8 Best Caching Plugins

If you run a website or come across a website that’s taking much time to load, you’ll realize how vital page speed is. As your website grows and you start to put more and more content on it, the load-time of your website increases.

This is because the site takes time to load all the content and plugins before it appears to your visitors. A good way to tackle this is to install one of the best caching plugins. Let’s learn more about cache and the solutions available today.

Why Do You Need A Cache Plugin?

If your website is taking much time to load, it will quickly drive away many visitors. The maximum loading time you show aim for is 3 seconds, after that you’ll face a high bounce rate, low conversions and an overall decrease in your website’s traffic.

In this case, having a caching plugin will save your website’s life. Through this plugin, your WordPress website will work more efficiently. We’ll tell you how: when someone comes to your site, the content on the web loads dynamically, which means that many backend processes happen for your page to load fully.

A caching plugin will display your content in a static version, which eliminates many steps of the time-consuming process. Hence your visitors will have the content in front of them as soon as they access your website.                                      

Now that we explain the “techy” part, let’s look at the solutions. Hope you’ll enjoy our list of the best caching plugins. Let’s go!

WP Rocket

WP Rocket is one of the best cache plugins you can get your hands-on, and that is why it’s at the top of our list. If you don’t know all the technicalities related to caching then this plugin will come in handy because it is effortless to understand.

With just a single click you can cache your website. Furthermore, the WP Rocket plugin automatically builds up the cache for all your WordPress web pages. The plugin also automatically turns on all the recommended settings for your WordPress web pages which are required. WP Rocket consists of many other features as well that will significantly positively impact your website and decrease it’s loading time.

Pros

• Easy to understand and work with
• Automatically builds up cache for all pages
• Comes with a lot of other optional features for improving performance as well
• The setup process is also simple

Cons

• WP Rocket only has a paid version.

SG Optimizer

SG Optimizer is on our list for many reasons. First, it free.

Second, Sitegroud developed this plugin and can be downloaded directly from WordPress.

It is a great tool to connect your WordPress site with SiteGround’s performance services to ensure better results.

One biggest downside, however, is the fact that it can only be accessed if you’re using SiteGround’s hosting services.

Nonetheless, SG Optimizer is pretty unique. It gives you full control over your website’s cache. You can easily alter and make changes to your website’s dynamic caching and even test out your website’s cache very easily. To save time, it also allows you to optimize your pages in bulk while also giving you the freedom to do it individually.

Pros

• Involves all the technicalities for good control
• Connects your WordPress site with SiteGround’s performance tools
• Comes with all the necessary features for your website’s cache
• Allows you to make changes to your website cache easily

Cons

• Available only for people using SiteGround’s services
• Not the best for beginners as it is quite technical

W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is without a doubt one of the most popular plugins for cache. It has more than a million active installations on WordPress, which shows how much users love it.

Many giant tech companies trust W3 Total Cache, and there are good reasons for that. W3 Total Cache will help to cache your website regardless of the hosting you have.

It will improve your server’s performance and decrease your website’s page load time from the moment you install it.

Pros

• Trusted and recommended by many prominent organizations
• Improves your server as well as website performance
• Increases your site speed no matter which hosting service you’re using
• Easy to use interface

Cons

• Can take you some time to figure out what the perfect cache settings are

WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache, much like the others is also a top caching plugin for your WordPress website. With over 1 million installations to date, it is also one of the most popular and widely used plugins. Automattic – WordPress’ mother company – developed this plugin.

With the help of WP Super Cache, you can quickly generate static files for all your dynamic WordPress pages. WP helps in converting all your heavy dynamic pages into static ones so that your visitors don’t have to face long website load times.

To further enhance and categorize your experience, WP Super Cache breaks down their services into three sections; Simple, Expert and WP Super Caching. You can choose any of them depending upon the type of service you want.

Pros

• One of the most trusted and widely used plugins
• Offers three different levels of services
• Developed by the team who runs WordPress
• The user interface is quite simple

Cons

• The settings of WP Super Cache can be difficult to adjust
• The Simple service isn’t as fast as the Expert service

WP Fastest Cache

The WP Fastest Cache is a plugin that will make things much easier for you because it comes with lesser configurations compared to the other plugins.

Much like every other caching plugin, WP Fastest Cache also creates static HTML files for all your WordPress website’s dynamic pages. The plugin comes with a free as well as a premium version.

The premium version comes with features like database cleanup, image optimization and many others. Overall, WP Fastest Cache is a great simple plugin that professionals and beginners both can use to decrease their website’s load time.

Pros

• Comes with a free version
• One of the easiest to use caching plugins
• The premium version offers lifetime updates which makes it an affordable choice
• The interface is straightforward to use

Cons

• The free version is extremely basic
• Doesn’t have all the necessary built-in integration options

Comet Cache

With over 60,000 active installations, Comet Cache has been gaining a lot of popularity. Due to its ability to cache the users who are already logged in as well, it becomes the best choice for e-commerce websites or sites that require memberships.

The service it offers is close to perfect. It monitors your servers closely and also sometimes disables the cache expiration depending on the site traffic. Overall, Comet Cache has many great features that will allow your website to have reduced page load times.

Pros

• Allows you to increase page speed without taking round-trips from server to website
• Gives you great analytical insights about your caches
• Best for e-commerce or membership sites
• Comes with a free version as well

Cons

• Too many configuration settings. Might get confusing for new users
• The free version doesn’t have any critical features

Cache Enabler

Cache Enabler is also a nice, light, and one of the best caching plugins. It will easily convert your dynamic website pages into static HTML files so that your visitors face reduced website load times.

Cache Enabler comes with almost all the essential features that you would need to optimize your website and increase its speed. To make things easier for you, it has very few configuration options so that everyone can use and understand things easily.

Pros

• Cache Enabler provides detailed documentations
• Requires the least amount of configuration
• Comes with all the possible features that you would need
• The user interface is easy to use

Cons

• Gives problems with WordPress Multisite
• Sometimes the cache expiry doesn’t work

Breeze

Breeze is a free caching plugin that is gaining a lot of popularity and thousands of installations as well. The biggest reason for its increasing popularity is the fact that they promise 99% delivery of static files to all your website visitors.

The plugin has most of the features that are required to decrease the load time, and it delivers all that with great simplicity making it usable even by beginners. From CDN integration to minification of HTML, JS and CSS, Breeze does it all.

Pros

• It’s completely free
• Quite simple and easy to use
• Offers compatibility with WooCommerce as well
• Also compatible with the most recent versions of PHP

Cons

• There aren’t many configurations available
• Some advanced users might not find this good or detailed

Conclusion

A website that doesn’t load quickly will end up being useless. Therefore, one must invest in one of these caching plugins to get extraordinary load time for their websites. We hope that this article will help you make your choice.

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