Best WordPress Caching Plugins for Better PageSpeed Score

What does WordPress caching do?

Cache is a hidden storage memory to help data be delivered faster by loading it directly from the cache disk. 

Whenever visitors access your website, they are sending signals to request information which is stored on WordPress server. These pieces of data take time to transfer all the way from server to the visitor devices.

This is where WordPress caching plugins come in to help. These plugins help create a temporary space to store the regularly accessed web pages and show those page views to frequent requests or visitor locale.

Do you need WordPress caching plugins? And Why?

You can run a test right now with your current site. If the page load time lasts more than a few seconds, then it’s time to optimize your pages!

Even if it ranges within 5 seconds, there’s still space to improve.

Faster loading web pages bring at least 5 advantages:

• Retain visitors
• Higher SERP ranking (Google loves speedy web pages)
• Save server resource
• Improve user experience
• Earn more revenue

How to pick the best caching plugin for WordPress?

There’s no such thing as the best WordPress caching plugin for everyone and every site, only the best way to find it for yourself. 

Since site loading speed depends on various factors including your own server, hosting, resources, configuration, access point’s physical location, etc. I’m afraid you’ll have to test at least 3 plugins to get the most suitable caching solutions for your WordPress site.

The process result is not readily served, yet you have these recommended WordPress caching plugins to start with.

1. Swift Performance

If you have used W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket, you’ll see Swift Performance is a totally different solution. Although it’s quite a newcomer in the WordPress repo, I won’t be surprised if Swift Performance ranks among top-selling plugins in the coming time.

To our own experience, our web pages load almost immediately with the help of Swift Performance. The installation is easy enough to follow, especially step by step configuration wizard. 

The initial pre-cache is built very quickly unlike other plugins that take forever. Easy to manually include/exclude items from caching. Works immediately with WooCommerce.

Features:

• Eliminate render blocking assets

By minifying and combining CSS and JS, this plugin helps reduce cumbersome loading. You can also inline or merge these CSS sheets.

• Enhanced cache functionality

Swift Performance provides smart caching in which you can also cache AJAX request and dynamic request. It always crawls the cache every hour and whenever there are changes to the web pages such as forum posts or guest comments.

• Unlimited image optimization

Swift Performance helps compress JPEG, PNG files without depreciating its pixel quality.

• 3rd-party proxy Javascript

With this expansion, you can integrate Google Analytics, Facebook proxy and other headers.

• CDN supported

You can appoint which specific hostname for static resources.

2. WP Rocket

WP Rocket is a premium WordPress plugin, probably the best when it comes to performance and user interface design. WP Rocket is loved by users of all levels from rookies to pros. It’s safe to use on any site and won’t break your site even when its cache doesn’t work. It has a really professional design that can appeal to clients.

Main features in WP Rocket 3.7:

• Delay of JavaScript Execution with lazy-loading technology – By enabling this option and specifying keywords of files to delay, WP Rocket will search for those keywords, analyze and recognize scripts safe to delay.

• Preload Links – This new feature improves perceived performance. WP Rocket 3.7 uses an early prefetch strategy to detect and preload the URLs a user is about to visit. As a result, the user will perceive pages linked by those URLs as loading instantly.

• Improving Core Web Vitals – version 3.7 is making good progress in meeting these new standards. Automatically adding font-display: swap to CSS files containing a font-face, we instruct the browser to use a system font while the custom font is being downloaded. Once the download is complete, the system font is replaced with the custom font. 
• Clean interface – Google Fonts Optimization and HTML Minification removed.
• Remove jQuery Migrate –  If you’re using a brand-new and ever-updating theme, this feature should be enabled to prevent abundant loading of jQuery.

3. WP Cloudflare Super Page Cache

This is a free plugin that automates page cache and serves a website from CDN. WP Cloudflare Super Page Cache features intelligently cache dynamic content so that you can keep managing and updating content while reducing the multitude of round trips.

This plugin has the perfect compatibility with all WordPress versions as well as available WordPress themes. Combining with Autoptimize or LightSpeed Cache is good as long as their rules don’t interfere with Cloudflare’s.

To use this plugin for your multisite, you’ll have to install it on each website in the network. This can also be done even if you have different Cloudflare accounts on those sites.

4. W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is the most popular free open-source option. It comes with quite a dozen general settings to configure. But if they’re done right, your site will reach a huge performance gain.

You can start with configure page cache, database cache, object cache, browser cache, then minify CSS and JS. Opcode cache and Fragment cache are also available in the premium package. W3TC is actually best if configured by developers or system admins who really understand server environments.

Depend on your site hosting, environments and other purposes, you’ll have different ways of configuration to optimize your page speed performance. The above image is recommended W3TC general settings for shared hosting sites.

W3 Total Cache provides an excellent preview mode to help you see all changes in a separate browser tab and those only apply when you click Deploy. This is an essential feature since you need to make sure minifying CSS and JS won’t break your site content and layout.

5. WP Fastest Cache

This plugin helps optimize your site in many ways such as cache option for logged-in users, delete cache when a post or page is published, minify HTML & CSS resources, and even optimize media files.

Apart from generating a static HTML page and save it for further access requests, WP Fastest Cache also offers lazy loading, database cleanup, image compression, and combination options for JavaScript and CSS.

You can write your own function that will modify the content of minified or combined CSS sources before saving.

add_filter('wpfc_css_content', "your_function", 10, 1);
function your_function($content){
//you can run whatever you want
return $content
}

6. LiteSpeed Cache

Unlike WP Rocket, both LightSpeed and Swift offer image optimization in their free version. LiteSpeed outruns everyone on its own servers. It felt definitely faster to the eye for both first and repeat visits.

Transients Cleanup and Database Cleanup help clear the temporarily needed info.

Final words

To find the idea caching plugins for WordPress really depends on your site server environment, your frequent visitors and also your tech knowledge. While W3 Total Cache is best for skilful developers, WP Rocket is cool for clients eyes, Swift is very much recommended for general webmasters with conventional requirements.

If you have any caching experience you wish to share, please leave a message. We’re all ears.