Are you planning to increase/ improve your WordPress website’s speed?
While we talk about increasing the website speed, you probably thinking about using a caching plugin, right? However, you could find so many free and premium WordPress caching plugins in the market. How to choose the best?
Don’t worry we are here to help!
In this post, we are going to introduce you to a premium WordPress caching plugin called WP Rocket! From here, you can read the complete WP Rocket review!
WP Rocket Review
No matter you are running a personal blog or an online shop. You might want to take care of your website’s speed more carefully. A one-second delay in your loading time can affect your website’s conversions, ranking, etc. However, using a bulky WordPress theme is also not recommended.
If you check our blog, you could see that we are running on the Genesis Framework. So with a lightweight WordPress theme and WP Rocket, you will be able to score better in loading time!
In this WP Rocket review, we will be explaining their features, pricing, and how you can configure the plugin on your blog. So without wasting time, let’s get into the WP Rocket review!
WP Rocket Features
Now, let’s see the most popular features of WP Rocket.
Easy Configuration
You don’t need to hire any freelancer for configuring the plugin. You can do it by yourself. However, if you still need a hand, feel free to check out the WP Rocket documentation.
Page Caching
When you activate WP Rocket on your blog, the page caching will be activated instantly. This feature will help you to increase the speed of your loading time by serving cached files to your website visitors. The good thing is, this won’t increase the HTTP requests and server load. You can keep everything running without using additional resources.
If the page caching got enabled, you are good to go. This can help you with search engine ranking (speed is now a search engine ranking factor), increasing conversions, sales, etc.
Sitemap Preloading
If you are using any SEO plugins like Rank Math/ Yoast SEO or All In One SEO Pack on your site, definitely you have enabled the sitemap feature. So the plugin will create a custom sitemap for your blog posts, pages, category archives, and all other custom post types.
With the sitemap preloading feature of WP Rocket, you can always keep your cache fresh. All you need to do is, enter the sitemap URL on your sitemap preloading section, save the changes.
The plugin will check for sitemap changes automatically. And if any sitemap got updates, the plugin will generate a new caching file. It’s simple and useful for regularly updating blogs.
Database Optimization
If your database is not optimized well, it can also affect your website’s speed. Well, there’s a popular plugin available for cleaning up database and optimizing it. We are talking about the WP-Optimize plugin.
It’s a free version plugin used for removing post revisions, spam comments, trashed posts from your WordPress database.
But some folks don’t like using so many plugins. If you are a guy who wishes to keep the active plugins count low, consider purchasing the WP Rocket plugin.
WP Rocket will help us with database optimization. Also, if you need it, you can schedule an automatic cleanup every day or every week. So the plugin will take care of the optimization automatically.
NOTE: Always consider creating a complete website backup before moving with database optimization. You can use any free backup plugin like UpdraftPlus or a premium one like BackupBuddy!
DNS Prefetching
We might be using external domains inside our website like Google Fonts, Google Analytics, Google AdSense, etc. And fetching contents from these external domains will slow our page loading time. With the DNS prefetching feature, you can add all the external domains there. And the plugin will take care of fetching the content.
This way, you can reduce the HTTP requests.
CDN Integration
For reducing the loading time of our content, most of us are using a CDN (Content Delivery Network). The popular ones in the market are Cloudflare, MaxCDN, etc. If you are using a CDN service on your site, integrate it with your caching plugin.
With WP Rocket, you can seamlessly integrate any CDN network you have. You do not need to get help from any third-party peoples.
Lazyloading For Images
If you are writing long blog posts and adding a lot of images to it, your pages will get slower. When someone from a search engine or other internal links land on your long blog post, all the text, images will be rendered automatically. And since you use so many images, it will get slower.
With the Lazy Loading technology, you can serve your images according to the user’s position on the page. If you have turned the lazy loading feature on, all your images won’t be loaded instantly. As the user scrolls down to the bottom, our images will be rendered.
This will help you to speed up the loading time of your blog posts, pages, etc.
Thankfully, you do not need to use any additional Lazy Loading plugin. WP Rocket got this feature inside it. And with a single mouse click, you will be able to turn that feature on!
Minification
By minifying your static files like JavaScript, CSS, HTML, you will be able to reduce the loading time. in the WP Rocket minification settings, you will be able to choose the file type that needs to be minified. After selecting the file types, save the settings. Clear the cache if you want.
NOTE: Sometimes, minifying CSS files can break your website’s design. So after minification, check your website from the frontend. If everything looks normal, you are good to go.
eCommerce Compatible
If you are using plugins like WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, or something like that, you need to make sure that your checkout and cart pages are excluded from caching. WP Rocket is 100% optimized for eCommerce shops.
Import/ Export
Let’s say that you have two websites. You have configured the WP Rocket plugin on Site A. When you need the same settings on Site B, we can use the import/ export feature of WP Rocket. When you export your WP Rocket configuration, a file will be downloaded to your local storage.
You will need to use this on Site B for getting all the same configuration here. It is pretty simple and works every time. It can save a lot of time.
Pricing
As of today, WP Rocket got three premium pricing plans.
- Single – $49/ year.
- Plus – $99/ year.
- Infinite – $249/ year.
You can choose a plan according to your use. Well if you have only one website, the Single plan is good. While you are running a web designing agency that will develop WordPress websites for clients, consider purchasing the Infinite plan.
If you have the infinite plan, you will be able to use this plugin on unlimited client websites.
However, you can choose your PayPal account or Credit Card for processing the payment. Once you have done that, you can log in to your WP Rocket account, download the premium plugin files, access the licensing information.
Support and Documentation
Once you have purchased any of their premium plans, you will get 1 year of support and updates from the developer team. If you need help, all you need to do is, simply raise a support ticket. And within 24 business hours, one of their support staff will help you.
If we are talking about documentation, they got a wide range of helpful articles.
You can search those sections for finding every article. However, WP Rocket is easy to configure the WordPress plugin. For customizing the WP Rocket features, you do not need to refer to any third-party articles.
WP Rocket Alternatives
In the WordPress plugins repository, you could see several free options. Some of the popular ones are:
Etc.
However, while using a free version plugin, there will be several limitations. We have tested the free WordPress caching plugins on our websites and found WP Rocket is far better than those. You can check out the image below to see the comparison.
However, some of these caching plugins are freemium ones. This means there will be a premium version with no restrictions. But still, we recommend you using WP Rocket as your WordPress caching plugin.
Get Started With WP Rocket!
You can get the premium version of the WP Rocket WordPress plugin from below.
We hope you have found this article helpful and enjoyed the read. If you did, please consider sharing this post with your friends and fellow bloggers on social media. It will help someone looking for a WordPress caching plugin.
You can always check out our blog for more WordPress product reviews, tutorials, etc.