Any WordPress site owner who keeps an eye on his metrics will tell you one thing: speed is crucial when it comes to attracting and retaining visitors. Increasing your loading times by a second may not seem like a big deal, but it could cost you dearly. With this in mind, implementing a WordPress caching plugin is a no-brainer.
This time around, we’ll be comparing four different caching tools on price, features, ease of use, and (of course) speed. By the time we’re done, you’ll know exactly which solution is right for you. Let’s get cracking!
WP Rocket vs Hummingbird vs WP Fastest Cache vs Comet Cache:
This premium WordPress caching plugin has been making waves in the WordPress community ever since its inception – you could say it’s taken off! Its success is down to remarkable support, thorough documentation, and interesting progress reports.
- Caches each of your pages.
- Uses dedicated crawlers to preload your cache by simulating visits.
- Loads images on request to improve your page load times.
- Automatically minifies your HTML, JavaScript, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) files.
- Optimized for use with Google Fonts.
- Fully compatible with CloudFlare for even faster loading times.
- Supports WordPress Multisite.
Before installing the plugin, the site in question took exactly two seconds to load – that time got shaved down to a lean 0.7 seconds with WP Rocket activated.
That’s a 65% reduction right there, and pretty impressive.(Chart by Visualizer Lite.)
Hummingbird is WPMU DEV’s entry into the WordPress caching wars, and it’s a solid one. This WordPress caching plugin takes ease of use to another level thanks to its detailed performance reports, and the ability to enable each function at the drop of a hat.
- Provides you with a detailed performance report.
- Includes advanced minification features.
- Ability to set the longevity of your cached files in your visitor’s browser.
- Works alongside other WordPress caching solutions.
- Fully compatible with CloudFlare and other major Content Delivery Networks (CDN).
- Supports WooCommerce out of the box.
Activating the plugin with its default options turned on managed to improve their test site’s Google PageSpeed Insights ranking from 52 to 88 out of 100, and cut its load time from 5.88 to 3.63 seconds.
That comes out to a respectable 38.26% decrease in loading speeds.WP Fastest Cache
WP Fastest Cache is a popular free WordPress caching plugin that’s been around for a while. Its design and feature set is simple and functional, but it gets the job done without much fuss.
- Preloads the cache for your entire site so results can be seen right away.
- Enables you to minify both your HTML and CSS.
- Combines CSS and JavaScript files for faster loading times.
- Uses GZIP compression to reduce the size of files sent by your server.
- Supports both browser and desktop caching.
Before applying the plugin, our site took 1.4 seconds to load – not bad. After activating WP Fastest Cache and enabling its basic settings (cache preloading, minification, combined CSS files, and GZIP compression), we reduced that to 0.8 seconds.
A cool 42.85% reduction in a matter of minutes.Comet Cache
Formerly known as ZenCache, this plugin rebranded itself as Comet Cache at the beginning of 2016 at the insistence of ZenDesk – a rather un-zenlike move if we do say so ourselves.
Despite this minor setback, Comet Cache has continued to grow its user base steadily, and development shows no signs of slowing down.
- Simple one-click configuration, preconfigured with the best possible options to maximize speed.
- Automatic caching of your entire site.
- Supports RSS feed caching.
- Ability to manage your cache expiration times.
- GZIP compression.
Our test site dropped from 1.4 to exactly one second in loading times.
That’s a decent 28.57% reduction.Finding the best WordPress caching plugin: Conclusion
All things considered, all of these caching tools offer excellent solutions for WordPress users who have a need for speed – and that should be all of us! They each have their pros and cons, and depending on your specific requirements you may want to choose one over the other.
Let’s recap to see which WordPress caching plugin is the best fit for you:
And lastly, here’s a quick comparison table of the performance numbers that each plugin has given us. And while we’re not saying that these results are anything close to “ultimate benchmark,” it’s still cool to see them all in one place:
| WP Rocket | Hummingbird | WP Fastest Cache | Comet Cache | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No Cache | 2.0s | 5.88s | 1.4s | 1.4s |
| With Cache | 0.7s | 3.63s | 0.8s | 1.0s |
| Difference | -65% | -38.26% | -42.85% | -28.57% |
Layout and presentation by Karol K.
Tom Ewer
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