Speed up your site
The best WordPress caching plugins to speed up your site
The best WordPress caching plugins will help you significantly increase your site speed and performance, and potentially your SEO or Search Engine Optimization.
What is caching and why do I probably want it?
Cache is saved data for accessing quickly. Your computer stores information on its hard drive and when it’s requested, your computer runs several processes before presenting the information. But with cache, the data is in your computer’s memory so it’s faster.
Or in the case of WordPress cache, the dynamic web content that WordPress generates is cached so that it does not need to regenerate and serve that data every time a new visitor loads a page. This speeds up page load times and gives the user a better experience, as well as helps out your SEO a little.
Caching works by storing files in temporary storage for quick retrieval. It is specifically designed to reduce bottlenecks. Using caching, WordPress websites can improve performance by speeding up load times.
Overloaded servers slow your website’s online performance.
Caching plugins lets you skip a lot of steps, making WordPress websites faster. If someone visits your site, the caching plugin will make a copy first and then serve that cached version to every subsequent user.
Why is cache important?
Caching is important to improve your WordPress performance. If you want really fast load times and the best performance, caching your website content can have a large impact.
An optimized website is interactive and engaging, giving users the best experience possible.
If you want your site to rank higher in Google search, it needs to be faster. With a second-ranked web server, you can generate more traffic from organic search; with faster loading pages and less chance of crashing, your website is primed for superior SEO performance.
Let’s take a look at the best WordPress caching plugins that you can use to make your websites load quicker.
1. WP Rocket
WP rocket is a great plugin, and probably the easiest beginner-friendly caching plugin for WordPress. It works to make your website faster and reduces load times.
Installing the plugin allows you to instantly speed up your website. The crawler will scan your website and automatically cache it in just a few clicks. With recommended WordPress caching settings like gzip compression and page cache, the plugin can make your site faster than ever.
WP Rocket includes features to improve performance like lazy loading images, CDN support, DNS pre-fetching, and minification.
WP Rocket – why and when we use it to speed up our site
2. WP Super Cache for WordPress
A plugin to help WordPress sites is WP Super Cache. It requires little configuration and is supported by many of the leading WordPress hosting providers.
WP Super Cache gives you all the recommended caching features. These include gzip compression, page cache, cache pre-loading, CDN support, advanced cache preload, and more.
This plugin includes instructions in an easy-to-use tab. For more information on how to install the WP Super Cache plugin, see our article.
Using W3 Total Cache
WordPress caching plugins like W3 Total Cache allow you to automatically store your blog posts on a server, which decreases loading time and increases page visitor engagement. This plugin may be intimidating for beginners to use due to its many options, but it is one of the most popular ones on WordPress.
The WordPress Cache plugin includes all the features necessary to optimize no-fuss caching. It contains page cache, object cache, gzip compression, limited minification support, and CDN support.
W3 Total Cache is difficult to set up. For a more detailed article, see our tutorial on how to install and configure W3 Total Cache.
W3 Total Cache is not a one click plugin this is a very detailed plugin that offers many options and is better suited for more advanced audiences
4. Sucuri Firewall
The Sucuri plugin includes a built-in caching function and comes with a firewall option. This plugin is a very good way to protect WordPress websites and to speed them up.
Sucuri is also a DNS level firewall with hard to beat level of performance. It is able to serve cached content to your users before their request reaches your website, boosting its performance significantly.
5. Built-in Cache Plugins from Hosting
Caching on your managed WordPress hosting service can reduce the load on host servers, which is good for these servers. This is why many providers offer their own caching solution.
If your website is hosted with one of the following hosting companies, then you can use their built in caching plugins to speed up your website.
SG SuperCacher
SiteGround includes caching with all hosting plans. The feature can be enabled through the dashboard on your account.
They have recently updated their WordPress caching and offer website owners a free dynamic WordPress cache. They promise that this update will increase your speed by 50% to 500%.
SiteGround has added Brotli compression which will also help you speed up your site by 15 – 20%
SiteGround caching capabilities have improved a lot over the last few years. Their users don’t really need caching plugins like WP Rocket anymore, and the less plugins you can use on WordPress the better for security and speed.
WP Engine Caching
One of the best managed hosting companies is WP Engine. Their WordPress hosting plans include performance optimization such as caching and improved network bandwidth.
It is possible to clear the cache on your WP Engine account. To do this, go to the WP Engine menu and under the General settings tab, change the Cache Settings to match your personal needs.
For further caching options, you can install the Advanced Cache plugin from WP Engine. The plugin provides additional WP Engine cache controls for managing things on your site.
Bluehost caching
With Bluehost, you can add caching to their built-in cache with a single click, so you can speed up your website
Select your site from the ‘My Sites’ page, then click on the performance tab. This page has two options: Cache On and Cache Off. You can also adjust cache settings in this section.
You may also want to check out our review on Cloudflare
We hope this article has helped you find the WordPress caching plugin to unleash your website speed. You may also want to see our list of 10 best WordPress plugins for eCommerce websites, and our comprehensive WordPress SEO tutorial to help you improve your rankings.
