Many people know about the importance of speed when it comes to websites. In fact, a recent study by Google showed that 47% of people leave a site if it takes over 2 seconds to load.
WP Rocket is a speed booster for a WordPress site. It increases the loading time of web pages and reduces server load by caching static files, such as images, CSS, and JavaScript.
The plugin also allows configuring how many resources are saved in cache per page type or post status. For example, with WP Rocket you can save up to 100 cached items on a homepage but only 4 on an individual blog post.
Besides, WP rocket will speed up your site by running minification for scripts and StyleSheets which helps remove unnecessary spaces between lines of code so they don’t use extra bytes over the bandwidth.
When you are in the business world, every second count! Therefore WP rocket was created to help optimize WordPress sites and make them load faster.
However, this WP Rocket review will show you what wp rocket is, its features in detail, pricing plans, pros/cons of this plugin & finally whether wp rocket should be considered by upstart bloggers who want to increase their WordPress blog speed!
Real Performance Data Using WP Rocket Plugin
Before writing this review of WP Rocket, I have tested the speed on one of my sites using with and without the WP rocket plugin.
I hosted my site on Hostinger and used a Kadence theme with a few other essential plugins and has almost 45 blog posts.
I have tested my site on Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom speed test tools both good for measuring website page loading time.
After using the WP Rocket plugin on my site, I have gotten the below page load score on Google Page Speed Insights. See the screenshot.
It takes 1.4s to fully load on Pingdom speed test tool. See the screenshot below.
So the above speed test reports are great for an established WordPress site. Thanks to the WP Rocket team for developing this Amazon caching plugin.
WP Rocket Before And After Compared
To clarify inquisitive minds about the score before running the site through these tools.
Below I have summarized a report of the changes on the test site before and after optimizing with WP Rocket.
| Before WP Rocket | After WP Rocket | |
|---|---|---|
| Google Page Speed Insights (Desktop) | 86/100 | 99/100 |
| Google Page Speed Insights (Mobile) | 65/100 | 96/100 |
| Pingdom Page Load | 3.4s | 1.4s |
| Pingdom Requests | 32 | 25 |
Core Benefits of WP Rocket Plugin
WP Rocket is a WordPress speed booster plugin that has tremendous benefits like:
- Preloading the home page, allowing for up to 100 cached items. For individual posts and pages, you can cache up to four per post or page.
- Minifying scripts and stylesheets in order to reduce the size of files so your site will load faster over bandwidth (less time spent downloading).
- It caches previously visited URLs so they don’t have to be downloaded again which speeds up your website.
- Speeding up browsing by blocking ads from loading with no type of hassle.
- Improving site performance by combining CSS and JavaScript files so that they load only once instead of loading separately, which will lead to faster visiting the next time around.
- This plugin is easy to use. It helps you figure out what settings you should put on your website faster than before!
- A caching system that stores HTML pages in memory when possible so they load much quicker than before (previously cached), speeding up your website with minimum effort on behalf of the user. This means if visitors come back later, they will be able to see your latest content without having to wait for it to load.
- A CDN (Content Delivery Network) which stores the static files on servers around the world.
Check WP Rocket’s Features & More Benefits
Web Hostings That Well Compatible With WP Rocket Plugin
It is more important to know which WordPress web hosting providers are the best for WordPress even well compatible with the WP Rocket plugin to speed up more than other non-compatible hosting providers.
WP Rocket is well compatible with the following web hosting providers.
WP Rocket is well compatible with almost all popular website hostings. But the above hosting providers are highly recommended because they has huge bandwidth and enough server resources that never cause of slow website loading even server down. So you can use any of them with WP Rocket plugin.
WP Rocket Review: Core Tabs & Features
WP Rocket Dashboard
It has a clean dashboard interface where you will get access to all the WP Rocket features on a single page.
WP Rocket Dashboard also provides data insights about how well your site performs with WP Rocket installed, such as load time analysis report, response speed analytics, etc.
It has an option to manage documentations which are related to WP rocket installation, update, or uninstallation process which guides users through every stage so that they don’t need any assistance from their webmaster or developer team while using this plugin.
Also, you will get an option to activate its license key or connect the rocket plugin with WP rocket account.
From its dashboard, you can easily clean all site cache and start cache preloading with just a single click.
Overall, you will get everything including news and guides related to WP Rocket from this dashboard.
Now, let’s dig into some of the actual settings…
WP Rocket Cache Tab
The WP Rocket cache tab is the first option on the dashboard and it’s where you can configure WP Rocket to serve cached content. Configuring settings for the cache tab of WP Rocket you can speed up site for mobile devices and restricted content on your website and set up cache lifespans.
You will get the following options in the Cache tab.
- Mobile Cache: To speed up your site for a mobile device this option enables by default. But if your theme is not optimized for mobile devices, then you can enable the separate option ‘cache files for mobile device’. Otherwise not.
- User Cache: is a great option when you have user-specific content on your website. You can enable website’s cache for logged-in users.
- Cache Lifespan: This is the most important feature that lets you set a time when a specified lifespan will be deleted. By default, it has 10 hours, which is good.
WP Rocket File Optimization Tab
You can optimize files with the wp rocket File optimization feature. WP Rocket starts by identifying all of your media files and compressing them as much as possible without compromising their quality to save on bandwidth usage.
It can replace JavaScript libraries with minified versions for better performance. It also rewrites the CSS stylesheets into a single file, removes duplicate scripts from HTML pages, and it caches images so they don’t need to be reloaded every time you visit an individual page.
You can customize these features yourself if you want finer control over what’s being optimized or not.
In the file optimization tab, you will get the following options to boost your WordPress speed.
- CSS Files: First enable Minify CSS files option then must enable combine CSS files. I will not recommend enabling the combined CSS option if your site uses HTTP/2. You can also boost the speed of your site by enabling the ‘Optimize CSS delivery’ option.
- JavaScript Files: You can remove white space by enabling minify JavaScript file option. Here do not forget to enable the ‘Combine JavaScript Files’. Additionally, you can enable ‘Load JavaScript Deferred’ that can improve your site’s load time by combining and minimizing JavaScript on the page.
Lastly, you can exclude specific JavaScript files if they the cause of the slow loading of your site. This is a good option for increasing website speed.
WP Rocket Media Tab
WP Rocket is a powerful caching plugin that can speed up your site dramatically. WP Rocket’s Media Tab has the ability to compress all of your images, videos, and audio files before they go live on WordPress.
It includes an intelligent image optimizer that will resize, decompress and optimize JPEG and PNG images without quality loss for better performance while viewing them online.
Plus, it has also a feature that has lazy loading capabilities so you don’t need to specifically upload extensive files in order for them to be loaded quickly when visitors click on them.
This tab is the most important tab for optimizing and boosting the speed of a WordPress site. In this tab, you will get options that are:
- LazyLoad: To improve site speed using this feature you must enable it for the image files. And for the iFrames and videos, you have to enable the next media file option.
- Image Dimensions: Image dimension is one of the most important SEO factors. So if your site has any missing image dimensions, you can enable this feature.
- Embeds: By enabling this feature you can prevent others from embedding content from your site.
- WebP Compatibility: WP Rocket supports the new webP format. So if you want to optimize your site for this file type, enable it in WP Rocket Media tab.
Also, you have an option to exclude any specific file from being caching. For this, you can use the ‘Excluded images or iframes’ box which you will find under the ‘Enable for image’ option.
WP Rocket Preload Tab
WP Rocket has a special tab that you can use to preload content and resources such as sitemap, fonts, links, etc. You will need WP Rocket plugin installed on your website for this feature.
By default, preload cache option is enabled, but you can enable or disable sitemap-based cache preloading. I will recommend enabling this. If you activate this feature, then input your sitemap URL or enable the option ‘Yoast SEO Sitemap’.
The other options in this tab are:
- Preload Links: You can preload all links on your website.
- Prefetch DNS Requests: I highly recommend enabling DNS pre-fetching. It makes external files load faster, especially on mobile devices!
- Preload Fonts: It helps to make the Internet better by making it easier for browsers to load fonts.
WP Rocket Advanced Rules Tab
Using the advanced rules tab, you can set up advanced rules for your WP Rocket plugin.
You can also configure WP Rocket to disable cache invalidation requests based on scheduled events like publishing content at specific times per day or upon commenting with no changes made by other users.
In addition, if you have many plugins installed that make frequent AJAX calls, you may want to exclude those via this rule-set so they don’t count against WP Rocket’s cache.
The advanced rules tab includes the following features:
- Never Cache URL(s): You can exclude sensitive pages like custom login/log out URLs from cache just by simply inputting the URL in this box.
- Never Cache Cookies: To specify full or partial IDs of cookies that prevent a page from getting cached, you can use this option.
- Never Cache User Agent(s): WP Rocket will allow cache invalidation requests from specific browser agents that you can select here.
- Always Purge URL(s): If you want certain URL(s) to always be purged from cache, enter them here and they will never get cached.
- Cache Query String(s): WP Rocket will cache the query string of a URL if you specify it here.
WP Rocket Database Tab
This tab is available for WP Rocket users. It gives you access to all the settings related to your database.
Using the WP rocket database feature, you can clean up your database and keep it optimized. It allows you fully clean post revisions, auto draft, trashed post, spam comments, trashed comments, expired transients, and more.
Besides, you can optimize and reduces the overhead of database tables using this premium feature.
I like its schedule automatic cleanup feature that lets you set daily, weekly or monthly time frames for automatically cleaning up the database. But before using this feature (database feature), you should backup your database. You can use a WordPress backup plugin to complete the database backup process.
WP Rocket CDN Tab
WP Rocket offers a CDN feature for caching and hosting content from WordPress installations.
It works by distributing user requests to one or more servers around the world in order to increase speed and reliability while decreasing load time.
This way, you have an excellent opportunity to serve content close to visitor locations rather than from your own server location which might be far away.
Read: 6 Top CDN Providers Including Free Image CDN Service for WordPress
To find the available Add-ons, click on the addons link or you can find all addons in its addons tab.
WP Rocket CDN feature tab is where you can activate and integrate WP Rocket’s CDN with the selected CDN addons of your choice.
Using this CDN feature you can easily integrate WP Rocket with two Content Delivery Networks that are:
You can integrate any of them that you prefer. You can also integrate Google analytic, Facebook Pixel, and Varnish add-ons to optimize your site speed and getting more benefits.
WP Rocket Heartbeat Tab
WP Rocket heartbeat is an excellent feature. When the Heartbeat feature is enabled on your WP rocket plugin, it periodically checks if your server is alive.
If it detects that your blog is not responding, it will automatically shut down WP Rocket to prevent data loss and downtime. As an additional layer of protection against hackers, you can activate this option without fear as a safeguard from potential attacks on your site or server.
By default, it is enabled, but you can reduce heartbeat activity by changing the frequency option. But remember, If you disable Heartbeat, it could lead to issues with plugins and themes using this API.
WP Rocket Image Optimization
The WP Rocket image optimization tab saves your time by optimizing pictures automatically with no loss of quality or size!
WP Rocket also caches images, so they can be reused in other pages on the same site and reduce time and bandwidth use by loading them only once.
This will improve page loading speed, which is important because Google ranks websites with a fast-loading experience higher than those sites that take forever to load.
To enable WP ROCKET image optimization you need to install IMAGIFY on your website. WP Rocket will automatically detect any IMAGIFY installation and use it to optimize images on the fly!
If you don’t have an installed IMagify plugin, then WP rocket will only store (not optimize) all uploaded images in its cache for reuse.
To manually configure this optimization tab, go to: Settings -> WP Rocket -> Optimize Images Tab then install IMagify plugin.
What is IMagify? IMagify is a WordPress plugin that lets you resize images on your site without affecting the quality. It can do this because it’s smarter than other plugins that shrink or enlarge an image by changing its dimensions, i.e., length and width.
WP Rocket Tools tab
WP Rocket Tools tab is a collection of tools that are designed to help you with your website. You can use this tool tab to export and import settings, and even rollback previous versions.
Using this feature, you can easily download existing customized settings for using other WordPress sites that are WP Rocket-enabled. So it reduces time to configure a new WP rocket plugin on a new site.
WP Rocket Plugin Documentation
It has an extensive video and text documentation library that is referenced as needed. In the WP Rocket tutorial tab, you will get tons of video tutorials that will help you set it up properly. These guides are excellent for both beginners and professionals.
Not only video guides, but it also has totally separate text-based documentation for all features and settings. So you never worry about its guides or tutorial to configure plugin settings and more options.
WP Rocket Best Settings
There are lots of settings to configure the WP Rocket plugin. Some settings can depend on your server and website resource. If your hosting has good resource capability, then you can enable almost all settings of WP Rocket.
But everything has a standard-settings that you should know. WP Rocket’s best settings are suitable for beginners. You can follow the below video tutorial for knowing about the best settings.
WP Rocket Pricing
WP Rocket has three pricing plans. Single plan costs only $49/year for a single site license with a year of customer support and plugin update. Plus plan for up to 3 sites that cost $99/year whereas Infinite plans cost $249/year for unlimited websites with one-year support and version updates.
Besides, the WP Rocket team offers a 30-day money-back guarantee if you are dissatisfied with their plugin to speed up or optimize a website.
If you have any questions related to this plugin’s pricing and plans, you will get all answers from their FAQs section or you can contact them.
Is WP Rocket Worth It?
WP Rocket is an all-in-one caching plugin that accelerates your site and can speed up your blog or website by over 100%.
Using this premium plugin, you will have a much better user experience. It is possible to use the cache settings for mobile browsers as well as bulk delete unneeded files from your server.
One of my favorite features about WP rocket is its ability to clear browser caches automatically while on the fly without having to reload pages manually.
This means that if someone visits one page and then revisits another page, they are viewing previously cached content which will result in super-fast loading times.
In addition, I’m not talking about SEO yet, but there are some benefits for search engine optimization with this plugin. If you’re running a blog and want to rank higher in Google, WP Rocket is something that should be on your checklist.
These benefits are only available for those who have caching plugins installed already, so it’s worth considering whether or not this plugin is the best option for your needs.
Even if you don’t need caching features, there are still some other cool things about this WordPress plugin such as site compression which will make your website load faster.
However, it saves lots of money from buying others plugins. So I hope WP Rocket plugin is worth a WordPress site.
WP Rocket Pros and Cons
Pros:
- it reduces page load times by 50% +.
- It is easy to install.
- It’s a reliable caching plugin for WordPress that well compatible with WooCommerce, bbPress, and other popular plugins and themes.
- You have access to many options when it comes to how you want your website cached.
- The plugin offers detailed reports about performance speed and usage statistics.
- The plugin is regularly updated and their customer service team offers prompt support.
- WP Rocket’s design has been kept simple to ensure it doesn’t add too much overhead when running on lower-powered servers with limited resources.
Cons:
- There are some features that might not work well if using other caching plugins with it.
- It’s not a free version, like other cache plugins.
WP Rocket Free Alternatives:
There are many alternatives to the WP Rocket caching plugin. Some of the best are:
- WP-Optimize: This plugin is free and has a lot of outstanding features. It offers more advanced features in its pro version.
- WP Super Cache: This plugin is also free for personal use and optimized for speedy loading.
- WP Fastest Cache: This plugin is the fastest available caching plugin and is also free.
If you are a beginner and don’t want to spend money to buy WP Rocket, then you can use any of the above alternative plugins. If you have enough money and need the best alternative, I will recommend WP-Optimize Premium.
WP Rocket Review: The Final Thoughts
WP Rocket is a premium plugin that can be used to speed up your WordPress site. The WP team has done an amazing job on this one and it’s well worth the money, but with so many free alternatives out there you can consider them if you have not enough budget to purchase WP Rocket.
But if you have a budget, you can try its single license, which costs $49 per year. It has a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can test it out for a month and then decide if it’s worth extending your license.
To extend website speed more like 100/100 or 99/100 in the speed test tool, I recommend the Perfmatters plugin which is the most advanced plugin for website performance optimization. It is well compatible with WP Rocket.
If you have any question about the WP Rocket plugin review, you can comment below. I will try to give you the best answer.
