| Cache Plugin | Key Features | Direct Link |
|---|---|---|
| WP Rocket | ✓ Powerful page and browser caching ✓ GZIP compression ✓ Lazy loading and eCommerce compatible ✓ It’s a premium plugin. (Starts at $59/year) | Download |
| W3 Total Cache | ✓ CDN Integration for faster load times ✓ Lazy Loading for improved user experience ✓ Browser caching and enhanced website safety ✓ It’s a free plugin | Download |
| Hosting Cache | ✓ Hosting company’s in-built caching ✓ Don’t require 3rd party plugin ✓ Included with the hosting plans (no extra payment) | Learn More |
| WP Super Cache | ✓ Page Caching and Cached Files Preloading ✓ Allows integration with CDNs ✓ Garbage collection feature to manage the cache ✓ It’s a free plugin | Download |
| WP Fastest Cache | ✓ Page Caching and CSS/Javascript files minification ✓ Enables Gzip compression for cached files ✓ SSL and CDN support ✓ It’s a freemium plugin. (Pro starts at $49/lifetime) | Download |
| Hyper Cache | ✓ Supports desktop and mobile caching ✓ SSL support and integration with CDNs ✓ Autoclean to control the cache used disk space ✓ It’s a free plugin | Download |
Are you looking for the best cache plugin to speed up WordPress?
Read on…
Internet today is all about speed.
The faster your site and webpage load, the better it is from the point of a user AND the search engine.
There are ways using which you can speed up your website, including using one of the fastest WordPress web hostings, compressing images, using CDN, using caching techniques, and so on.
Here, we will talk about some of the best WordPress cache plugins that you can use on your WordPress powered site and blogs to speed up the loading time.
Even Google made it clear that they take page load time as one of the signals for search engine ranking, and knowing the fact, we can’t ignore the importance of faster loading time of your WordPress-powered or any other platform based websites.
How does WordPress caching plugin help?
Alright, let’s take the hard part first and explain why you need one of these WordPress caching plugins.
Let me explain it in simple terms:
When a reader opens a page on your WordPress site, WordPress queries the database, and it loads everything (sidebar, related post, custom hook) related to that page from your database, which makes numerous calls to your database.
This is a lot of computation that is repeated every time a user opens a webpage on your WordPress site.
What happens when lots of visitors visit at a single time? Your web-hosting has to do a lot of computation in a single second, due to which your server crashes sometimes.
You must have seen errors like 500 internal server error or error connecting database.
These are severe problems, and a lot of users using WordPress are not aware of why that happens. The solution to this problem is using a caching plugin.
Here is how caching in WordPress works:
WordPress cache plugin converts your pages into static pages (cache) when a user requests a page for the first time.
Now, when a second user requests the same page, instead of querying the database, the cache plugin serves the pages from the cache which reduces the server load, and your website will load faster.
Especially as a starter, you might be using shared hosting, which offers good resources but again using a caching plugin helps a lot to lower down server load and you might not get an unexpected warning like exceeded CPU limit and so on.
There are many top caching plugins for WordPress available in the WordPress repository.
Some of these are well-known: WP super cache, W3 total cache, WP-Rocket, and many more.
Here in this article, I will talk about some of the best WordPress cache plugins and explain the features so that you can compare them and pick the best one for your WordPress environment.
Do remember, pick only one as almost all of them do the same job. Using more than one cache plugin might lead to conflict, and your server might act funny.
Also, it’s a good idea to contact your web hosting provider and ask them which WordPress cache plugins work best with their hosting configuration. At times, this helps in picking the right cache plugin for your platform.
Recommended reading:
The best WordPress cache plugins:
Before you pick one plugin from this list of best WordPress cache plugins, make sure you take into account your hosting and server configuration.
For example, the W3 total cache plugin works best with VPS or dedicated servers, whereas Super cache is ideal for shared hosting.
I would also be explaining some of the main advantages of these WordPress cache plugins, and you can pick the one which you believe is compatible with your server’s environment.
Before you start using any one of these cache plugins, make sure you run a speed test on your site using Pingdom or GTMetrix and note the loading time.
After installing the cache plugin, rerun a test and notice the difference.
1. WP Rocket (Premium)
WP-Rocket is the only premium cache plugin that made to this list.
They have been in the industry for the last 3 years and they are the best choice for premium WordPress websites.
If you are using Kinsta hosting, this is the only cache plugin that they allow.
With minimum configuration options, WP Rocket has proven to:
- Improve the loading time of the pages
- Improves the indexing of page
- Offers lazy loading of images (Best for image-heavy websites)
- Superior support for nontechnical WordPress users.
- Preload mode
You can read a detailed review of WP-rocket here and watch a case study in the below video:
Starts at only $39 for the single site
2. W3 Total Cache (Free)
W3 is one of the most advanced WordPress caching plugins which works out of the box and offers an advanced caching mechanism.
However, a perfect W3 total cache configuration might require some technical skills.
The latest version of the W3 total cache offers integration with Cloudflare. You can quickly configure CDN easily using this plugin.
Object caching is one more feature that you should use in this plugin.
Some more notable features of this top WordPress cache plugin are:
- Page cache
- Database Caching
- Minify CSS, JS
- CDN
- Cloudflare
- Works best with VPS and Dedicated hosting but works with Shared hosting too
- Caching of the search results page
Read: How to configure W3TC plugin
3. Use Hosting In-Built Cache
The majority of managed WordPress hosting companies have in-built caching and they don’t require any 3rd party plugin. The in-built caching system is powerful enough to make your WordPress website load faster.
Kinsta cache:
Kinsta offers an in-house caching system that automatically purges the cache when you update your WordPress website. They are one of the few hostings which offer integration with the WP-Rocket plugin for enhanced caching. This is what we use here at ShoutMeLoud.
SiteGround cache:
A few shared web-hosting services like Bluehost, SiteGround also offers inbuilt caching system.
I’m particularly a fan of SiteGround inbuilt cache plugin called SG Optimizer (which works only on SiteGround hosting).
If you use any of these web hosting services, then is no need for an extra cache plugin.
4. WP Super Cache (Free)
WP Super Cache is a very popular plugin and also one of the most recommended WordPress caching plugins.
WP Super Cache is easy to install, easy to use, and also gives you a good performance boost. It generates static HTML files from your dynamic blog this plugin will also provide gzip compression.
Now you can use your subdomain as a CDN in WP Super Cache, for serving static files like Images, Javascript, and CSS from another site or CDN.
If you’re a new user with average needs, this would be the best choice for you. Here is the guide for configuring the Super Cache plugin:
This is one of the most active and updated plugins and is managed by Automattic.
Depending upon your server config, you can configure the Super Cache plugin to cache files using any of the 3 ways:
Mod_rewrite, PHP & legacy caching.
For faster loading of a WordPress site, I recommend you to configure Apache mod_rewrite way to cache your files.
WP Super Cache has a Preload mode, which is very useful for a site that is not updated very often and you can preload content and set an expiry – a feature that you might not be using.
Once you have configured the Super Cache plugin, make sure you use the feature Test cache under the easy mode, which will confirm whether or not this plugin works fine.
5. WP Fastest Cache
WP Fastest cache was a new entrant in 2016, and it’s listed here because it’s awesome and very easy to configure. This is a plug and play WordPress cache plugin that you can download and configure in just a few minutes.
6. Hyper Cache
Hyper Cache is another brilliant caching plugin for WordPress users who host their blogs on low resources hosting providers, for example (CPU and MySQL). The one advantage of Hyper Cache is, that it works even with Windows hosting. Some of the features that Hyper Cache boasts of are listed below:
- Compatible with the plugin WP-PDA which enables a blog to be accessible from mobile devices
- Manages (both) plain and gzip compressed pages
- An auto-clean system to reduce the disk usage
- 404 caching
- Redirects caching
- Last-Modified HTTP header compatibility with 304 responses
- Compressed storage to reduce the disk space usage
- Agents, URL’s and cookies based rejection configurable
- Easy to integrate with other plugins
Conclusion: Which is the best Cache plugin for WordPress?
All these WordPress caching plugins have their own reasons and features to use.
- For high-level caching: WP-Rocket
- For Free cache plugin: WP Super Cache
If you are new to the blogging world, I’d recommend you to use the WP Super Cache WordPress Plugin. If you want a more advanced caching system on your blog and only the best, use WP-Rocket. This is what I’m using on ShoutMeLoud.
Though, my best advice for faster loading would work on all aspects of your WordPress site. That includes using CDN from MaxCDN, Compress images using Shortpixels plugin, and using a Powerful hosting server.
There are many more plugins that can be added to this list of WordPress cache plugins, but I would like to keep the list short and pick the best in the market.
I would love to know which cache plugin for WordPress you are using.
Write back in the comment section below.
Hii Sir , which plugin is best for wordpress blog (w3 total cache or wp fastest cache)
Antesh Kumar Singh, if you have a simple Blog OR have some better knowledge about cache and can fix some JS, CSS, HTML errors, which normally occurs while using W3 Total Cache plugin, then I would Recommend W3 Total cache.
However, Wp Fastest Cache works Very well within few click & Free features, Including Emojis, Gip compression, Browser Caching, etc. But JS Minify is not included in Free version 🙁
I have Tested 4 cache plugins in WordPress blog, E-commerce sites, Now I am using Autoptimize Free Plugin amazing response without having any Error with A Grade Gtmetrix.
Feel Free to Reply me if you need any help about WordPress. I am always here to help you as a Regular reader of SHOUTMELOUD : )
Hello mate! For me, tweaking page load speed is always a serious matter. I have dedicated much time in evaluating plugins that claim to optimize WordPress page load speed. I know that W3 Total Cache has a very good reputation in the industry. Recently I came across two page load optimization resources, Hummingbird and Breeze Cache Plugin that I would personally recommend WordPress Community to give a try.
Hello Harsh, i found this post really helpful but stuck at a point. I m using wp touch plugin and installing wp super cache requires to configure wp touch plugin first. Can you be kind to share details on the same.
@Mannu
I’m not sure about it anymore as I stopped using WP touch plugin long back. You should rather use Jetpack mobile theme option + AMP plugin to make your site more mobile friendly.
As soon as I read this information I ‘ve tried & installed on my blog It made difference
past I had used W3 Total Cache which is loading very slow
Thanks Harsh for your useful information
nice article, i also find that W3 Total catch is difficult to understand and configure, it is also not free hence they not give us all feature in free
WP fastest catch is look very good but due to its new so. ..
i think WP Super catch is best plugin yet
Good list of WordPress Plugins to load faster your site.
Right now I am not using any plugin and I see that my site is bit slower than before, so that’s why I started to find the information and as usual ‘shoutmeloud’ is always my first preference to find answers for my questions.
So I got the answer to use one of the best Cache Plugin and I am going to try ‘WP Fastest Cache’
Thanks for the information.
Has anyone here tried Hummingbird? How does it hold up in comparison to the other plugins listed here? I’m trying to decide on whether to go with WP-Rocket or Hummingbird!
Really useful list of cache plugins. Well I’m using W3 Total Cache and it works really well, but it’s good to know more alternates. Thanks Anuj for this useful post 🙂
Hi Anuj
Whenever I select Minify CSS and JS, my site theme breaks down and the whole site is displayed in plain-text HTML. Any way out for this?
W3 Total cache is the winner in this case. I have checked these plugin and tried to implement all the suggestion suggested by YSLOW and according to me most of them are included in this plugin Except Cookies Less Domain. Other wise you have to tackle most of them manually like , Expire Headers, ETTags, Minify etc. Thanks for this great article Anuj.
Had used W3 Total Cache in past, but it slowed down my website to a great extent, i wonder why, but ever since then i have never used any cache plugin, your article will certainly help me in selecting the better one.
I’ve been using W3TC for a long time, and never tried any other plugins. Now after I read your article, I’ve decided to give it a try with the WP Super Cache and… it gave me 10% boost in speed 0_O
So I guess, you should really try all the options and compare how each works. In terms of caching plugin there can’t be one that will work best for everyone. Test, test and test.
Thanx for the great post 🙂
I like W3TC plugin over WP Super Cache. W3TC cache has lot’s of features and I’m using it with CDN to make my site fast.
I am using wordpress blog for my website for more than 5 years. But I never know about this cache. Thanks for your new information. Definetly this is the new information for me.
you welcome mate 🙂
Hello Anuj, I am using WP Super Cache Plugin. But i can’t setup CDN for my blog? Can you help me about this?
Ok Ammar,I am trying to write an article on that.
I am currently using wp super cache plugin, i want to know which among all is best in terms of performance.
Hi Gaurav,
they both are best on different -different resources.as i mention above in my post.
Hello Anuj,
Quick cache works well for my blog it reduce server load time and increase pages loading speed. what is best part, you do not need to configure, developer already pre configured with recommend settings. My suggestion is go for quick cache..
i am using wp super cache and smushit .. which one you think is best in all of them ? Conclusion for that will be appreciated 🙂
Hi,aatif
wp super cache and smushit they both are very different from each other.wp super cache is for enabling Caching,smushit for compressing images.According to me they both are best in there own field.
Well observed and precisely presented work.
Very useful for online workers.
Great article.
Good luck!
Regards……..
W3TC is a best caching plugin with lot’s of feature and options but sometimes it’s create problems with some other plugins and on shared hosting server.