSpeed Cache from other plugins. Due to its built-in page cache features, the plugin, despite being free, does need the use of the LiteSpeed Web Server.
In order to deliver different versions of cached material based on the user’s device, location, and currency, the page cache can omit PHP and database queries and instead use cookies. You must buy a license to use this server, which will cost you a nominal monthly fee.
It offers tools for speed optimization like lazy loading of images, a cleaner and optimizer for databases, as well as support for WebP image formats. Additionally, LiteSpeed supports multi-site WordPress installations and works with popular plugins like WooCommerce, bbPress, and Yoast SEO.
Rating: 5 ⭐
WP-Optimize
Another top-rated caching plugin for WordPress with over 100,000 active downloads is WP-Optimize. You can modify the plugin’s parameters to tell client browsers to utilize cached materials, compress HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files, and optimize and delay CSS and JavaScript to cut down on the volume of requests made to your server.
To make sure visitors on mobile devices receive an optimized version of your website, you can also tick a box to create separate files just for them. To guarantee that a mobile-friendly version of your website is delivered to people using mobile devices, you can also tick a box to produce separate files just for mobile devices.
WP-Optimize is an all-inclusive web optimization solution, in contrast to the earlier plugins. It will assist you in cleaning up your database, compressing your photos, and caching your web pages, making your site even faster.
Rating: 5 ⭐
WP Super Cache
WP Super Cache is one of the best freely available WordPress caching plugins introduced by Automattic. It’s simple to set up because each caching feature’s settings include explicit enable/disable functions.
It offers all the essential caching features you’ll need to create a quicker, more streamlined, and more appealing website. One of its intriguing characteristics is garbage collection, which instantly detects and removes outdated and stale cached items. As a result, your website’s speed is maintained.
One of the additional remarkable functions of this plugin is cache reconstruction is this plugin’s. As a result, it creates several caches and serves those personalized caches in accordance with the users’ most recent visits and interactions.
Rating: 4.5 ⭐
W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache (W3TC) is a popular, freely available WordPress caching plugin used by millions of users and developers. The abundance of capabilities for enhancing the speed of your website is the main factor in W3TC’s popularity. Some newcomers, nevertheless, might require some time to adjust.
By accelerating site execution and reducing page load times, this caching plugin enriches the user experience on your site. By caching your site data and condensing CSS and JS, the plugin assists you in improving essential web vitals and SEO.
W3TC performs similar functions to the aforementioned plugins, including code optimization, picture compression, and database caching. It also offers extra features like object and browser caching, enhanced progressive rendering, support for peak traffic times, website security, etc.
Rating: 4.5 ⭐
Jetpack
Jetpack, one of the greatest all-in-one WordPress cache plugins, was developed by Automattic and is one of the most widely used caching plugins for WordPress websites. Over 5 million installations worldwide are covered by it, which is free and open-sourced. Your WordPress website can be customized and optimized using its robust tools to increase traffic and revenue.
Users can quickly speed up WordPress mobile sites with Jetpack’s Google AMP integration and small toolkit without any technical knowledge. For pictures, CSS, and JS files, it also offers CDN integration. Since their servers provide CDN integration, site developers can do so at a reduced cost and with less bandwidth usage.
In a similar vein, internal coding is used to optimize features like lazily load images and custom site searches. Custom searching aids users in finding the relevant material, whereas lazy loading holds off on loading media until your visitors navigate to the desired interface.
In addition to straightforward caching and cleaning, it offers a wealth of essential features like social network integrations, site backup, round-the-clock site security, basic design tools, etc.
Rating: 4 ⭐
Hummingbird
Hummingbird is another great WordPress caching plugin that provides top-notch website optimization capabilities. By integrating Hummingbird with Cloudflare’s Automatic Platform Optimizations (APO) and Google PageSpeed Insights, you can quickly improve the SEO of your website.
Its ability to analyze your website and identify information that is slowing it down is a wonderful feature of this cache plugin. Additionally, it provides pointers and one-click solutions, such as minifying and delaying JS and CSS styles.
Hummingbird also offers the usual functionality, such as browser caching, slow loading for posts and images, GZIP compression, JS and CSS alterations, etc. Using this plugin is quite easy because of the UI, which also offers in-app tutorials to help you get used to the caching system.
The framework gives you control over elements like file compression, CSS and JS modification, lazy loading, and caching, and it will immediately aid in the speeding up of your website.
Rating: 5 ⭐
Autoptimize
Another widely used, free-to-use cache plugin for WordPress is Autoptimize. Unlike other plugins, it only concentrates on making users’ experiences better, improving SEO, and shortening the time it takes for websites to load.
It can aggregate, optimize HTML, and postpone CSS and JS, lengthening the time it takes for a web page to load. Additionally, it automatically inserts CSS into the page header, and it pushes and defers scripts to the footer, which speeds up the webpage.
By leveraging image optimization techniques, including support for the WebP and AVIF formats, eliminating WordPress core emoji, and slow-loading photos, the plugin improves the user experience for visitors. Google Fonts and discrete asynchronous JavaScript are also optimized.
Rating: 4.5 ⭐
WP Fastest Cache
The WP Fastest Cache plugin for WordPress is a freemium caching plugin. Your WordPress blogs will operate more quickly and get higher search engine rankings thanks to the many features included in the free edition.
For instance, the plugin reduces the size of HTML, CSS, and JS codes to free up server space. Beginners won’t have any trouble using this plugin because of how simple its user interface is. By simply ticking the checkboxes, you can activate and deactivate settings.
The accessible edition of WP Fastest Cache has a lot of site-boosting features, but the premium package offers a little bit more. The additional capabilities include using browser caching, Gzip compression, WebP conversion, blocking emoji, database cleanup, lazy loading, etc.
Rating: 5 ⭐
SiteGround Optimizer
SiteGround Optimizer (SGO) is a robust and well-built cache and optimization plugin that was initially created for SiteGround’s server users. However, the plugin is now available to everyone and offers more features than just caching.
Some of the optimization tools, like code and database optimization, web font optimization, picture compression, etc., are only available to customers who use SiteGround hosting services.
For speed-enhancing features, you can activate lazy-load pictures, automated purge, browser-specific caching, and manual purge if you’re using a separate hosting service. Additionally, you have the option to exclude certain areas of your website from caching, retain them as dynamic, and decide which child pages of a certain parent page should not be cached.
Rating: 4.4 ⭐
Conclusion
This completes our list of the top 10 WordPress cache plugins that are currently on the market. In order to improve user engagement and happiness and speed up site performance, a caching plugin is a necessary WordPress tool.
Before installing a plugin on your website, it would be better if you were aware of its features. This article should assist you in finding the best plugins for your WordPress site and thereby increasing its performance.
To improve website performance and user happiness, a cache plugin is a necessity for WordPress websites. Without changing any of the coding in your theme or .htaccess files, you may utilize any of the aforementioned plugins to build a quick website that satisfies your visitors.
