Last Updated on August 17, 2020 by Sunny Staff
If you pay attention to your site statistics, you know which pages tend to be requested more than others, and which ones have the most return visitors. Do these folks (and your SEO scores) a favor and make sure your pages load quickly, as in within two seconds. If your website uses WordPress, you do this by installing one of WordPress’ cache plugins.
First, let’s discuss what caching is and why your website needs this.
Caching is Key for Website Processing Speed
Caching is a process that lets a website store information that’s frequently called up for easy retrieval. This can be written content, a graphic, or a video.
Each time a visitor lands on any webpage, his or her browser asks the site to send the page information. What caching does is store information in a temporary repository so that subsequent requests for it are returned more quickly.
Tools like WordPress cache plugins can cut page load time by more than one-half, according to an informal study by plugin developers at Design Bomb.
Best WordPress Cache Plugins – Free!
Lots of WordPress plugins are free, and caching plugins are no exception. Many free plugins also offer paid products that allow for more customization and setup configurations, not to mention access to technical assistance.
A number of free plugins do a good job for many WordPress sites, particularly those that don’t have a lot of demanding technologies. Oh, and many of the free plugins offer a premium version with advanced features for a reasonable price.
Here are a few that have survived over time and have thousands, even millions, of satisfied users:
- WP Super Cache has more than two million downloads so we can safely conclude it does the job. It offers three ways to speed up page loads (the developer recommends one that will satisfy 99% of site visitors) and requires little work afterward.
- W3 Total Cache has over a million installations. Some WordPress users find it’s too difficult to understand since it has 16 pages of documentation to help you set page, database, and browser caching (thankfully, this freebie offers customer support).
- WP Fastest Cache (are these guys all related?) has had more than 700,000 downloads, is easy to configure, and above all, is fast.
Best WordPress Cache Plugins – Paid
WP Rocket sails above most of the paid caching sites for good reasons – it’s affordable at $49 for one website per year, has more than a million users, and is considered among the best and fastest caching plugins by WordPress experts. It immediately begins caching pages upon activation, and its interface is pretty user-friendly.
Comet Cache is $49 per website but comes with lifetime updates and three years’ technical support. Comet Cache provides automatic updates, page caching for users logged in to your site, enforcement of canonical URLs, and auto-clearing of custom URLs during routine caching. It’s had 1.7 million downloads and counting. A free version is available as well.
When You Don’t Need a WordPress Plugin Cache
Here at SunnyHQ, we build in server-side caching with our hosting services. We do this for the same reason cache plugins exist – to speed up page load times. Our clients don’t have to worry about configuring and updating caching plugins, or plugins conflicting with one another.
We even remove unnecessary plugins, which include cache and backup plugins, since we also perform daily backups. Our Smart Managed Hosting Solution delivers a free SSL certificate, free Cloudflare to speed up your site even more, and protection against brute force attacks. We guarantee 99.95% uptime. To learn more about the best WordPress cache plugins and other related topics, contact our team at Sunny HQ!
