WP Rocket is a popular plugin for improving WordPress performance.
However, it is a paid plugin, costing around $49, and the site does a great job ( visit here )
The question is?
- Is it better than WP Super Cache or W3 Total cache?
- Is WP Rocket’s pricing reasonable?
We’ll find the answers to all these questions in this detailed WP Rocket review.
Before this, we all know that a fast loading website not only provides a good user experience but also helps in getting better rankings.
For WordPress, there are many plugins that can be used to speed up the loading of your blog, and one of the most common types of plugins is a cache plugin. A cache plugin creates a cache for the static files of your blog posts, and when a user visits the post, it directly fetches the content from the cache folder.
This saves a lot of resources by not having to run all the PHP queries and access the database to regenerate and publish the same article. In addition, articles published with cache will load faster than without cache.
I won’t dive into the more technical aspects of WordPress caching, but what you should know is this:
It is essential to install a caching plugin on your WordPress blog. It will allow you to significantly increase WordPress loading speed and reduce the load on your server. The following infographic will help you understand how WordPress typically handles page requests.
There are various caching plugins (both free and paid) available nowadays and choosing the right one is important as it can save you from the hassles of configuration and make your WordPress blog’s speed and performance highly optimized .
Unlike in the past, now WordPress is a huge commercial market and all plugin developers are competing to turn their free plugins into products.
For example, one of the most popular cache plugins, W3Total cache, started offering Pro features/support that unlocks many advanced features, while another paid cache plugin called WP Rocket entered the market, which is probably the first WordPress cache plugin released as a premium plugin on the market.
When it comes to WordPress caching plugins, there are many free options, such as:
- W3 Total Cache
- WP Super Cache
- WP Fastest Cache
- Automatic Optimization
When the market is flooded with a large number of similar free plugins, it becomes very difficult for paid plugins to survive. It is difficult for paid plugins to find their own place in the market. I have always been a loyal user of W3Total Cache and WP Super Cache plugins.
I’ve been hearing great things about WP Rocket over the past few months, so I decided to give it a try to see how it performs. I contacted the WP Rocket team and requested a review license so that I could do a head-to-head comparison between W3 Total cache and WP Rocket to see if this premium caching plugin is really worth the money.
Prepare W3 Total Cache and WP Rocket plugins:
ShoutMeLoud is already highly optimized and the loading time is not even a second. I felt that there was no point in doing this test on ShoutMeLoud. For this purpose, I chose a blog that is less optimized and has a longer loading time. One of the blogs in our network is “ sidelineplay.com ” which is quite outdated in terms of theme and optimization, and we were previously using W3 Total Cache plugin.
To start comparing the two plugins, I first tested the loading time of sidelineplay.com on GTMetrix and tools.pingdom.com :. Here are the results using the W3 Total Cache plugin:
From the above results we can see that:
The page size is over 1.34+ MB and the overall performance is poor. This is why I needed to test WP Rocket, otherwise it would not be a good comparison.
After testing the loading time of the site, I completely uninstalled W3 Total Cache.
- Cache deleted
- Disable all cache options.
- Disabling and uninstalling plugins
- Deleting W3 Total configuration files via FTP
- Remove entries from .htaccess file
- Also used Advanced Database Cleaner to remove orphan tables created by W3 Total Cache
The idea is to delete all files related to W3 Total cache and test the website performance using WP Rocket cache plugin.
Configure WP Rocket plugin:
I have used WordPress cache plugins such as W3 Total cache and WP Super cache for many years. I thought that configuring WP Rocket plugin would be time-consuming, but I was surprised because WP Rocket is probably the easiest to configure of all WordPress cache plugins. Even if you have no technical knowledge, you can complete the configuration in seconds. You can access the configuration panel through Settings > WP Rocket.
The first screen is the basic setup, and I ignored the shrink and connect options for this test.
The only options I have enabled in the interface above are lazy loading of images, mobile caching, and increasing the cache purge lifespan to 96 hours. Once you activate the WP Rocket plugin, it will automatically take care of most of the optimization and caching options.
Here are the results from Pingdom and GTmetrix after enabling the basic settings. To make sure the page was cached, I opened the site in another browser and browsed 10-12 pages to make sure the page was cached.
The results so far were satisfying and I decided to enable the file optimization feature to see how it improves my loading times. I just enabled all three options for file optimization:
The performance report this time is much better than last time, and I can see a pretty big difference in the load time and total number of requests. Here are the final load times for the site:
Note: I haven’t touched on the advanced settings yet, which offer features like “Prefetch DNS requests”, “CDN”, etc. Comparing the two plugins, I found a very interesting observation: WP Rocket fixes most of the performance issues that should have been fixed by a caching plugin.
Conclusion: Is WP Rocket Worth It?
When I started doing this test, I wasn’t expecting to see such a huge difference since W3 Total Cache plugin has excellent features, but the test results proved me completely wrong.
In my tests, I found that WP Rocket performed better than W3 Total cache, and what I liked most about WP-Rocket was how easy it was to set up. In fact, it was even better than WP Super cache and Auto-Optimize plugins.
Overall, WP Rocket is worth buying.
WP Rocket Price:
A personal license of the WP Rocket plugin costs just $49 and you can set it up in 3-4 minutes.
You will also get support from their team and most importantly the loading time of your WordPress blog will be faster.
The latest version of WP Rocket adds the ability to optimize your database. This is a smart move because a bloated database can slow down your WordPress blog.
Last but not least, if you are not satisfied with the plugin, you can get a refund at any time within 30 days.
FAQ
How do I update WP Rocket?
Whenever a new version is released, you will get an option in your WordPress dashboard to update the WP rocket plugin.
Does WP Rocket have a free version?
WP Rocket is a premium caching plugin that currently doesn’t have a free version. However, they offer a 14-day money-back guarantee so you can get a refund if you’re not satisfied with the plugin.
What about Nulled WP Rocket?
There are websites that offer invalid WP-rocket plugins. Do not use it as it contains malware that may cause you to lose access to your website in the future. These websites download paid plugins and offer them for free so that they can add backlinks or redirect your website in the future for profit. Please try to avoid using invalid versions of WP-rocket.
Lastly, I’d like to know which caching plugin are you using on your blog?
In the meantime, I recommend you to get a single-site license for the WP Rocket plugin and try it on your blog and notice the difference.
Please test your site loading time with tools.pingdom.com using your current configuration, then follow my steps and notice the difference using WP Rocket.
If you don’t like it, you still have 30 days to request a refund. All in all, it’s a win-win for you.
Disclosure: Some of the links in this article contain affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you click through to visit us, at no extra cost to you. See how SidelinePlay is funded, why it’s important, and how you can support us.
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