In this article, I will review one of the more popular WordPress Cache Plugins – WP Rocket. It is a paid plugin, so the question is, is it worth it? And should you buy it over other free alternatives like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache? Read the in-depth WP Rocket review below to know more.
WP Rocket was launched in 2013 into a market with good free cache plugin alternatives. But it has, in a short span of time, acquired a significant share of the WordPress Cache plugin market due to its performance and ease of use.
Today, WP Rocket is one of the top plugins for WordPress, ahead of the free alternatives.
An Overview of WP Rocket
WP Rocket is, at its core, a caching plugin. The plugin will help you speed up your website by creating cached versions of your pages and files.
But it can do more than cache pages. It also includes many tools to help you optimize your website’s performance. WP Rocket provides these features:
- Minifying JavaScript and CSS
- Eliminate Render blocking CSS/JS
- Preloading of Cache files and fonts
- Lazy loading of images and delivery of WebP images, if available
- Integrations with CDN
- Clean up and Optimize the Database
- Control WordPress Heartbeat API
Configuring these features will help speed up your WordPress website and reduce page load times. Improved page load times mean better core web vitals, which can help your page ranking.
How to Install WP Rocket Plugin
The steps to install WP Rocket are no different from any other third-party plugin. If you haven’t done it before, here are the steps to follow to install WP Rocket:
- Download the WP Rocket plugin from the WP Rocket website.
- Log into your WordPress dashboard and go to the “Plugins” page.
- Click the “Add New” button to upload the WP Rocket plugin file.
- Activate the plugin and click the “WP Rocket” tab in the top navigation bar or the left-hand menu under Settings.
- Configure the plugin as outlined in the next section and click the “Save” button.
- WP Rocket will now be live on your website, delivering caching and optimization features that you have configured. Test the speed of your website and see the improvement in speed.
WP Rocket Features and Configuration
On activation, WP Rocket enables the following features by default:
- Caching of Pages and Browser Caching
- GZIP Compression – as the name suggests, compression of files to make them smaller
- Cross-Origin Support for Web fonts
- Support for WooCommerce due to the dynamic nature of shopping carts
- Optimization of Google fonts
The remaining features must be configured via the WP Rocket Settings page.
I will go through all the features one by one in this WP Rocket plugin review. Caching your website’s pages is its primary feature, so let’s get started with it.
Caching Web Pages
Caching is usually one of the quickest ways to speed up a WordPress website. If you are not familiar with caching, you can read this article on WordPress caching.
Once active, WP Rocket will generate all the web pages for your website and store them as HTML files in the cache.
When visitors navigate to your website, they are presented with the web page from the cache. This eliminates all the server-side processing that usually takes place.
In the Cache tab, you can configure WP Rocket to:
- Enable caching for mobile pages
- Enable caching for Logged in Users. This is not required unless your site is a membership site with user-specific content.
- Cache Duration – to clear the cache at periodic intervals and refresh with the latest content
File Optimization
You can configure the Minification and Combining of JavaScript (JS) and CSS files in this tab. This will help you reduce the size of the JS and CSS files making your web pages lighter and faster to load.
You also have the option to defer the loading of JavaScript. What this does is it delays the loading of JavaScript till there is user interaction. This helps the page load faster, allowing visitors to see the page and interact more quicker.
This improves your Core Web Vitals as well.
Media
You can activate Lazy load for images in this settings tab. This will limit the loading of images on the page to only those within the browser viewport. Images below the viewport are not loaded upfront. This again reduces page size and improves load times.
The rest of the images on the page will load as you scroll down, and the images come into the viewport.
Preload
There are a few Preload options to configure:
- Preload Cache: This will use your sitemap to identify the pages on your website. It will preload the cache by emulating a visit to all the pages.
- Preload Fonts: Fonts load when referenced in the CSS file. Preload fonts feature allows you to start loading fonts upfront instead of later. This saves loading time.
- Fonts must be self-hosted on your server or CDN for this to work.
- Avoid specifying many fonts to preload. Limit to primary fonts used on the website.
- Preload Links: If a visitor hovers over a link on a page, the linked page will generate in the background. If the user clicks on the link, the page will load faster since some of the page load work is already done.
- Preload DNS Requests: If you load fonts and images from an external server. Then, every external domain requires a DNS lookup or resolution. You can activate this option and specify the external domains to prefetch. This will complete the DNS lookups upfront and save time loading the external files.
Database
This option is all about cleaning and optimizing your database for performance. You can choose to clean up your post revisions and drafts, spam comments, and optimize the tables. You can also schedule this process to execute periodically.
CDN
This feature allows you to integrate a CDN with WP Rocket. A CDN will further cache your web pages at edge servers worldwide. In addition, a Visitor will be served cached pages from the nearest edge server instead of your server. This further reduces load times due to the shorter distance to the server.
You also have an Add-on to integrate Cloudflare with WP Rocket.
Related Article: What is a CDN Server and Why WordPress Sites Need Them
Heartbeat
The WordPress heartbeat is an API for real-time syncing between the server and the browser. This helps autosave posts, notifications, and real-time data on dashboards.
This API runs every 15-60 seconds. The Control Heartbeat function of WP Rocket will reduce the frequency of the API to run every 2 minutes. This helps reduce the consumption of server resources.
Avoid disabling the heartbeat function unless you know what you are doing.
Optimizing Google Fonts
Google fonts is one of the most common third-party resources used by websites. Websites connect to the Google font CDN and download the required fonts to display a page.
You can also opt to self-host Google fonts on your server, which is one of the recommendations to speed up websites. WP Rocket, though, does not support the self-hosting of fonts. This would have been an excellent feature to have. I have implemented this on sites and found it delivers better load times.
What WP Rocket has done instead is to include a feature to optimize the font delivery from Google font CDN. This feature reduces the number of HTTP requests to Google fonts. It also loads the fonts asynchronously without render blocking.
Whether you self-host or load from Google font CDN, limit the number of fonts you use on the website. The more fonts you use, the more time it takes to load, which will be inefficient.
Add-Ons
The Add Ons section of the WP Rocket admin provides quick configuration of integrations for media and CDN.
- The WebP compatibility allows you to turn on the feature of serving WebP images to your visitors instead of JPGs or PNGs. WebP is a new picture format that is increasingly becoming popular for the web because of its smaller size while retaining quality. Do note that WP Rocket will not convert the existing images to WebP. You must use a tool like Imagify or Shortpixel to convert images to WebP. WP Rocket will only create a cache and serve the images to your visitors.
- The Cloudflare and Sucuri Add-on allow you to quickly integrate with these tools and clear their respective caches when you clear the WP Rocket Cache.
Documentation and Support
One of the reasons why sometimes good products don’t do well in the market is the lack of good documentation. As a result, people can’t figure out how to get the best out of the product, or instructions are unclear.
WP Rocket scores very well on the documentation front, and this is one of its strengths. Here are some of the positive aspects:
- In-App Help: The WP Rocket panel within WordPress includes a help panel. You can search for issues and view solutions within the panel. This is a handy feature, and most users will love this.
- They also have extra documentation on their website, including hosting compatibility information.
WP Rocket Pricing
WP Rocket comes with three licensing options costing:
- $59 for one website,
- $119 for three websites and
- $299 for unlimited websites
The license cost is yearly, and there is no difference in feature set across the licenses. With an active license, you will get product updates and support to resolve any issues.
The WP Rocket plugin will still work after expiry, but you will only get updates or support if you renew.
No free trial is available for WP Rocket, but you have a 14-day refund policy. This allows you to try the plugin in this time window.
WP Rocket usually has deals or discounts around Spring, Halloween, and Black Friday. At other times, new customers might be able to get 10% off if they sign up for their newsletter.
WP Rocket vs W3 Total Cache vs WP Super Cache vs WP Fastest Cache
While WP Rocket may be a popular caching plugin, there are a few other plugins that you may want to consider.
- WP Super Cache: WP Super Cache is a free caching plugin for WordPress. It has fewer features than WP Rocket, but it is a good choice for starting.
- W3 Total Cache: W3 Total Cache is another popular caching plugin for WordPress. It is more powerful than WP Super Cache but is more complicated to use and has a steeper learning curve. This is one I recommend for the more technically inclined.
- WP Fastest Cache: WP Fastest Cache is a caching plugin with a free and premium option. It is easy to use, but the free version does not have as many features as WP Rocket. You must buy the Premium version to get the full feature set comparable with WP Rocket.
WP Rocket Pros and Cons
Let us take a quick look at some of the Pros and Cons of WP Rocket.
Pros
- Easy to Use Interface, especially for beginners
- Simple to Configure
- Extra WordPress Speed optimization features
- Faster Website Loading Times
- Good Support and Documentation
Cons
- The Cost (annual subscription plan with no lifetime plan option)
- No self-hosting of Google fonts, though it does offer an Optimize Google fonts feature
WP Rocket Review: Wrapping Up
WP Rocket does an excellent job of caching your web pages. It has even more features to help optimize your speed, which is a plus and delivers a good performance boost for a website.
Yes, it is a premium plugin with a yearly subscription fee. But if you are in the market for an effective plugin that is easy to install and use, WP Rocket ticks the boxes.
At the end of the day, the simplicity and ease of use of WP Rocket are its USP and make it a popular choice.
If you are a blogger or are setting up an eCommerce store, you want to spend more time on work that will help the site grow. And less on technical aspects of the website. This is where WP Rocket can help deliver better performance with minimal setup.
Check out WP Rocket today and see how it makes a difference to your website’s performance!
