7 Best WordPress Cache Plugins of 2021 [Free and Paid]
WordPress cache can be difficult to understand or in some cases might be even boring. Explanation of such tricky technology can take a lot of pages. Worry not, as we are going to unfold this trick for you step by step in a simple manner.
Your website might be seen several times every month. Perhaps you see significantly higher numbers, in the hundreds, thousands, or millions. Seeing as how your website is probably serving up the same, or comparable, content all the time, wouldn’t it be great if the server could recollect those files to serve up your website unfailingly?
Caching Simplified
So, all the web pages viewed on your site demand a request to the server, processing by the same server (comprising database queries), at that point an ultimate result sent from the server to the visitor’s browser. The outcome is your website, equipped with the majority of the files and components that influence it to look similar. For example, you may have a header, images, a menu, and a blog. Since the server needs to process every request, it sets aside some time for the entire webpage to be conveyed to the user– particularly with burdensome or bigger websites.
That is the place a WordPress caching plugin becomes an integral factor! The caching plugin directs the server to store some data to disk or RAM, depending on the design. Subsequently, it can recollect and copy a similar content it has been serving previously. Accordingly, your site pages respond much faster, specifically from the reserve. Essentially, caching decreases the measure of work required to create a pageview.
When do you need a WordPress Caching Plugin?
We discussed very little about speed, but do you really need a WordPress caching plugin? And what are most of the additional advantages of caching?
These are truly important queries, and for users who are controlling their own servers or are on shared hosting, a caching plugin generally makes a great deal.
Disadvantages of Caching Plugins
Well, in many cases you don’t need a caching plugin at all, if your site is hosted with a managed WordPress hosts like kinsta, it will take care of the caching for you. Caching is mostly done at the server level and a much faster manner. Like plugins, server-level caching does not need any expertise to make it faster at all, caching through servers are faster by default.
You always need some type of Caching
Whether you have a server-level caching or caching plugin, caching is important. So, what are some other advantages of caching?
- Speed up your website for users – despite its coverage; this point is just to remind you that speed is important.
- Improve your overall user-experience – If you make your website faster, users are more likely to hang around. And it will reduce your bounce rate significantly.
- The server uses fewer resources – This will boost your speed, as the light resources ideal for a faster site. Nonetheless, it will ease the server process to a great extent.
- You may see a boost in search engine optimization -This again describes speed and performance, but with a better user experience you will be able to signal search engines to index your website at a higher ranking level.
- You’ll see lower TTFB -Caching is a brilliant technic to reduce your TTFB. Moreover, in our experimentation, we have seen caching reduced TTFB by up to 90%. That’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?
The Best WordPress Caching Plugins
If you are expecting a personal server or are utilizing shared hosting, these are the caching plugins to experiment with. Some of them are more natural than others, yet every one of them has incredible reviews. Numerous online posts will attempt to compare the speeds of caching plugins and sell you on the most advanced one. Be that as it may, this is relatively inconceivable on the grounds that these plugins will perform diversely in light of your own server, setup, resources, and even physical area.
We adore speed tests the same as much as anyone else, yet taking a plugin as “the fastest” is likewise out of line to the plugin’s creator, as what works best for one client, may not for another. Also, there are several unique settings that could be enabled or disabled. Along these lines, you ought to dependably test WordPress caching plugins yourself.
Here’s a list of the top 7 WordPress cache plugins for you. If you want to know about them in detail, keep reading.
- WP Rocket [paid]
- Cache Enabler [free]
- Comet Cache [free + paid]
- W3 Total Cache [free]
- WP Super Cache [free]
- WP Fastest Cache [free + paid]
- Hyper Cache [free]
It’s suggested that you install and experiment with 2-3 plugins and select the correct one based on your experience. We are also in favor of running a speed test with website speed test software like Pingdom or GTMetrix after the implementation of each plugin.
Important
Don’t forget to run your speed test numerous times to understand that it is serving from the cache.
Now, without further delay, let’s dig into the core of the top 7 WordPress caching plugins and learn how they can help you.
1. WP Rocket
One reason we prefer the WP Rocket plugin so much is the result of its basic UI and speedy setup. It’s a WordPress reserving plugin with the ability to make your site bursting quick, yet any novice could take a seat and understand a large portion of the settings included.
WP Rocket is outstanding amongst other reserving solutions for WordPress and the main premium plugin on our stock. It is colossally easy to use and a lifeline for webmasters who discover specialized terms and web programming very interesting.
The plugin will work accurately after installation; accordingly, you won’t rack your head against the divider endeavoring to configure it. Those of you who are technically sound can dig into its advanced alternatives and set up a custom setup.
For what reason is this considered one of the best WordPress caching plugins?
- WP Rocket gives a developer-friendly background and a dashboard for amateurs to feel handy.
- The plugin has a greatly straightforward setup for all users.
- Database optimization is incorporated for tidying up your database and expelling the number of resources being utilized.
- Cloudflare compatibility is given for accelerating your site at a faster speed.
- WP Rocket coordinates with a portion of the best multilingual plugins available.
- Multisite compatibility is offered through the plugin.
- The cache can be preloaded.
- You get tools for both decrement and linking.
- One special element includes the optimization of Google Fonts. We are yet to see this on any of the other caching plugins we’ve ever come across.
- Backup for object caching.
2. Cache Enabler
Cache Enabler is a great caching solution for WordPress that completes two things to diminish your website’s page load times – produces static HTML files and gives WebP bolster. The static HTML files saved money on the server’s hard plate.
It’s one of the first to empower clients to serve WebP images without JavaScript. For those of you who don’t definitely know, WebP is another image type that is rapidly picking up prevalence as a web-friendly image that gives lossy and lossless pressure.
Once a document is accessed to or asked for, the webserver conveys the static HTML record while staying away from the greater part of the backend processes which might be resource-intensive. This caching procedure significantly expands your site’s speed, results in bringing down page loading speed, and enhances the execution of your WordPress activation.
For what reason is this considered one of the best WordPress caching plugins?
- The Cache Enabler plugin offers one of a kind method to serve up WebP images. In order to convert your images to WebP design, you can utilize Optimus, ShortPixel, or EWWW Cloud (we suggest the cloud variant for better performance).
- The UI is straightforward and to the point. It’s by a long shot one of the flexible caching plugins to set up.
- The real cache measure is shown on the dashboard to see how much space the cache is filling up. It’s an effective and quick storing program with automated and manual choices for clearing the cache.
- Both inline JavaScript and HTML can be minified.
- Cache Enabler merges with a plugin called Autoptimize to incorporate additional highlights like infusing CSS into the page head.
3. Comet Cache
This famous cache plugin formerly renowned under Zencache and Quick Cache is drawing solid attention with its new name. It has got some awesome features and one of them is its ability to take real-time snapshots of every page, post, category, and link and caching them automatically. This simple and smart caching plugin saves you a lot of time as it will reduce the page loading time to a great extent.
The plugin runs on a smart and advanced technique to control the time of sending or not sending a cached version. In general, users who log into the system and visitors who just commented on the page are not provided cached pages. This configuration setting can be edited from the settings page.
For what reason is this considered one of the best WordPress caching plugins?
- Comet Cache showcases a quick configuration and a user-friendly backend for installing your caching within a moment.
- Caching can be applied to posts, pages, categories, or tags.
- Through a paid subscription, subscribers can avail of automatic and intelligent cache clearing.
- The caching of RSS feeds can be done to check that your content syndication is delayed.
- Most of its great features are available for free and you don’t need to upgrade until it’s that necessary.
- The premium features that you get here are almost similar to what you get in WP Rocket. So, it is our advice that you check out both before the final implementation.
4. W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache is the only WordPress Performance Optimization system that is intended to improve user usability and enhance page load times. This caching solution is highly prescribed by a portion of the best hosting suppliers in the business including Pagely, Flywheel, and SiteGround.
The principal thing you have to think about this plugin is that its Settings domain is split into 16 pages. Whoa! This might be very overwhelming, however, the imperative thing to recall is that you don’t need to manually design the settings to make the plugin work – its default settings work extraordinarily as well.
W3 Total Cache has a devoted Settings page for each sort of caching – database caching, object caching, page caching, browser caching and so on. The quality of customizability that you get with W3 Total Cache is difficult to discover elsewhere.
For what reason is this considered one of the best WordPress caching plugins?
- W3 Total Cache is completely free and it gives the dominant part of caching plugins that’ll be necessary to keep your site quick and highly-optimized.
- Although you shouldn’t always follow the group, popularity is regularly a marker of quality. W3 Total Cache has a large number of incredible user reviews and millions of installations.
- The plugin is compatible with all sorts of hosting alternatives, for example, committed servers, shared facilitating, and clusters.
- Caching is done for all mobile environments too. Along these lines, when somebody lands on your site while on a mobile device, they still get indistinguishable advantages of caching as they would find on a desktop.
- SSL support is catered when you’re endeavoring to make your online store faster.
- The CDN combines with the media library so you’re able to perceive how your images are being optimized.
- Support for Object caching.
5. WP Super Cache
This is one of the best cache plugins for WordPress. Its technology and dashboard are very user-friendly and comprehensible. This plugin generally tracks static HTML files from your WordPress blog and caches them in place of WordPress PHP scripts.
One of the best features of WP Super Cache is to collect garbage. Actually, your cache inventory gets filled up and slows down your site. WP Super Cache does a great job of finding and recycling the old cache and keeps you fast and optimized.
For what reason is this considered one of the best WordPress caching plugins?
- WP Super Cache has the quality and reputation to guarantee that it’ll give excellent caching facilities to all of your sites, regardless of size.
- It’s a free, open-source item from Automattic. So, you realize that updates will turn out regularly and the plugin isn’t leaving at any point in the near future.
- The backend interface has the majority of the settings you require. It’s quite simple to understand and implement, even for learners.
- WP Super Cache has been coordinated with a special CDN setup for superior dissemination of your files.
- The plugin has an extraordinary component called Cache Rebuilding, where the cache on your blog isn’t deleted at whatever point a comment is made. Rather, it rebuilds the cache and serves up the old page to different clients.
6. WP Fastest Cache
As per its developers, the WP Fastest Cache plugin is “the least complex and fastest WP-Cache system”. Like WP Super Cache, WP Fastest Cache creates static HTML documents in view of your dynamic WordPress blog and spares them in the cache.
WP Fastest Cache prides itself on giving a simple-to-install plugin – and it delivers. You don’t need to modify the .htaccess design document.
The plugin utilizes mod_rewrite to make static HTML documents on your website. It additionally offers minification, GZIP compression, browser caching, and a possibility for consolidating JavaScript and CSS documents together to decrease requests from your server.
For what reason is this considered one of the best WordPress caching plugins?
- The Settings page is straightforward since it’s essentially a list of checkboxes with data about each setting.
- You can rapidly move up to the premium version right in the WordPress dashboard. There’s no compelling reason to download a plugin from the website.
- You can join and decrease CSS and JavaScript.
- CDN incorporations can be done without much design.
- Image optimization is handled independently by So you’re ready to see precisely how much space is being spared with one of your greatest resource hogs.
- There’s an element for making a cache, particularly for your mobile theme. You’ll discover an alternative to not serve a cached version for the desktop to the mobile users.
7. Hyper Cache
It has got only 4 tabs on the configuration page of the plugin. Certainly having lesser options but that’s pretty favorable for anyone wanting a plugin to get the work done without little or no issue.
With HyperCache, you can cache at allocated interims of time, empower on-the-fly compression, clean caches when another comment is made or another post is distributed, and empower browser caching.
You can set up Hyper Cache so as not to cache particular pages or URLs, and you can cache just the latest posts by blocking caching for posts older than a predetermined number of days. It offers help for CDN and mobile caching.
For what reason is this considered one of the best WordPress caching plugins?
- The plugin doesn’t have any payment packages. It’s a free, open-source plugin with the greater part of the highlights included upon download.
- It’s a mobile mindful caching plugin, so the caching happens on comparatively lesser gadgets also.
- CDN bolster is given to taking advantage of a bigger network of servers and accelerating your site considerably at a much faster speed.
- Compression is managed through the plugin, notwithstanding for non-cached pages.
- The plugin identifies if a website theme has been changed to a mobile version.
Additional Caching Plugins
There are some other important plugins that are used to complete specific tasks.
Redis Object Cache: A regular object cache backend supported by Redis.
LiteSpeed Cache: This plugin provides all in one feature for the acceleration of sites, with solid server-level cache and a list of highly optimized features.
Conclusion
The explanation behind caching your website isn’t that difficult to understand. Hence, the mechanism behind that caching is mostly very complicated for the normal WordPress user. In this way, when you go into a caching plugin’s settings you may have no clue how to make sense of if it is quite moderate.