A fast loading blog is more desirable and superior in terms of user-experience, search engine ranking and overall conversions of your WordPress website. For WordPress, there are many plugins which you can use to make your blog load faster and one of the most common type of plugin is cache plugin. These cache plugin creates a cache of static file of your blog posts, and when a user access the post it serves it directly from the cache folder. This saves a ton of resources in terms of running all PHP queries and accessing your database to regenerate and server the same post. More over, serving a post from cache will make the post load way faster than without the cache.
I would not get into much technical aspect of WordPress caching and what you should know here is: Having a cache plugin on your WordPress blog is essential. Now there are various cache plugins out there (Free and paid) and picking the right one is important, as it will save you form headache of configuration, it will make your WordPress blog highly optimised for speed and performance.
Unlike old days, now WordPress is a big commercial market and all plugin developers are in a race to convert their free plugins into a product. For example, one of the most popular cache plugin W3Total cache started offering Pro features/support which unlocks many advance features and recently (One year back) another paid cache plugin call WP-Rocket entered into the market and this was probably first WordPress cache plugin in the market to be released as a premium plugin.
When it comes to WordPress cache plugins, there are many free options out there such as:
- W3 Total cache
- WP Super cache
- Quick cache
- Hyper cache
- WP Fastest cache
Above list is curated from this awesome post by Kevin. Survival of a paid plugin becomes difficult when there are a humungous amount of similar free stuffs in the market. It becomes really difficult for a paid plugin to create its niche in the market. I have always been an ardent user of W3Total cache and WP Super cache plugin.
From past few months ,I have been hearing good reviews about Wp-Rocket plugin and I decided to give it a try myself and see how effective it is. I contacted the WP-Rocket team to ask for a review license so that I could do a neck-to-neck battle between W3 Total cache and WP-Rocket plugin, and find out if this premium cache plugin is really worth your money or not?
Preparing for W3 Total Cache Vs. WP-Rocket plugin:
ShoutMeLoud is already highly optimised and the loading time is even less than a sec ( Thanks to Cloudways hosting, Thesis WordPress Theme, Cloudflare and W3Total cache). I don’t see much point of doing this test on ShoutMeLoud. For this, I picked one of my blog which is poorly optimised and takes a little time to load. One of our blog in the network is “Letstalkrelations.com” which is quite outdated in terms of theme, optimisation and we were using W3 total cache plugin.
To start the comparison between these two plugins, I first tested the loading time of Letstalkrelations.com on GTMetrix and tools.pingdom.com and here is the result with W3 Total cache plugin:
As you can see from the above results:
Page size was more than 1.31+ MB and overall performance is not that great. This is exactly why I needed to test WP-Rocket else it won’t be a decent comparison.
After testing the load time of the site, I uninstalled W3 Total cache completely. ( Guide to uninstall W3 Total cache plugin)
- Deleted cache
- Disabled all cache option.
- Disabled and uninstalled plugin
- Remove W3 Total config files via FTP
- Removed entries from .htaccess file
- Also used clean options plugin to delete orphan tables created by W3 total cache
The idea was to remove all files related to W3 Total cache and test the site performance with WP-Rocket cache plugin.
Configuring the WP-Rocket plugin:
After using WordPress cache plugins like W3 Total cache and WP super cache for years, I thought configuring this plugin will take time but I was taken aback, as WP-Rocket is probably the most simplest WordPress cache plugin for anyone to configure. If you are someone without any tech-skills you can configure the plugin within seconds of time. You will be accessing the configuration dashboard via settings> WP Rocket
The very first screen is the basic setup and I ignored the minification and concatenation option for this test.
The only options which I enabled from the above screen was enable Lazy loading images, mobile caching and increased the clear cache lifespan to 96 hours. As soon as you activate the Wp-Rocket plugin it takes care of most of the optimisation and caching options. Here is the Pingdom and gtmetrix result after enabling the basic settings. Just to make sure pages are cached, I opened the site in another browser and browsed 10-12 pages to ensure caching of the pages.
So far the result was satisfactory and I decided to enable the files optimisation feature to see how it improves my loading time. I just enabled all the three options for files optimisation:
And this time the performance report was even better than the last time and I could see a considerable amount of difference in terms of loading time and total number of requests. Here is final loading time of the site:
Note: I have not yet touched the advance settings which offers few features such as “prefetch DNS requests” “CDN” and few others. One thing which I find very interesting after comparing both the plugin is, WP-Rocket fixed most of the performance grade issues which a cache plugin is suppose to take care of.
Here is a test result by WP-Seer team, where they compared WP-Rocket with WP Super cache and here is the result difference in loading time:
Conclusion of W3 Total Cache Vs. WP Rocket:
When I started doing this test, I was not hoping to see such huge difference as W3 Total cache plugin is loaded with excellent features, but the results of the test proved me completely wrong.
In my testing I find WP-Rocket performance to be better than W3 Total cache and what I liked most about WP-Rocket is it’s easy to configure.
WP-Rocket plugin personal license costs only $39 and you can set it up within 3-4 minutes. You will also be getting support from their team and most important the loading time of your WordPress blog will be faster.
In the latest version of WP Rocket, they have added features to optimize your database. This is a smart move as a bloated database can slow down your WordPress blog.
Last but not the least, you can always get a refund within 30 days if you are not satisfied with the plugin.
Check out features & get your license of WP-Rocket plugin
To end with, I would like to know which cache plugin you are using on your blog? At the same time, I would suggest you to get a single site license of WP-Rocket plugin and try it on your blog and notice the difference. Do test your site loading time with tools.pingdom.com with current configuration and later follow my procedure and notice the difference with WP-Rocket. If you don’t like it, you still have 30 days to claim your refund. Anyhow, it’s a win-win situation for you.
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Hi
I bought wp-Rocket one licence in 24 December 2015 ordr number n°#113818 and expire in December, then i saw you have offer for 3 licences that is mean if i buy them i will have 4 licences but after i bought this offer in 27 May 2016 order number n°#170207 i only got 2 licences, i contact with support and they said they can not help me and becuase i have 3 licences and they refuse to accept refund my money back. i really liked wp rocket and i just want the third licence or refund money back.
Hi
i bought before one licence by 39$ and i saw offer to buy 3 licences by 50$ then i bought this offer but i only got 2 licences and the support said now you have 3 licences and they account the old one i have it before!! i asked for refund my money as wp-Rocket said but also the support said no we won’t give you refund your money. so what will happen now? will i get my third licence or refund my money?
Did you pay with paypal? If yes do a dispute. Or chargeback if credit card. But warning: They will ban you from buying any products of them again, probably.
WPRocket is really one of the best, if can make a good minified combination with the css and js file reaches amazing results !
I also tested the plugin and am happy about the speed, but the service is a disgrace!
Hello and greate comparsion ! i use wp rocket nearly 1 yeahr on 53 blogs and i still have a good performance
WP Rocket ripped me off. I tested about 10 different caching plugins and WP Rocket came in 3rd place. Their website says “30 Days Satisfied or Refunded” so when I went to get a refund they produce a secret refund policy that in effect says you can’t get a refund. It is companies like WP Rocket that give the internet a bad name.
@Joe
Sad to hear that. What’s their secret refund policy ? Could you add more details here?
Hi,
Thank you for your feedback.
We updated our refund policy few months ago, which is much more flexible. You can have a look at it: http://wp-rocket.me/refund-policy/
You also have now a link on the pricing page on “30 Day Money Back Guarantee”.
Thank you for the review, but I am afraid it can’t be called neck-to-neck comparison, as you are comparing WP Rocket (which is a paid-for plugin) with the free version of W3TC rather than the paid-for premium version of the same.
I just start using it and I impressed with how every features work together.
For example. I used to use W3 before + Autoptimize the result were great but there are some problem if you want the best result, like you have to choose between more speed or your Facebook comment to work. Then they are also problem when I install some Lazy load plugin. It block the images so I cannot use Lazyload.
However WP Rocket make all working together. It not make thing too hard for other pluigns to work with it. My Facebook comment still working and I also get Lazyload! That’s is what I love about it. It not break any of my css or javascript on my website.
I am also writing about WordPress and is going to write about it too. Too bad they don’t have the Affiliate. The review can be honest the speed can prove with the Speed test tools. We also write for food and place too. It just like a gift for our hard job spend hours for writing even though we love to write. I think both give is fair.
I use a combination of Cloudflare and W3TC to optimize my blogs. Can it beat the performance of this combination ? Are there any special features available like prefetch ?
WP Rocket can be configured to be used with Cloudfare, the are settings to enable cloudfare cdn within WP Rocket Plugin.
I tried out WP Rocket on basis of SHOUTMELOUD recommendations and it did make a huge difference, much better than W3TC – that was with Cloudfare enable.
However the only sad part is that there is no free version unlike W3TC, and license validity is only for one year.
I just wanted to warn people, caching is a complex concept and be careful being seduced by the wp-rocket ‘one click install’. I had various issues with minification initially which they initially solved. However, with an update to their own plugin 2 months after I bought it, images stopped loading.
I had a lot of back and forth with wp-rocket support (mind you they are not native English speakers) and there was so much miscommunication it was staggering. They did not troubleshoot my issue thoroughly and I wasted many hours on emails getting nowhere. I requested a refund. Their policy is that after 30 days refunds aren’t possible so I ended up disputing with PayPal to refund 10 months worth of wp-rocket’s value. I am waiting for PayPal to decide.
I was using W3 total cache before and have switched back after removing wp-rocket. W3 total cache is definitely faster than wp-rocket and more customizable so ultimately more powerful.
Hi there!
This article might be the reason I will install Wp Rockit. I am a bit scared though, since I haven’t read anything about this with a webshop (only blogs). Maybe you can clear this up for me; will this also works for webshops? What happens when we update a product, will it be visible instantly after updating or do you have to do something about the caching?
Also my homepage loads 4 images randomly everytime you would go to my shop; will this cach plugin change any of this?
Hope you find the time to help me get rid of my insecurities, thanks!
Kelly
I’m using W3 Total Cache and I’m happy with it as it’s very powerful if configured properly. I agree that if you are a beginner, it can be time consuming to enable the right settings and make tests on your website to see if everything is alright.
No matter what cache plugin you’re using, it’s just not enough to make your WP site at the desired speed especially if you have plugins and themes that are loading CSS and JavaScript that is not needed in specific pages. Think about your “Contact” or “404” pages that are only requiring a few files.
It’s good if you disable plugins on pages where you don’t need them and dequeue scripts and styles (such as the ones loaded by themes) that are not needed on certain pages.
@Gabriel
Completely agree with you on selective loading of plugin files. One golden rule of keeping a WordPress site loading in control is using the right plugin & ensuring those plugin doesn’t load every-time on the pages, where they are not required. Unfortunately, all plugins are not coded for performance.
Yes, I’ve used lots of popular plugins and themes (one of the bests out there and I would recommend them to anyone) and to my surprises plenty of them are not well optimised for loading speed. The developers just don’t seem to bother with this, as it does take extra development time and if the plugin/theme is working, then they would just release it.
For this purpose Im using PluginOrganiser – this enables me to select what plugins are loaded on what pages…
i paid wp-rocket but still i dont know how config it the cdn options
I use WP Super Cache and although it started very well, I have seen my site getting slower with time and WP Super Cache not helping much.
It is a time now to try WP Rocket, thanks Harsh for a steer.
It would be helpful to know what specific settings were used for each plugin during the testing. With such a wide variety of options available, plugin settings would most certainly play a significant role in the results achieved in the head to head evaluation of any caching plugins.
Thanks for the write-up. I’m considering using Cloudways services. Can you tell me what you think of them, and also, would you then consider using cloudways and wp-rocket together instead of their auto-w3-total cache setup?
WP Rocket is compatible with varnish with an extra plugin added, so I was considering trying out cloudways + wp-rocket to get the full benefit of both, instead of using w3 total cache, which I’ve run into issues with before.
Would love your opinion!
Cheers,
Dan
@Dan
I’m on Cloudways and my current setup is:
Cloudways + Wp Rocket + Varnish HTTP Purge plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/varnish-http-purge/)
No problem so far and I would suggest you to try this setup!
Additionally you might like to integrate Cloudflare with your setup which will boost performance. http://www.shoutmeloud.com/cloudflare-cdn-features-setup-guide.html
@Harsh
Thanks for the reply. I should have mentioned I also use cloudflare. :)
That’s exactly the setup I was hoping to try so you’ve just given me a huge boost of confidence. Thanks so much!
Cheers,
Dan
I’ve been a long time user of W3 Total Cache. I’d heard that there were other plugins that were better, but just couldn’t find the time to figure out how to set them up correctly. I do now, however, and have found a lot of people and websites all recommending WP-Rocket. Granted, it looks pretty fantastic – I’ve already purchased the plugin, and am proceeding to set it up in an attempt to speed my website up from a 2 second+ load, to hopefully a 1 second load!
Thank you for the review! It’s helped me decide to purchase WP-Rocket, and hopefully speed my website up even further!
Regards,
~Gale.
Thanks for the mention Harsh! Greatly appreciated. I am loving WP-Rocket so far. I think it is really going to dominate the WP Caching space. Keep up the great work.
I just bought this plugin and it seems great however am having problems with my CDN(Amazon Cloudfront)
Read many times super cache is better than w3tc, nice to see you made this comparison to help us decide where we can put faith and increase page speed.
Would you say that this caching plugin has an effect on the admin side of wordpress? Optimizing on the front end is great of course, but I am also looking to do some optimizing on the backend admin side of things.
Great Post. Thanks.
I use w3 total cach plugin. Is wp rocket better than w3 total cache plugin?
I had some problems with w3 total cach pugin. When I configure settings, the layout of my blog changed.
@Nilantha
That’s because of CSS conflict and you can take help of this guide to understand how to resolve this issue: http://docs.wp-rocket.me/article/19-resolving-issues-with-minification
W3 total cache is hands down the best caching plugin but its power brings complexity; which combined with the non-existent documentation results in most people not being able to really get the most out of it or worse, actually up putting their site at a disadvantage with improperly chosen W3TC options.
So you have to keep this in mind when comparing W3 total cache to other caching plugins. Also, W3 total cache is free to download and use and it doesn’t have an affiliate program ;)
Hi Robin,
We (WP Rocket) don’t have any affiliate program. That’s exactly the reason we don’t have any : people are suspicious when a review contains affiliate links.
More explanation here : http://blog.wp-rocket.me/wp-rocket-and-affiliation/
Hi J-P, thanks for the response. The blogpost is not very clear English but I suppose the main message is rocket doesn’t have an aff program. Got it.
The reason I assumed that it did was the obfuscated link in the blog post above and in the 15% coupon code provided. If you don’t mind me asking, what is the arrangement between rocket and bloggers that provide? you just provide coupons? or something else?
Getting back to the main topic, I’m glad that we have more competition in the caching plugin area since that is always better for the user. And no doubt rocket is much simpler to configure than W3TC but the above review is not complete.
The main reason I suggested that the comparison may not be complete nor accurate is that Harsh showed the W3TC pingdom screenshot with 185 requests and the rocket with 180 requests – so 5 less.
Without seeing the exact configurations we can’t say if he was properly using W3TC. Could he have combined those 5 files? or some other setting which didn’t take advantage of all the potential?
This is why benchmarking and comparing caching plugins requires attention to detail and meticulous documentation.
Hopefully the competition will spur more innovation and motivate w3-edge to provide a simpler and friendlier UI as well as proper documentation for their plugin.
Hi,
The “arrangement” is really simple : we provide them a free personal licence, that’s all.
Then they are free to review it (or not) and to say what they want about it.
Generally we don’t provide a coupon code, but Harsh asked me if it would possible to.
That’s all :)
The requests in less are certainly because of the Lazy Load, and W3TC doesn’t have this feature.
@Robin
Let me answer this question here, as I was the one who approached WP-Rocket team for the review plugin and after reviewing I asked them if they can provide the coupon-code for my readers (Which they gladly did).
That link you see (It’s not an affiliate link), I just masked it to see how many clicks I’m getting ( I haven’t got my hands dirty with GA yet to count clicks on outbound links, which I would do soon).
I absolutely love WP Rocket. After spending hours and hours learning how to configure the other WordPress Cache plugins I couldn’t believe how easy this tool is.
Hi Harsh, I have already used their lazyload plugin and believe me the result was really wonderful thus added the feature of that plugin in my wp-theme and the page load time is now less than 1 sec. The test you conducted on this plugin is wonderful and will help a lots of people to decide between this premium plugin and free plugin. BTW automatic has aquired wp super cache, thus it would be interesting to see the results in near future.
~rakesh
@Rakesh
That’s a wonderful news about Super-cache and I was not aware of it. WP Super cache is equally easy to configure as WP-Rocket and hopefully now Super-cache will be updated on a regular basis, and I won’t be surprised if they add it as a module to Jetpack plugin.
Speed is important, but a 1 or 2 seconds slower is not significant. I highly doubt a quality article with a 3 second loading time will rank lower than a low quality article with 1 second loading time.
No need to be the fastest kid on the block, just don’t be too slow. This is why WP Super Cache is still my favorite.
@Ngan
The competition is not between a high-quality article and low-quality article. Competition is always between two high-quality article and that’s where the loading time of even one second will have a significant difference. Super cache is indeed a good plugin but after using WP-Rocket, I could say it’s better than Super cache as of now!
2 seconds slower is not significant for you? 3 seconds for loading website in 2015? If any website load so long I close it and usually never come back. 3 seconds today is really too long.
I would have to agree with you Peter. 1-2 seconds slower could literally mean thousands of dollars revenue lost. Partially due to SERP rankings but also because of a high bounce rate. Like you said if the site takes too long to load you probably won’t come back. Also relevance is a ranking factor so if Google sees you have a crazy high bounce rate they are going to see you as less relevant than someone else.
I try to aim for 850ms or less. If you use WP Rocket, Kraken, a good host, it is possible.
Wouldn’t you think that actually lazy loading images is more worthless.
I was reading the post and there were big white empty spaces which (unknowingly) got filled with images when I reached the next paragraph.
And, on a second thought I would like to know, don’t ad networks (adsense, infolinks, buysellads, etc.) and tracking service’s javascript slows your site down ?
You know, just an afterthought
@Jotpreet
You are actually right as even I find lazy loading feature to be annoying at times. Specially when it takes too much time to load the images and especially for those readers who don’t read much and just scan the post (Pun intended).
Though Lazy load image feature is pretty useful for image heave sites as it will have a significant difference in loading time of the post.
You got point, many times I experience that simple and relatively fast websites use lazy loading instead of 200ms longer loading. But overall experience for readers is worse. Also if you visit site hosted on other side of planet, then lazy loading do bad job.
Sure on heavy image sites, its something like ”must”