The best WordPress caching plugins compared

Is your website operating very slow? Or is its performance just not enough for you? For many visitors, a slow website is a dominant reason to hit the back key. In the worst case, this can cost you potential customers. Optimising your homepage is also important for search engine rankings, as Google and co. reward fast-loading websites with a better positions in search results. WordPress caching plug-ins can help you optimise the performance of your WordPress site.

But what actually is a cache?

Whenever a user visits your website, their browser sends a request to the server in order to call all required data from the page. The server works on this request using its database and sends all necessary data and files to the browser. For large websites with a lot of – or particularly big – CSS files, images, or JavaScript files, this request can take quite some time.

In order to reduce this time, the server uses what is known as the cache. Instead of loading dynamic objects from scratch each time and calling them from the database, a static version of the site is stored in the cache. The user, therefore, receives a finished website, which may not be the most recent version but loads significantly faster. This is exactly what a WordPress caching plug-in can help you with.

Caching generally has a lot of advantages and is always useful to have. Depending on your hosting solution, the service provider might already handle caching at the server level, meaning you have nothing to worry about. This is especially helpful if you have no technical knowledge on the subject.

If you have a shared hosting solution or you host your own WordPress website on your own server, a WordPress caching plug-in is a sensible idea.

• Faster loading time: Since you save data and other objects in the cache, the browser can load your website more quickly.
• Better user experience: A fast-loading website is more inviting for users and will reduce the quit rate.
• Less server resources: WordPress caching plug-ins relieve the server, as it has to handle fewer requests.
• Better search engine optimisation: Thanks to the quicker loading time and better user experience, your website will be ranked more highly by search engines.
• Lower “time to first byte” (TTFB): TTFB is a measurement of the responsiveness of a server. This is the time the server needs to be able to send the first byte of data to the browser. You can reduce this time by using a WordPress caching plug-in.

Depending on the things you want to display on your website and how often you change your content, WordPress caching plug-ins can have the following disadvantages:

• Basic knowledge requirements: Unlike caching at the server level, WordPress caching plug-ins require basic knowledge for you to be able to optimise the plug-in for your own website and make sure that everything displays correctly in the end.
• Constantly changing information: If, for example, you show the number of active readers on your site, a browser using caching techniques will always show the older, saved version. The latest data will only be shown once the cache has been cleared.
• Old prices on affiliated websites: Affiliated websites show the prices of products in other online stores. If these stores change their prices, the browser will only show these new prices once the cache has been cleared. To avoid outdated prices being shown on your website, it is recommended that you set it up so that affiliated websites are automatically deleted from your cache after one to two hours.

WordPress caching plug-ins offer a range of different features to help improve the loading times of your website. The most important features to speed up your WordPress website are as follows:

• Combining files: Websites often use various CSS and JS files. Each file needs its own request. In order to reduce the number of requests, the plug-in bundles individual CSS and JS files into one bulk file.
• Browser caching: When a user visits a site, the plug-in creates copies of the various resources. If the user visits the same site again, these resources are taken directly from the cache.
• GZip compression: WordPress caching plug-ins can use Gzip to reduce the size of HTML, CSS and JS files.
• CDN (Content Delivery Network): Data can be sent more quickly over a CDN.
• Image optimisation: Large images or a lot of images often slow the loading times of a website. Optimised image sizes noticeably improve performance.

WordPress offers a wide choice of WordPress caching plug-ins. We dug out the best ones to compare for you. All of them have extensive settings. We recommend you test two or three different plug-ins, checking your speed using Pingdom. This way, you can find out which plug-in works best for your website, server, and requirements.

WP Rocket is a comprehensive premium plug-in that provides all the features you need for a faster online presence. The developers do not offer a free version of this plug-in, but the paid version comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee. The price is between £30 and £145, depending on how many websites you want to use the plug-in for.

WP Rocket is a particularly good WordPress caching plug-in for beginners, as its user-friendly interface and quick installation make it very simple to use.

W3 Total Cache is completely free. There is no premium or paid version to unlock any features. All important features are already available in the base version. The extensive range of features makes this WordPress caching plug-in a little more complicated to use for beginners. If you already have a little knowledge, this is a good choice to get access to a bunch of fine-tuning possibilities absolutely free.

The WP Super Cache plug-in was developed by the same company that developed WordPress. WordPress users therefore think of it as the official WordPress caching plug-in. The biggest advantage of this plug-in is that it sets up static HTML pages. This allows the browser to display the site significantly faster than when reading data from a database.

Now that we have shown you the four best WordPress caching plug-ins, take a look at the table below to get an overview of all the important features.