As any blogger will tell you, one thing that can make or break your blog is speed. If your blog takes too long to load, people are going to click off and head elsewhere. Nobody has the time or patience to wait around for a slow page. So if you’re looking to start a blog, it’s vital that you do everything you can to keep your site fast and nimble.
We’ve put together this list of the best WordPress plugins for speeding up your website. Read on, and get ready for a turbo-charged, hyper-fast blog!
Table of Contents
Best WordPress Plugin For Website Speed
1. WP Rocket
WP Rocket is the best WordPress caching plugin in the market. It is the easiest and most beginner-friendly caching plugin, which is a big help if you don’t know the technical terms used for different caching options.
It allows users to instantly cache their website with one-click. Its crawler automatically fetches your WordPress pages to build up the cache. The plugin then automatically turns on recommended WordPress caching settings like gzip compression, page cache, and cache pre-loading.
WP Rocket also includes optional features that you can turn on to further improve performance. This includes lazy loading images, CDN support, DNS pre-fetching, minification, and more.
This is why we use WP Rocket on WPBeginner to speed up our site.
2. WP Super Cache
WP Super Cache is another popular WordPress caching plugin. It is free and comes highly recommended by many of the top WordPress hosting companies.
WP Super Cache plugin includes all recommended caching features that you will need to speed up your website. This includes gzip compression, page cache, cache pre-loading, CDN support, advanced cache preload, and more.
It includes a comprehensive settings section with a separate tab for easy setup. For detailed instructions, see our article on how to install and set up WP Super Cache plugin.
3. W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache is one of the most popular WordPress caching plugins. It is a comprehensive WordPress caching plugin with a ton of options which may make it appear a bit intimidating for beginners.
It includes all the features you will need to properly set up WordPress cache. This includes page cache, object cache, gzip compression, limited minification support, CDN support, and more.
Beginners may find W3 Total Cache a bit difficult to use. For detailed setup instructions, see our article on how to install and set up W3 Total Cache plugin.
4. Sucuri Firewall
Sucuri is the best WordPress firewall and security plugin. As a website firewall, Sucuri comes with a built-in option to cache your website content and enable gzip compression with a click of the button.
It is the best option for any website because Sucuri is a DNS level firewall. This means that they can serve cached content to your users even before their request reaches your website. This gives your website an incredible performance boost.
5. Built-in Cache Plugins from Hosting
Caching helps significantly reduce the load on hosting servers allowing them to perform optimally. This is why many managed WordPress hosting companies now offer their own built-in caching solutions.
If your website is hosted with one of the following hosting companies, then you can use their built-in caching plugins for your websites.
SG SuperCacher
SiteGround offers a built-in caching solution with all their hosting plans. It can be enabled by from your hosting account’s dashboard.
Once enabled, their dynamic WordPress caching will improve your website speed anywhere from 50% – 500%. They have also added an option for site owners to opt-in to get memcache enabled.
SiteGround has also added Brotli compression which can also help you unlock 15 – 20% speed improvements.
Overall SietGround’s caching has improved a ton. If you’re on their platform, you really wouldn’t need any caching plugins like WP Rocket or others.
WP Engine Caching
WP Engine is one of the best managed WordPress hosting companies. Their hosting plans come with built-in caching and performance optimization.
You can manage settings and clear cache from your WordPress admin dashboard. Simply click on the WP Engine menu and under the General settings tab you can manage WP Engine cache settings.
For more advanced caching options, you can install and activate WP Engine Advanced Cache plugin. The plugin provides you some additional controls to manage WP Engine cache settings for your website.
Bluehost Caching
Bluehost is one of the biggest hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider. Their hosting plans include built-in caching that you can enable from your hosting dashboard.
After logging into your hosting account, select your site from ‘My Sites’ page and then click on the performance tab. From here you can turn the cache on / off and change other advanced caching settings.
We hope this article helped you find the WordPress caching plugin to speed up your website. You may also want to see our list of best WordPress plugins for business websites, and our comprehensive WordPress SEO tutorial to help you boost your rankings.
best free wordpress speed plugin
1. Caching Plugin: W3 Total Cache
Falling firmly under the category of quick wins, a caching plugin is a must. The W3 Total Cache plugin is one of the most popular caching plugins, and also one of the highest rated. A caching plugin is a must for all webmasters, and a plugin like the W3 Total Cache will be highly effective at improving your load time. Its developers promise at least a 10x improvement in overall site performance, which is a seriously bold claim! Even better, we have our very own W3 Total Cache Plugin Guide that you can follow along with to get your caching setup.
A Caching plugin works by storing a static version of your website on the server. The images, CSS, and JavaScript on your website are notoriously resource intensive to load, and it makes little sense to load them from scratch each time, especially for a website that rarely changes. With the caching plugin installed, every time you receive a visitor the stored static version of your website is displayed, meaning the heavy lifting is only done once. This saves a lot of resources, and speeds up your website.
The W3’s main competitor is the WP Super Cache plugin, which some users prefer due to it being slightly more user-friendly (we have a guide to WP Super Cache as well if this plugin is more your style).
2. Image Size Plugin: Smush
Another plugin you should consider is Smush. This plugin was developed by WPMU DEV and makes it easier to optimize images in a variety of ways – all on upload. Or, you can implement optimization manually retroactively, too. Some features included here are image lazy loading, resizing, and compression. Specifically, you can expect lossless compression, a bulk smush option that allows you to compress up to 50 images at once, as well as an incorrect image size notification that identifies images that are too big so you can resize or compress them and improve your site speed.
The Smush plugin works by stripping away all metadata from JPEGs, as well as removing unused colors from indexed images. The result: smaller file size, quicker load time, and no noticeable loss of image quality. If you want to see some more plugin options, checkout our image optimization tips.
3. Database Plugin: WP-Optimize
Every post, page, and comment is stored in your WordPress database — including every revision you make. Now, every time a user wants to access one of your posts it has to be retrieved from this database. Needless to say, the more junk you have sitting around in there, the more your website gets bogged down. With every revision and auto-save taking up space in there, there are some substantial speed improvements to be made by optimizing your database.
My preferred plugin for the task is the WP-Optimize plugin. This plugin helps de-clutter your database in a number of ways. To start, the plugin makes it easy to remove those excess post revisions you simply don’t need any more — if, like me, you make plenty of revisions per post, this can save a lot of space. It also allows you to quickly remove any spam comments queued up, which can be cumbersome to remove manually. Another great feature is that it simplifies the process of actually deleting unwanted content, rather than just storing it as trash. If you want to know how effective this plugin could be, it can tell you your current database size and indicate how much space optimization can save.
4. Lazy Load Plugin: Lazy Load
Another plugin worthy of consideration here is the Lazy Load plugin. As its name would suggest, it displays images only when a user scrolls to that part of the page. This means the initial view of a website can load very quickly, speeding up pagespeed over all, improving user experience, and often improving SEO. The plugin works on images within posts, pages, and widgets as well as thumbnails. It can be applied to YouTube iFrames, too.
5. Lightweight Social Media Plugin: WP Socializer
Next up, we have the WP Socializer plugin that adds social media icons and a sticky or floating share bar to your WordPress website. The great thing about this plugin is that it’s extremely lightweight, so won’t slow down your site like many other social share plugins do. Setup here is straightforward and the output is flexible, too. It works with most of the top social media platforms as well.
Conclusion
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