Are you searching for an honest WP Rocket review?
Then you are in the right place.
I have tested this plugin for on this. I am still using it and sharing my experience with you. Check out this post for a complete review of WP Rocket and see whether it is the best WordPress caching plugin.
WP Rocket Review: Best Caching Plugin
Everyone loves fast-loading sites. Be it the visitor or Google. Also, site speed is one of the ranking factors.
If your website is loading slowly it could:
- Affect search ranking
- Increase the bounce rate
- Bad user experience
- Affect your earnings and business.
There are two important things you should do to increase the site speed.
- Choose the fastest web host.
- Install the Cache plugin.
Though there are many plugins available in the market, WP Rocket is the best WordPress caching plugin.
In this post, you can expect a detailed review of WP Rocket along with its important settings and main features of it.
About WP Rocket
WP Rocket is the best WordPress cache plugin that helps you optimize and speed up your WordPress site.
It was launched in 2013. With its minimal and great features, it became the market leader. As of now, it powers more than 900,000 websites.
To know how WP Rocket works, you should know about WordPress Caching.
What Is WordPress Caching?
Whenever someone comes to visit your website, data is transferred between the server and the visitor’s device.
These data are important website files that load up on the client screen.
If the files are huge it will take a lot of time since web pages are dynamically generated each time a request is made.
Enabling caching on your site helps you create a static version of your site.
This reduces the loading time and speeds up the site since it takes only less amount of time to load a static compared to a dynamically created site.
Apart from site loading time, the user will not experience any other difference. Whenever you’ll make some changes to the website like changing the design or publishing new content the cache will be refreshed.
How To Enable WordPress Caching?
There are two ways to enable caching on your website.
Get a Web Host that gives an inbuilt caching system.
Get a caching plugin.
It is good to get a caching plugin like WP Rocket since most of the hosting providers do not inbuilt caching systems.
Can WP-Rocket Speed Up WordPress Websites?
WP Rocket can do more than just increase the site speed. In short, I can say that it will increase your site speed.
For testing, I have set up a few test sites with the plugin with a lot of images and content and just look at the results I got after using WP-Rocket.
How to Speed up your WordPress Site With WP Rocket in Less Than 5 Minutes
You have seen the results of our test site above. To achieve the same on your website, follow the steps below:
Install and Activate the Plugin
You can activate the plugin by following the steps below:
- Get WP Rocket
- From the dashboard of your site, click on Plugins -> Add New.
- Click on Upload and then click on Activate.
WP Rocket will start caching your website now.
Configure File Optimization
Follow the steps below to enable file optimization:
- Click on Settings from the dashboard of your site.
- Select WP Rocket.
- Click on the “File Optimization” tab.
On the File Optimization tab, you can minify and combine different types of files namely HTML, CSS, and JS.
You want to set the following options:
- Minify HTML.
- Combine Google Fonts files.
- Remove query strings from static resources.
- Minify CSS files.
- Combine CSS files.
- Optimize CSS delivery.
- Minify JavaScript files.
- Combine JavaScript files.
- Load JavaScript deferred.
- Safe mode for jQuery.
Click on “Save Changes” after enabling all the options.
Minifying removes unnecessary white space from files.
The combining option combines all the javascript files. If your site has more javascript it will be combined as a single one.
Control Your Heartbeat
All the themes, plugins, and core files use an API called Heartbeat through which it makes requests to your server.
When the number of requests increases, the performance of your site is impacted.
In WP Rocket, you can control the Heartbeat.
You just need to enable the option “Control Heartbeat” and set it to “Reduce activity” on each option (behavior in the backend, behavior in the post editor, behavior in the front).
At last click on save changes.
With these important settings, you will be able to load your site faster.
Let us move to the important part of the WP Rocket review post.
WP-Rocket Review – Best Features
When compared to other plugins, WP Rocket has more features which makes it the best WordPress cache plugin.
The Best Features of WP Rocket are
- CSS & HTML compression
- Javascript compression and delivery optimizer
- Separate cache files for mobile devices
- File optimization
- Ability to combine CSS, HTML, and Javascript respectively
- Ability to remove query strings
- Safe mode for jQuery
- Lazy load for images and Iframes
- Sitemap-based cache preloading
- Bot-based cache preload
- Advanced cache rules
- GZIP compression
Let us take a look at the favorite portions of WP Rocket
Cache Exclusion
The interface of the WP Rocket is very easy to set up the advanced caching options.
With this option, you can exclude certain pages or posts from being cached.
You can also set up the cookies from being cached.
Extensive Documentation
WP Rocket not only provides the best support but also has extensive documentation available within the plugin.
You can search for help articles within the dashboard of your WordPress site.
Cache Preloading
If you use caching, you need to wait till that particular page is visited so that the cache will be built.
With cache preloading, the cache is built even before that particular page is visited.
This makes the site load very fast.
With WP Rocket, you can enable this option with just a click.
Database Optimization
With the increasing content and revisions of your posts, the database of your website builds up. With WP Rocket, you can easily clean out those unwanted databases.
You can optimize the database just by selecting the options and clicking the “Optimize” button.
Before running the optimization of your database it is always good to take a backup of it. In case anything goes wrong, you can always restore the database.
Media Files Loaded Only When Needed
WP Rocket includes a smart set of options to tweak the display of images and iframes on your site.
With our LazyLoad, you can defer the loading of images or iframes, leaving them ”off-screen” until the users need them.
Lazy-loading is a brilliant way of optimizing both perceived and real performance. It also saves the users bandwidth because they won’t have to download all your images!
If your site uses WebP images, WP Rocket can also create a separate cache file to serve those, if needed.
WP Rocket Review – Pricing
Unlike other plugins, WP Rocket does not offer a free plugin with limited features and then a Pro version with premium features.
WP Rocket is a premium plugin. You cannot make a great plugin for free.
There are 3 plans:
- $59 for one site.
- $119 for 3 websites.
- $299 for unlimited sites.
All plans include updates and support for 1 year from the date of purchase. After that, you can renew it with a 30% discount.
WP Rocket Review – Pros and Cons
Pros
Let us see the pros of using WP Rocket.
Automatic speed optimization
Your site website will load faster once you have activated the plugin since it comes with pre-set settings.
Add-Ons
The plugin has many add-ons such as varnish cache and Cloudflare CDN add-on which further help you purge cache every time you publish a post on the Nginx server
It also connects the Cloudflare cache directly to your site cache.
Support
You will get excellent support from their support team who are well equipped with the latest technology and knowledge.
Cons Of the WP Rocket Plugin
Let us see the cons of WP Rocket.
No Free Version
It does not have a free version and its beginner plan of $49 cannot be afforded by a beginner.
Overwhelming
WP Rocket is not just a caching plugin, it is a complete speed optimization plugin.
You need to have some technical knowledge to play with the advanced options on the plugin.
Final words about WP Rocket Review
With all the options and features available on the plugin, I must say that WP Rocket is the best plugin available in the market.
It does not require any complex settings. You just need to activate it and your site will start to load faster.
I hope this WP Rocket review helped you in choosing the right plugin for your site.
Try it and you will not regret buying it.
WP Rocket Review: Is It The Best Caching Plugin?
- Features
- Ease Of Use
- Performance
- Support
- Pricing
Summary
WP Rocket is not just a caching plugin, it is a complete speed optimization plugin. With all the options and features available on the plugin, I must say that WP Rocket is the best plugin available in the market.
