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Best WordPress Caching Plugins 2018

There are so many candidates for being the best WordPress Caching plugin in 2018.

In this article, I will try my best to narrow down the list for you.

There are a couple of reasons why you should use WordPress caching plugin to speed up your WordPress website.

Two of the most important ones are because it affects the user experience and your SEO ranking.

Firstly, statistics says that if your website takes longer than 3 seconds to load then the visitor will abandon.

Another is if Google detects that your website takes a lot of time to load then it would punish your SEO ranking.

I guess we could all agree that nobody likes a slow loading website.

Fortunately, there are WordPress caching plugins that could speed up your website by simply enabling its features.

Before we get into the list, let’s first find out how the WordPress caching plugin works.

What does WordPress caching plugin do?

Basically a WordPress caching plugin creates a static HTML version of your pages and posts.

They then serve this static HTML file to the visitor instead of running the PHP codes and querying the SQL database every time someone visits your website.

This minimizes the CPU and RAM consumptions thus improving performance. Especially when multiple people are accessing your website at the same time.

Here are the best WordPress caching plugins in 2018.

1. WP Rocket

WP Rocket is currently considered as the best premium WordPress caching plugin.

It is literally the most complete and featured pack caching plugin there is.

Even if you combine the features of its top 3 competitors. There would still be features that only WP Rocket has.

The best thing about WP Rocket is that even if it has a lot of features. It doesn’t have a convoluted dashboard unlike its competitors.

WP Rocket starts optimizing your website as soon you activated it.

Some of the key features of WP Rocket are:

  1. Page Caching
  2. Cache Preloading
  3. HTML, JS and CSS Minification
  4. LazyLoad
  5. GZIP Compression
  6. Browser Caching
  7. Sitemap Preloading
  8. DNS Prefetching
  9. Defer JS Loading

WP Rocket is currently being used by over 530,000+ WordPress websites.

2. WP Fastest Cache

The WP Fastest Cache found itself a sweet spot between being simple and yet powerful at the same time.

The way WP Fastest Cache works is very similar to how other WordPress caching plugin works.

It creates a static HTML file which is then served to the visitors instead of running the PHP codes and querying to the SQL database all the time.

This minimizes the CPU and RAM usage on the server thus improving performance.

To get access on all the features of WP Fastest Cache. You will need to buy the premium version.

Some of the key features of WP Fastest Cache are:

  1. Desktop Cache
  2. Mobile Cache
  3. HTML, JS and CSS Minify
  4. Combine CSS
  5. GZIP
  6. Browser Caching
  7. Image Optimization
  8. Lazy Load
  9. Render Blocking JS

Currently, WP Fastest Cache have over 700,000+ downloads and installations.

3. WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache is a one of the most popular WordPress caching plugins in the WordPress plugin repository.

It has been downloaded over 25+ million times. And it currently has over 2+ million active installations.

Similar to other caching plugins. WP Super Cache also create a static HTML to be served to the visitors.

WP Super Cache can serve cache in 3 ways namely Expert, Simple and WP-Cache caching.

Some of the key features of WP Super Cache are:

  1. CDN Support
  2. Mutiple Caching Options
  3. Page Compression
  4. Garbage Collection
  5. Preloading
  6. Rest API Support
  7. Custom Caching

WP Super Cache also offers pretty advanced capabilities like for instance in troubleshooting.

It does require you to edit some files in the WordPress in order to do them.

4. W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is another popular WordPress caching plugin especially among developers.

This plugin boasts to improve SEO and user experience by increasing the website speed.

In addition to this, it will also reduce download times via the use of services like CDN.

W3 Total Cache is also the only agnostic WordPress Performance Optimization framework endorsed by many web developers and web hosts.

Some of the key features of W3 Total Cache are:

  1. CDN Support
  2. Accelerated Mobile Pages Support
  3. SSL Support
  4. Multiple Caching Support
  5. HTML, JS and CSS Minification
  6. Browsing Caching
  7. Non-Blocking JS
  8. WP-CLI Support
  9. Reverse Proxy Integration

W3 Total Cache currently has over 1+ million active installations.

5. LiteSpeed Cache

LiteSpeed Cache is a rising star in the WordPress caching plugins lineup.

It currently has over 2+ million downloads and has over 300,000+ active installations.

The best thing about LiteSpeed is it retains its 5 star rating even though it has this large number of downloads.

LiteSpeed Cache is an all-in-one site acceleration plugin which features a server-level of caching. It also has a lot of other optimization features available.

Some of the key features of LiteSpeed Cache are:

  1. WooCommerce Compatible
  2. bbPress Compatible
  3. SEO Yoast Compatible
  4. Object Cache
  5. Image Optimization
  6. Minify CSS, JS and HTML
  7. Minify Inline CSS and JS
  8. Automatically Generate Critical CSS
  9. LazyLoad

6. Autoptimize + Cache Enabler

This one in order to be fully effective will require installation of 2 lightweight plugins.

Both plugins are also highly recommended by the WordPress plugins community.

Basically Autoptimize will handle the optimization features like minification. And Cache Enabler will handle the caching functionality.

They work pretty well together and currently the setup I am using on this website.

Autoptimize user interface is very intuitive. All the settings you need to enable is in one tab.

It is one of the user friendliest plugin I have ever used.

The Cache Enabler user interface is very clean as well. All the setting options are in one page.

Cache Enabler is developed by KeyCDN which is one of the best CDN service provider out there.

Some of the key features of Autoptimize are:

  1. CSS, JS and HTML Minification
  2. Image Optimization
  3. Multiple Image Optimization Quality
  4. Inline CSS
  5. CDN Support
  6. Async JS
  7. Remove WP Emojis

Some of the key features of Cache Enabler are:

  1. Cache Expiry Time
  2. Multiple Clearing Cache Options
  3. Cache Minification
  4. Cache Exclusions

7. Comet Cache

Comet Cache is another rising star WordPress caching plugin. It is quiet famous because of its easy two-minute setup time.

The Comet Cache takes a snapshot of every page or post in your website and serve it later as static html.

The plugin also uses advanced techniques on whether to serve the cache page or not. Basically by default the Comet Cache does not serve cache version to a logged in user.

Comet Cache boasts that their control panel is simple and well-documented.

Some key features of Comet Cache are:

  1. Automatic Cache Clearing
  2. Client-Side Caching
  3. Apache Optimization
  4. WP-CLI Compatibility
  5. Logged-In User Caching
  6. HTML, CSS and JS Minification
  7. Auto-Cache Engine
  8. Server Load Monitoring
  9. Cache Statistics

8. Hyper Cache

Hyper Cache is a purely PHP based WordPress caching plugin. It is slowly joining the ranks of the elite WordPress caching plugins.

What makes Hyper Cache special is because it is very lite and simple. The reason behind it is because it is designed for hosting with low resources.

After you install Hyper Cache it will have some preset values already enabled. You can use the default settings or you can go ahead and tweak it further.

Some of the key features of Hyper Cache are:

  1. Mobile Aware
  2. HTTPS Ready
  3. bbPress Ready
  4. CDN Support
  5. Browser Caching
  6. Mobile Theme Switch Option

Conclusion

All the above mentioned WordPress caching plugins will enable you to speed up your WordPress almost instantly.

I highly recommend WP Rocket though because of how user friendly it is and how featured pack it is for the price.

If you are in the process of optimizing your WordPress website. You might also want to check out my best image compression plugins and best CDN service provider articles.

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