Best WordPress Speed Optimization Plugins in 2022

If you want to boost the speed of your WordPress website, the best place to start is by choosing a fast WordPress hosting. However, if you already have fast and reliable hosting, there are many helpful speed optimization and performance-boosting plugins you can use. You need the latest WordPress speed optimization and performance plugins to ensure the optimal functioning of your site and attract more visitors.

The speed of your website is highly essential, as it plays a crucial role in its ranking. Google uses several criteria to rank websites, with speed and performance being some of the top factors. A smooth web browsing experience will not only improve your search engine ranking but also reduce your bounce rates, as visitors do not spend much time on websites that load slowly.

Hence, it is essential to keep your website at optimal speed and performance at all times. There are hundreds of WordPress Speed Optimization Plugins in the WordPress Store, but not all are created equal. After long hours of research, consultation, and testing, we have compiled a list of the most reliable WordPress performance and speed optimization plugins. Read on to see our top picks.

The Five Best WordPress Speed Optimization Plugins

1.    WP Rocket

Right at the top of our list, we have WP Rocket – one of the most trusted and high-performance speed optimization plugins for WordPress sites. WP Rocket is a caching plugin designed to improve your PageSpeed score, loading time, and optimize your core web vitals. One of the significant attributes of this plugin is its ease of use. It is one of the easiest and most beginner-friendly speed optimization plugins for WordPress sites.

WP Rocket is an all-purpose performance plugin that you can use to implement page caching and other performance optimization tactics. Upon activation, this tool will implement browser caching, page caching, and Gzip compression. The simplicity of the plugin makes it an excellent option for beginners. If this is your first time using a plugin, you will not be intimidated by this tool’s interface.

The developers constantly update the plugin to keep up with the latest web performance requirements. Furthermore, WP Rocket will help save your time, as it delivers results out of the box. The tool does more than 80 percent of the web performance job upon activation, so it requires only a little contribution from your end. With this tool, you will experience better SEO ranking, great first impressions, more conversions, etc.

Key Features

• Improves Google PageSpeed Insights score
• Simple and quick setup
• Cutting-edge technology for optimizing site speed
• User-friendly interface
• Gzip compression
• Cache optimization
• Lazy load photos and videos
• Database optimization
• Heartbeat API control
• Code Minification

Pricing

• Single: This plan costs $49.00 per year for one website.
• Plus: This plan costs $99.00 per year for three websites.
• Infinite: This plan costs $249.00 per year for unlimited websites.

2.    Perfmatters

Next up, we have Perfmatters – a WordPress performance plugin designed to reduce your bounce rates and increase your conversions. One of the culprits for slow WordPress sites is heavy and/or too many plugins. That is why it is always recommended to install only lightweight plugins and themes on your website. Perfmatters is a super lightweight plugin, the first step to resolving the issue of a sluggish website.

This tool was designed by web performance geeks to help enhance the speed and performance of your WordPress website. Upon installation, this tool will execute some vital tasks to help free your website and improve its speed. It will reduce the unwanted load from the system, remove unused system files, and boost your website’s core.

With its deep optimization features, every feature or plugin disrupting your site’s speed will no longer have access to do so. The plugin will prevent things such as post revisions, query strings, embeds, different scripts, and unused WordPress system files. Furthermore, Perfmatters oversees lazy loading for photos and videos, data optimization, tweaking or deactivating the heartbeat API, and CDN integration & customization.

However, despite removing unused files and preventing unnecessary features, Perfmatters does not interfere with other cache optimization plugins. It works with a wide variety of themes and plugins, ensuring your website runs smoothly and loads faster.

Key Features

• Simple user interface and easy dashboard
• Reduces HTTP requests to improve speed
• Lightweight code
• Frequent updates
• Advanced script manager
• Disables query strings, emojis, embeds, dash icons, etc.
• Lazy loading for videos and images
• Disable/limit post revisions

Pricing

• Personal: This plan costs $24.95 per year for one website.
• Business: This plan costs $54.95 per year for three websites.
• Ultimate: This plan is $124.95 per year for unlimited sites.

3.    WP Fastest Cache

Are you looking for the best plugin to significantly ramp up your website’s speed and performance? If so, WP Fastest Cache is one of the best tools to consider. With more than one million downloads, this plugin is ubiquitous amongst many WordPress sites. This tool focuses on caching and comes with a wide variety of features to boost your site’s speed.

Another thing that makes this plugin common among many users is its ease of use. You can activate page caching and other key features to improve your site’s performance and speed by just checking a box. The plugin is available in free and paid versions. The free version comes with many mouthwatering features, including browser caching, Gzip compression, the option to disable WordPress emojis, CDN integration, basic minification for CSS & HTML, etc.

If you want advanced features, you should opt for the premium package. The premium package includes features like database optimization, image optimization, lazy loading, etc. It has a setup wizard, making it easy to install on any WordPress site.

Key Features

• Desktop, mobile, and widget cache
• Minify HTML, HTML Plus, CSS, CSS Plus, JavaScript, and JavaScript Plus
• Image optimization
• Gzip
• Browser caching
• Delete cache logs
• Cache statistics
• Lazy load
• Convert WebP

Pricing

• Free Plan
• Bronze: This plan costs $49.99 for one license (one-time payment)
• Silver: This plan costs $125.00 for three licenses (one-time payment)
• Gold: This plan costs $175.00 for five licenses (one-time payment).

4.    W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is one of the most trusted plugins in the WordPress Store. It is widely used and highly effective at boosting the speed and performance of WordPress websites. W3 Total Cache enhances your site’s Core Web Vitals, SEO, and overall user experience by reducing load times and boosting site performance. The tool leverages features such as CDN integrations and the latest best practices to enhance a site’s speed and performance.

This plugin comes with essential features like browser caching, database caching, lazy loading, mobile caching, CDN services, and code minification to help speed up WordPress sites. However, this is not the best plugin for beginners, as it comes with sophisticated and advanced settings. If you must use it as a beginner, we recommend sticking with the preset defaults, leaving the advanced settings for professionals.

W3 Total Cache flags itself as the total performance solution for optimizing WP sites. It is trusted by millions of web developers, publishers, and web hosts across the globe. The tool delivers up to 80 percent bandwidth savings when minifying CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files. It greatly improves SERP rankings, especially for mobile-responsive sites and websites that use Secure Socket Layer (SSL).

Key Features

• Caching statistics
• Fragment caching
• Page cache
• Gzip compression
• CDN support
• Limited minification support
• 10x speed improvement
• Easy setup with hosting
• Caching of search result pages
• Database and object caching
• Compatible with shared hosting.

Pricing

• Free Plan
• Pro – $8.25 per month (billed annually).

5.    WP-Optimize

WP-Optimized also made it to our list of the best WordPress speed optimization and performance plugins. This plugin has more than one million active installations because of its ease of use, effectiveness, and immense features. WP-Optimized is an all-in-one performance plugin that cleans your database, caches your website, and compresses your images. They built their cache features around the fastest caching engine in the world.

If you are looking for a simple tool to keep your website perfectly optimized, fast, and smooth, this is one of the best plugins to consider. In addition to cleaning & optimizing your database and compressing your images, this tool allows you to synchronize and minify CSS and JavaScript.

The free version offers a wide variety of features to enhance the performance of your site. However, the premium version has additional functionalities like preload key requests, optimization preview, lazy loading, etc. WP-Optimize helps to make space by removing unnecessary post revisions, which helps to increase speed and efficiency.

Key Features

• Clean and optimize your database
• Image compression
• Page cache
• Removes unnecessary data
• Automatic weekly cleanups
• Combine and minify CSS and JavaScript
• Gzip compression
• Optimization preview
• Lazy loading

Pricing

• Free Plan
• Premium – $49.00 per year

Tips for Boosting Your Site’s Performance and Speed

In addition to using the best performance and speed optimization plugin, you have a role to play in the speed and performance of your site. Here are some tips to help boost your site’s speed.

• Use Light Plugins and Themes: The amount of code a theme or plugin uses determines how heavy it is. Installing many heavy plugins and themes can significantly slow down a site. Hence, you should always use lightweight templates, themes, and extensions.
• Install Only Necessary Plugins: Some site owners install almost any WordPress plugin they come across. That is a bad practice that could affect your site’s performance and speed. Install only the plugins and add-ons you need. Remove or uninstall plugins that you no longer use.
• Use the Best Hosting: Regardless of how you optimize your website, it will never perform well if it is not hosted on quality servers. Hence, ensure you work with the best hosting provider possible.

Read more about WordPress & WordPress plugins at  our “Web” Category

Conclusion

Improving performance and speed is highly essential for every successful website. A slow website will result in higher bounce rates and reduced conversion rates. Your loyal customer or visitor base will also reduce, as no one would want to return to a website that takes forever to load. However, you can rely on the plugins reviewed in this guide, as they are designed to increase the speed and performance of your WordPress website.

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