5 Best Cache Plugins For WordPress to Speed up Your Blog

One of the things you can do to speed up slow loading website is to install one of the best cache plugins for WordPress on your site.

WordPress caching plugins help reduce the number of HTTPS requests. It enables compression, improves performance, defers off-screen images, and combines and inlines CSS and JavaScript files.

Also, a good cache plugin will leverage browser and page caching, enable support for content delivery network, etc.

A one-second delay in website loading time can lead to loss of revenues, audience, low search engine ranking, and a high bounce rate.

You definitely don’t want any of the above metrics to happen to your online business.

According to Think with Google, a mobile site speed testing tool, you need to improve your website pages to load in under 2.5 seconds.

Increasing page speed by 0.1-second can lead to a massive 8% increase in conversion and engagements.

The BIG problem is how do you increase WordPress page speed?

While there are many things, you can do to fix a slow-loading page, having a good cache function will significantly improve page speed.

Therefore, you need a cache system developed from the ground up to improve page speed, cached, and serve static files, boost performance and improve the overall user experience.

A WordPress cache plugin can do all these tasks without touching a line of code or needing to be a developer.

So, in this article, I will share a list of the best cache plugin for WordPress to speed up your blog pages.

You will also improve the user experience, boost website performance, increase duel time, get more search engine visibility, and drive more revenue.

But before that, let’s define what exactly cache is in website performance.

What is Cache and why does it really matter to website performance?

A cache is a temporary special data storage space for storing static files that makes website contents, apps, devices, or browsers load content faster and more efficiently.

When you visit a website, you use an app or device for the first time, and the cache system stores a copy of the content to your web browser, app, or device.

The next time you visit the website or use the app and request the same content URL, the cached page/content is served instead of a live version of the Url.

This process makes retrieving and downloading the content faster and improves the user experience.

Why Does Cache Matters to WordPress Websites?

The same concept of caching described above is also used in WordPress websites to improve page speed and optimize performance.

By default, WordPress is a dynamic content management system that runs many steps to serve users the requested information from your website database.

The process WordPress runs to serve users your website content makes loading of web pages slower, especially when many users are requesting information simultaneously.

This is where a caching plugin comes in handy to help skip a lot of the process and makes WordPress pages load insanely faster.

Instead of WordPress going through all the serving processes for every web page request, the caching plugin copies the web page after the first visit; it then serves the cached copy to every subsequent visit.

This reduces the load on your web host servers, reduces page loading time significantly, and improves user experience.

Since Google announced that page speed is part of its search algorithm signals, improving page loading time has become an integral SEO task.

On top of that, faster web pages mean more search engine traffic, leads, low bounce rate, and consequently more revenue generation.

With that being said, let’s explore some of the best cache plugins for WordPress blogs in 2021.

1. WP Rocket

WP Rocket is by far the best cache plugin for WordPress blogs year after year.

The most popular best WordPress cache, performance, and speed optimization plugin among WordPress users. Also, it is one of the best cache plugins for woocommerce websites.

Over 1.9 million WordPress blogs optimized page speed by WP Rocket. This is a number no other WordPress caching plugin comes close to.

Unlike many other WordPress caching plugins, WP Rocket is beginner-friendly. You don’t need to be tech-savvy to configure the settings for maximum page speed optimization.

Upon activation, WP Rocket automatically deploys the best WordPress caching settings like Gzip compression, browser cache, page cache, cross-origin supports for web font, and cache-pre loading.

When Gzip compression is enabled in WP Rocket, the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files are compressed. This helps reduce total page size and makes your WordPress pages load faster.

WP Rocket also auto-disable WordPress emoji, optimizes Google font files, auto-detect, and supports third-party WordPress plugins.

While WP Rocket’s main feature is cache, it also includes optional optimization features you can turn on/off at will.

These include CSS and Javascript minification, image lazy load, delay javascript execution, CSS delivery optimization, load javascript deferred.

You can A/B test WP Rocket to see how much of a difference it brings to your site speed.

You can do this by appending a query parameter (?nowprocket) to the end of an individual URL on your site. This will render the page without any cache optimization features, just a plain WordPress page.

Before running this experiment on your blog, run a website speed test with tools like GTmetrix, Pingdom, Google PageSpeed Insight, etc.

This will help you to know if there is any significant improvement in loading speed and website performance after deploying WP Rocket on your website.

As you will expect, WP Rocket is a premium cache plugin. No wonder it gives so much more than any other WordPress cache plugin out there.

For a single website license with one year of support and updates, WP Rocket costs $49/yr. And for 3 websites license with one-year updates and supports, you’ll buy WP Rocke for $99/yr.

The infinite plan, which gives you the license to use WP Rocket on unlimited websites with one year of support and plugin updates, costs $249 annually.

You can learn more about WP Rocket’s advanced settings on this page. Or you can check out my full WP Rocket review on this page.

2. W3 Total Cache

One of the popular best free WordPress cache plugins is W3 Total Cache—a very comprehensive cache plugin with lots of settings to play with created by BoldGrid.

Though configuring the W3 Total cache can be a bit confusing for beginners. It includes most of the features you’ll expect from a free WordPress caching plugin.

W3 Total cache-free features include page cache, object cache, browser cache, limited support for CDN (content delivery networks), etc.

While W3 total cache is a free cache plugin, you can enjoy limited cache features in the free version.

If you upgrade to W3 Total cache pro, you’ll get more cache and performance features for your money.

In the W3 Total cache pro version, cache and performance features include:

• Fragments cache
• Full site delivery via CDN
• WordPress rest API caching
• Eliminating render-blocking CSS
• AMP supports
• Genesis framework support
• Tickets support
• WPLM extension

You can find a list of the W3 Total cache pro features on this page.

Upgrading to W3 total cache pro does not automatically enable the pro features. It only unlocks the features in the plugin.

It does not auto-configure each cache and performance feature like WP Rocket.

You still have to configure each cache and performance feature manually. If you can’t do it yourself, then hire the W3 Total cache supports team to do it for you.

It cost $99/yr for the W3 total cache pro license key.

If you need to use the W3 total cache on more than one website, you’ll have to purchase a separate license key for each website. In a WordPress multisite instance, you can use a single website license on all websites.

3. WP Fastest Cache

With over 1,000,000 million active installs, WP Fastest Cache is one of the most popular best cache plugins for WordPress blogs.

Unlike many other cache plugins in this list, WP Fastest cache has fewer configuration settings to play with. This makes it one of the best WP cache plugins for beginner WordPress users.

You can combine and minify CSS and JavaScript files into one file to reduce the number of HTTP requests on your site.

WP Fastest cache is rated 5 stars on the wordpress.org plugin directory. And it is frequently updated too. WP Fastest cache has a free version that anyone can use.

The pro version offers lots more than just a basic cache function.

Pricing starts at $49.99 per 1 website license. This is the bronze plan. The Silver plan license gives you access to use WP Fastest cache on 3 separate websites. And it cost $125 for a one-time fee.

If you want to use WP Fastest cache on up to 5 websites, the cost of the product is $175.

WP Fastest cache pricing advantage is that you only pay a one-time fee and use it forever. No yearly renewal fee like other plugins on this list. Check out the WP Fastest cache website here.

4. Comet Cache

Comet cache is one of the best free WordPress caching plugins on this list. It is the successor cache plugin to Zen cache, a plugin by the same WordPress developers – WP Sharks.

Comet cache is more beginners friendly than any other cache plugin here. Fully plug and play. You only need to install and activate the plugin; no rigorous or complicated configuration is required.

Comet cache is one of many WordPress users’ fastest free caching plugins in the WordPress plugin repository. The cache plugin is well popular among WordPress users with over 60,000 active installs and 4.5 average ratings.

Comet cache takes a real-time snapshot of your WordPress pages, posts, links, tags, and categories pages.

It stored these snapshots for faster retrieval at each request. This helps to save WordPress all the data processing steps. It improves the user experience, freeloads on your server, and serves your static pages faster.

The free version of Comet cache comes fully packed with cache features you’d expect from any other cache plugin.  All core cache features include:

• Page cache
• client-side cache
• 404 cache
• automatic cache expiration time
• RSS and Atom feed caching
• And lots more you can find on the WordPress download page

If you need more cache and performance features, Comet cache pro comes with more advanced cache features and settings.

For a single WordPress site license, Comet cache pro costs $39. Comet cache 3 WordPress site license is $99, while an unlimited WordPress site license costs $139.

All Comet cache pro license is a one-time payment. You only need to pay once and use the products forever.

Though your purchase of Comet Cache only covers up to 3 years of support, lifetime uses of the plugin, and updates. Comet cache pro comes with lots of advanced features such as:

5. WP Super Cache

2+ million active installations?

Yes!

WP Super cache is arguably one of the best free WordPress cache plugins. Brought to you by the same people that give you WordPress- Automattic.

Like any other WordPress cache plugin, WP super cache generates static HTML files of your dynamic WordPress pages. 

When a web page request is made, your web server will serve the user the generated static HTML files instead of WordPress processing PHP database requests.

This speeds up your WordPress page load time significantly and reduces latency. The cached pages can be served thousands of times to your site’s visitors.

By default, users who have not left comments on your blog. Site users who do have not to view password-protected pages. And all not logged-in users will be served the static generated HTML pages.

WP Super cache is not beginners friendly. It requires a few tech skills to configure the plugins to work with your site.

The plugin work in 3 ways to serve users the cached file or pages and they’re ranked by speed:

• Expert
• Simple
• WP-cache caching

The expert mode uses the Apache mod_rewrite. Or a similar module your web server uses to serve the “super cached” static file HTML files.

This is the fastest and completely bypasses the PHP database call. However, it requires editing the .htaccess file.

If you don’t know what you’re doing here, it’s easy to break your site completely. The Simple mode is the recommended way to use the plugin. It doesn’t require modifying the .htaccess file.

And it’s as fast as the expert mode. It requires a custom permalink, and a portion of your WordPress pages is served dynamically.

WP-cache caching is used to cache pages for logged-in users, registered comments authors, or URLs with parameters.

If “super caching” is disabled in the WP Super cache, WP-cache caching will also cached pages for unknown users. It is the most flexible cache option, a bit slower than the expert and simple mode.

WP super cache is a completely free-to-use plugin. But this does not take away its quality as a dependable free WordPress cache plugin.

The plugin integrates the OSSDL CDN off-linker to provide basic support for most CDN services.

Summary…

While over 1,000 caching plugins are in the WordPress plugin directory, your website needs only one caching plugin.

My intention here is to help you simplify the search process for the best WordPress cache plugins. And to bring you only the best caching plugin for a WordPress blog.

Although there are still a handful of good cache plugins for WordPress blogs out there like Autotomize, many of these plugins’ primary function is not cache function.

You’ll find a good number of these plugins well-focus on file minification, image optimization, etc.

The 5 WordPress caching plugins listed here are good for every WordPress blog to move with. If you ask for a recommendation, I will advise you to go for WP Rocket.

WP Rocket offers so much for page speed improvement and performance as a premium WordPress plugin than any other cache plugin in the market.

If you have any questions regarding any of the caching plugins listed here, please reach out via the comment box below.