If you are on this page, I can feel your pain. You must be facing a speed issue with your WordPress website. From my experience, I can say that 90% of WordPress users face this issue at the beginning. But don’t worry. I had been there, and I also looked for solutions. Unfortunately, many of those solutions did not help me. Therefore, I compiled these 7 best WordPress Cache plugins from my personal experience.
Caching is a major component of WordPress performance. A WordPress site’s caching system works by storing static content in the web server’s cache, so it doesn’t have to be generated every time a visitor loads the page. This article will help you select the best cache plugins for WordPress sites and improve your Website’s loading speeds.
I will cover both free and paid cache plugins in this article. If you own a small site, then a free cache plugin can be enough to speed up your WordPress website. But if you have a large site with a good number of visitors or are planning to earn from your site, I will highly recommend buying premium features.
Let’s start with some basics.
Caching is not the only reason that makes your website slow. There are many other reasons also. So you should know How to Speed Up Your WordPress Website
Table of Contents
What is Website Caching?
Caching is a technique used in website technology to store frequently accessed data in a temporary storage area so that it can be quickly accessed when needed. This speeds up the loading of pages and reduces the amount of bandwidth used.
Caching is a technique used in website technology to speed up the loading of pages. When a user visits a website, the web server looks for the requested page in its cache. If it finds the page, it serves the cached copy to the user. If the page is not in the cache, the server retrieves it from the database and creates a new cache entry.
If the previous definition was too techy for you, allow me to explain this in the following paragraph.
Suppose a user is visiting a webpage of your Website. In that case, that user’s browser will make a request to your hosting server for various files (such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, pictures, and more) when they visit a page on your site. Then, your server constructs these resources and returns them to the user’s browser, allowing the latter to display the web page.
Now think, if thousands of visitors visit the same page multiple times, the web server needs to use resources to show the same page over and over. That’s when caching comes to rescue your webserver.
Some data from your web pages may be kept locally on the user’s device (Typically, inside the browser.) if your Website employs caching. Caching information makes it available much more quickly than searching for it on a remote server. When a user returns to a certain page on your site, their browser will retrieve some of the necessary data directly from their local storage rather than from your server.
What Exactly happens when you Activate a Caching plugin in WordPress?
When a webpage of your WordPress website loads, there is a behind-the-scenes procedure that involves loading a page. Information (queries) must be transmitted to and from the database to load the page.
In other words, PHP language uses the query to retrieve data from your WordPress database and creates the HTML page that your visitors see. Given the number of steps involved, it takes some time for the site to load fully with accurate information. And if the web server needs to process all the queries from the users, it needs to use resources that can slow down your Website.
A Caching plugin comes to rescue your web server from doing this repetitive task.
Remember what we learned in the previous section? Caching helps speed up the Website’s loading the next time you visit it because your browser doesn’t have to download all of the files again.
WordPress caching plugins work in a similar way by storing a cached version of your Website on the server. When a user visits your Website, they are served the cached version of the site, which is much faster than loading the entire page from scratch each time.
WordPress caching plugins can also improve site performance during development or testing. By caching pages and posts, you can avoid having to load them each time you visit the site.
As a result, WordPress caching plugins can dramatically improve the speed of your Website. There are many different WordPress caching plugins available, so choosing one compatible with your theme and plugins is important.
Types of Caching that a WordPress Caching Plugin Perform
Before talking about the best WordPress cache plugin, I think you should know a little more about caching. It will help you to select the right plugin to solve all issues and improve the speed of your Website.
There are two types of caching protocols
- Server-side Caching
- Client-side Caching
Client Side Caching
Every Website has a finite amount of resources that can be used to render the pages and content. For example, if a website has 1000 pages and each page uses 100KB of bandwidth, then the Website would use 1GB of bandwidth to render all 1000 pages.
If a user visits the Website and only views the home page, then the Website does not have to use all 1000 pages to render the home page. The Website can instead cache the home page and use the resources to render the other pages when the user requests one.
This is called client-side caching. Client-side caching is a technique that can be used on websites to improve their performance of the Website.
Client-side caching is not a new technology. In fact, it is a common technique that is used to improve the performance of websites.
There are a few different types of client-side caching:
- HTTP Cache
- CSS Cache
- HTML Cache
- JavaScript Cache
Server Side Caching
Server-side caching is a technique that can be used to improve the performance of a website. Server-side caching allows the Website to store copies of pages that have been requested so that subsequent requests for those pages can be processed more quickly.
Server-side caching can be used to improve the performance of the Website. Caching is useful when there is a large amount of traffic on a website, and the content for each page may change frequently. This can be helpful when the content of a page is frequently updated or when there are large amounts of website traffic.
Server-side caching includes
- Database query caching
- Page caching
- Opcode caching
- Object-based caching
Why is the Speed of your WordPress website so Important?
Conversion
The first reason is that the speed of a website is one of the main factors people use to decide whether or not to visit it. If a website is slow to load, it can definitely affect how people feel about it. Research shows that if a website does not load in under 2 seconds, more than 50% of visitors don’t visit the Website. And if people don’t feel comfortable visiting a website, that could lead to lost sales and lost revenue.
SEO Factor
The speed of a website is also an important factor when it comes to search engine rankings. Speed is one of the factors that Google looks at when ranking a website. If a website is slow to load, it can affect how high it ranks on Google. And if a website ranks poorly in Google, that can lead to lost traffic and lost revenue.
User Satisfaction
The speed of a website is also an important factor when it comes to customer satisfaction. If a website is slow to load, it can lead to frustrating experiences for customers. And if customers are frustrated with a website, that can lead to them leaving the Website and likely never coming back.
If you are facing speed issues with your WordPress website Read this article: Best Plugins for Speeding up WordPress Websites.
7 Best WordPress Cache Plugins to Speed Up your WordPress Website
Now, I presume you learned a lot about WordPress caching, and it’s time to help you to find the best WordPress cache plugins to speed up your Website.
WP Rocket
WP Rocket is a WordPress plugin that claims to speed up your website. It does this by caching your pages and delivering them faster to visitors. It also minifies your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to reduce file sizes and make your pages load faster.
WP Rocket is easy to set up and use, and it’s one of the most popular caching plugins available. It’s a premium plugin, which means you have to pay for it, but it’s worth the price if you want a fast website.
One great thing about WP Rocket is its advanced features for e-commerce websites. The “Cart,” “Checkout,” and “My Account” pages are never cached to prevent any disruption to the shopping experience.
Once installed and enabled, WP Rocket immediately begins working to optimize your site’s performance, setting it distinct from other similar plugins.
WP Rocket is compatible with most WordPress themes and plugins, and it has a money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied. Overall, WP Rocket is an excellent choice if you want a fast WordPress site.
Some of the caching features include
- Browser cache
- File Minification
- Mobile Caching
- GZIP Compression
- Database cache
- Opcode cache
- CDN addon for additional price
- Object cache
W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache is a WordPress plugin that is designed to improve the performance of your website. It does this by caching your pages and posts so that they can be loaded faster. The plugin also minifies your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files to make them smaller and faster to load. Additionally, W3 Total Cache can improve the performance of your website by using a content delivery network (CDN).
W3 Total Cache speeds up your website by caching static files and eliminating the need to send requests to the server for each page load. This can greatly improve your website’s performance, especially if you have a lot of traffic. The plugin also has many other features, which can further improve your website’s speed.
There is one drawback with this plugin (Well, developers will disagree) the setting up process. This is most probably the most complex caching plugin to set up. But at the same time, it is a strength because it gives developers more freedom to choose various options.
W3 Total Cache has over 1 million downloads which proves that developers love the free feature of this cache plugin.
Some of the features of the W3-Total cache include:
- Instant browser caching
- 10X faster page speed
- Full Site Delivery with a CDN (Pro Feature)
- Caching Statistics (Pro Feature)
- Fragment Caching (Pro Feature)
- Rest API Caching (Pro Feature)
WP Super Cache
Are you looking for the best WordPress cache plugin which is absolutely free? WP super cache plugin has over 2 million active installations, which is the highest for any caching plugin. And the most important reason behind this is that it is the best plugin that you will get for FREE!
The WP Super Cache WordPress Plugin is a great caching plugin that can speed up your website. It creates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress blog. When a page is rendered, PHP and MySQL are used.
Therefore, using this caching plugin saves your server’s resources. This cache plugin is available for free on the WordPress.org website. The setup is easy, and once it is configured, the plugin will start working immediately. There are three modes to choose from simple, Expert, and-Cache cached pages only.
In addition, you can select the number of seconds you want the page to be cached for. The caching plugin will then display a “Super Cache” header on each cached page.
Overall, the WP Super Cache WordPress Plugin is a great caching plugin that is easy to use and set up. It will immediately start speeding up your website by caching static HTML files.
- Some of the top features of WP Super cache include
- Creates cached files for categories, tags, and posts
- Email notification to clean if the cached file volume increases.
- CDN support
- Rest AP Caching
- Well documented. You can easily troubleshoot with the available documentation.
This is absolutely free. So, if you are creating a new website and don’t have many visitors, you can use this plugin to speed up your website.
Cautions: You must notice when the cached file size becomes big and clear the space. Otherwise, it can hamper the overall performance of your website.
WP Faster Cache
WP Super Cache is one of the best WordPress caching plugins. Just see the number of downloads, and I don’t think you will disagree. It has over 1 million downloads. This powerful plugin creates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress site, which can then be served to visitors much faster than loading the entire page each time.
WP Super Cache is also easy to set up and use, even for beginners, so there’s no excuse not to give it a try. The only problem is that this plugin doesn’t have the advanced features of the W3 Total cache. But if you are not a huge tech fan and want to play with options that this is a very good choice for you.
And if you don’t feel the free features are enough for you, they have a paid version, and you can buy them at an affordable cost. Some of the features that WP Faster cache comes with:
- Cached files are automatically deleted.
- Preload Cache
- Admin can delete minified Jss and CSS files.
- Admin can restrict caching for particular pages or posts.
- Mobile Caching (Paid)
- Advanced Caching (Paid)
Cache Enabler
When it comes to the best WordPress cache plugins, everybody talks about the plugins that I mentioned earlier in this article. Very few talk about Cache Enabler caching plugins even though the plugins have over 100k active installations. This is one of my personal favorites.
This is a super simple WordPress caching plugin, and I normally use this on clients who are not comfortable using complicated tools. Though it is simple to use, it works just as some other top caching plugins in the WordPress repository.
The Cache Enabler plugin is a great caching tool for WordPress websites. It speeds up the loading of pages by caching static files and eliminating the need to send requests to the server for each page load.
This plugin can dramatically improve the performance of your website, especially if you have a lot of traffic. The plugin is easy to install and configure, and it has a number of options to customize its behavior. Overall, the Cache Enabler plugin is an excellent choice for anyone looking to improve the performance of their WordPress website without taking much hassle.
Some of the top features of Cache Enabler:
- Works fine with AutoOptimize
- Automatic Cache Cleaning
- Cache expiry
- Manual cache clearing
- A fast and efficient cache engine
- WebP support
- Custom post type support
Hummingbird
This one is also a less-named plugin when it comes to the best WordPress cache plugins. Hummingbird caching WordPress Plugin is a powerful caching plugin for WordPress that makes your website faster.
With the Hummingbird caching plugin, you can improve the performance of your WordPress site by caching your pages and posts. This caching technique can help reduce your website’s load time by caching your pages and posts before they are sent to the user’s browser.
The Hummingbird caching plugin also offers other benefits, such as improved security and faster site loading times. The Hummingbird caching plugin is easy to use and can be integrated with your WordPress site in minutes. It is also free to use, and there is no need to sign up for a subscription or pay any fees.
There is one unique thing about the hummingbird plugin, and that is it can find problems that are slowing down your website. Sometimes, the plugin also offers a one-click solution. For better performance, I will highly recommend the premium version.
Here are some special features of this plugin:
- Enable text compression
- GZIP Compression
- Fixes Javascript execution time
- Minify JS and CSS files.
- Eliminates render-blocking elements.
- Advanced caching by breaking the elements.
Comet Cache
Another good caching plugin for WordPress websites is easy to use. It caches your website’s posts, categories, tags, and other pages.
With Comet Cache, you can create and manage caching rules for your WordPress site with ease. Comet Cache also makes it easy to cache static files and media, so you can speed up your site without worrying about bandwidth restrictions.
In addition, Comet Cache includes an intelligent caching system that can cache results from multiple sources, so your site can run faster even when it has a lot of traffic. Whether you’re new to caching or you’ve been using it for years, Comet Cache is a powerful plugin that will help you improve the speed of your WordPress site.
For better performance, it is better to buy the premium version of this plugin. Here are some of the top features of this plugin:
Well configured and has excellent documentation.
- Automatic cache clearing.
- Client-side caching.
- RDF, RSS, and Atom Feed caching.
- URL exclusion.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Do I Need to use any Caching Plugin for my WordPress Website?
Absolutely. Without caching the plugin, your website will become slow. Moreover, without any caching plugin, your web server has to serve the page each time a user refreshes a page which is additional pressure on your web server. So, you must use a caching plugin for the best user experience and reduce the load on your web server.
2. Can I deactivate caching for Admins?
Yes, you can deactivate caching when you are working on your website. It’s useful because, if you don’t deactivate caching in Admin mood, sometimes you can not see the new changes you make on your website.
3. What is the best Caching Plugin for WordPress?
There are a few good caching plugins for WordPress. If you are looking for a premium solution, WP Rocket is the best plugin with many features and a very easy-to-use interface. If you are looking for a free solution, then WP Super Cache is the best one you can use.
Conclusion
WordPress itself is a very lightweight CMS. But as we need to use additional themes and plugins those make the website slow. A caching plugin helps to improve the speed of your website and reduce the pressure on your web server. I hope the list of the best WordPress cache plugin will help you to find the best one that suits your need. Pick one, and increase the speed of your WordPress website in no time.
