In this digital age, when everyone is in the race to be at the top of SERP, website speed is the utmost factor that can help you with better rankings. Google constantly rolls out updates now and then; similarly, in the year 2021, Google came up with core web vitals update where it mentioned the website speed as one of the major ranking factors.
There are various ways to improve the speed of your website; you can do it by optimizing images, reducing the number of unused plugins, using a CDN Network, and using cache plugins which we are going to discuss in detail through this blog.
Before we dive deep into the plugins, we will first understand what caching is and why it is important, then will know all the plugins that can help you improvise the speed of your website.
What is Caching and Why is it Important?
Caching, in simple language, means the process of storing data in a temporary storage location. Doing this helps your webpage to load faster. So, instead of recalling the requests from the web server, it recalls the data from the local storage, which helps to load the website quickly.
Let us understand it through the example; whenever you create an account on the new website, it then asks you for the option “Save Password,” or if you click on “Remember Me” on the checkbox, it will automatically save your password in the Cache. So, whenever you visit the website again, you will be logged in automatically without entering credentials. That saved your time, isn’t that?
Just like that, whenever a user visits a page on your site, WordPress collects the data from your hosting server and then runs several other steps before sending it to the user’s browser. Due to several steps involved before reaching the user’s browser, like collecting CSS, HTML, and other elements from your hosting server, which impacts your website speed. That, in turn, affects user experience.
Caching helps with the minification of all these steps after the first load, which in turn helps to load the website quickly. A fast-loading website is all that your users want. It is believed that website speed is important as users hate slow-loading websites, and this will increase your bounce rate.
How do you Set up Caching in WordPress?
You can set up caching manually on your WordPress; however, it will require some technical expertise as it requires adding some code to the cache.php file.
If you are not much into technical, you can simply install WordPress Plugins.
Thanks to WordPress that it revolves around plugins that make your tasks easier.
Here’s the list of the Best WordPress Cache Plugins
1. WP Rocket
WP Rocket, a premium caching plugin, is one of the best speed optimization plugins because it starts working right after installation and activation on your website.
With just one click, users can instantly cache their website. It offers a wide range of features, including cache preloading, GZIP compression, and the ability to minify and combine CSS and JS files, lazy load images, remove unused CSS, eliminate render-blocking JavaScript resources, and schedule automatic database cleanups.
It is a premium plugin offering 3 different packages; the basic package starts at $59 that provides support to 1 website; for 3 websites, it will cost you $119 yearly, and to get support for “n” number of websites, it will cost you at $299 per annum.
It is the most recommended WordPress caching plugin due to its easy-to-use feature, and it quickly helps improve your website speed and performance.
2. W3 Total Cache
It is a free plugin and is, again, the most popular cache plugin. It includes most features like page cache, gzip compression, CDN support, and minification support.
It has nearly 1 Million plus active installations, and the best thing about using W3 total Cache is it is compatible with most of the hosting options, including shared hosting, virtual private/dedicated servers, and dedicated servers/clusters.
It offers Caching of search results pages, web pages, and posts in memory or on disk, or CDN.
The only drawback of this plugin is it is a bit difficult to use, and for the layman to understand its configuration, it may seem fairly difficult.
3. WP Super Cache
With over 2 million plus of active installations, WP Super Cache is also one of the best examples of an open-source caching plugin. It is a free speed optimization plugin and often comes to the top list when searching for a caching plugin.
WP Super Cache plugin offers different caching modes. One of them is “Simple Mode,” and another one is “Expert Mode.”
Simple mode, as the name implies, is simple to use, and a user with little technical expertise can use it since it is not risky. However, in the expert mode, it would require making some modifications in the .htaccess file; this could be a bit trickier as any unwanted changes could take your whole site off!
4. WP Fastest Cache
WP Fastest Cache plugin is available for free as well as premium versions. Of course, the free version comes up with limitations. While the premium version offers some additional tools like lazy loading, minifying javascript file, etc., that can help improvise the website performance.
However, users with basic requirements might be happy to go with its free version, too, as it provides desktop caching, minification of HTML, browser caching, Gzip Compression, etc., which itself is enough to improve the website speed. Also, you can enable or disable the cache option for mobile devices by simply checking a check box on the settings page.
5. Cache Enabler
Cache Enabler is an automatic as well as manual cache-clearing plugin that is gaining popularity in the market these days. It is a free plugin, and the best thing is that it claims to support WebP images. WebP Images are light in weight compared to JPG and PNG, which allows improving your web page load faster.
It offers the Minification of HTML with/ without inline CSS and JavaScript. Overall, the Cache Enabler settings are easy to understand and can be used by anyone with even little technical expertise.
6. Comet Cache
Comet Cache is a user-friendly speed optimization plugin, and it can help you with automatic cache clearing for Posts, Author Pages, Categories, Tags, Custom Term Archives, and XML Sitemaps. It has both free and premium versions with added features in the premium version.
Its free versions offer most of the tasks, but it needs to be done manually; however, the premium version offers everything automatically, which ensures you can leverage a plugin for everything.
It has Server Load Monitoring that avoids regenerating the Cache. In all, the cache plugin is super user-friendly, and its settings page explains every detail in brief, which makes it easy to understand for any WordPress user who has even little technical knowledge.
7. LiteSpeed Cache
LiteSpeed Cache is also one of the best WordPress Cache plugins with nearly 4 Million plus active installations. It can help you with image optimization, lazy load images, and minifying CSS, JavaScript, HTML, inline & external CSS/JS.
These plugins support WordPress Multisite and are compatible with WooCommerce, and Yoast SEO. The added advantage is it helps WebP image support which can play a major role in improving the core web vitals of your website.
8. Hyper Cache
The Hyper Cache plugin offers options to serve cached pages to the users who comment on blogs, which in turn increases the comment ratio on your blog. This ensures that your website speed is well-maintained even with a significant amount of conversation.
Hyper Cache is PHP based and works on every blog without requiring any complex configurations. It understands the mobile environment, which makes sure that caching is enabled even when someone is operating your site through a phone or tablet.
Overall, Hyper Cache is most notable for its simple configuration and is good to go plugin for your website. It’s like the “Install and Forget “type plugin, where it does its job once installed.
9. HummingBird
Hummingbird has a free and premium version. It offers GZIP compression, minifies CSS and JavaScript, render-blocking resources, lazy loading of offscreen images, comments, browser cache, etc. The added advantage of this plugin is that it scans your website and provides you with tips and fixes to speed up your WordPress site in a while.
It can help to improvise the core web vitals of your WordPress website and get green signals on tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, and GTmetrix. This will help you with better conversion rates, and more users will like to travel to your web pages.
10. WP Super Minify
WP Super Minify is a WordPress cache plugin with nearly 10K installations. It offers features like Minifying JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. It also gives the option to disable the compression of CSS/JavaScript in case of any issue. The plugin is easy to use; however, it is still not in the trend as other suggested plugins.
Conclusion
To Conclude, Caching plugins are the must-have WordPress plugins for every website to uplift your website performance and gain more conversions.
The ten caching plugins discussed in this blog post are the best and offer a wide range of features and customization options to match every website’s needs.
Nowadays, website speed is the core ranking factor, so make sure you install any of these plugins based on your requirements, website pages, and daily traffic. The list includes premium as well as the free version of cache plugins, so choose the one that meets your requirements.
Bio: Archit has been working with WPWeb Elite since 2015 as a Content Manager. He is a passionate content writer and has a love for WordPress and Digital Marketing so he spends a significant amount of time writing about it.
