26 Best WordPress Speed Optimization Plugins 2024 [Updated]

WordPress Speed Plugins

Are you looking for the a WordPress performance plugin to speed up your wordpress site? In this post you will find the Best WordPress Plugins to Speed Up Your Website in 2024[Updated]. Find out which plugins are slowing down your wordpress site and enhace speed of your wordpress website.

Table of Contents [TOC]

WordPress Speed Plugins
Tips to Speed Up WordPress Performance

If yes, then you might need the latest plugins to ensure the optimal functioning of your website as well as giving your visitors the actual result they are searching for.

It is evident that if we compare the loading times of WordPress with those of other CMS (it is not the intention), when it comes to improving the speed of WordPress site, it takes the cake, sometimes even with many added plugins.

Knowing which topics are “heavy” and which plugins lengthen the page load times where they show results, along with optimizing the values of the WordPress hosting server, help to have a working installation that serves the desired content and also “Make it quick.”

Although WordPress speed optimization requires WPO techniques that help minimize the weight of web elements and improve its loading speed; Sometimes it can be helpful to use certain WordPress caching plugins. That they can be of help does not mean that they should be abused, since installing too many plugins in WordPress, rather than improving the performance of the website will do the opposite.

Also, keep in mind that some plugins consume too many resources, so more than helping, they are only slowing the loading speed of the web. Or it is possible that they show us better results in some tools such as GTMetrix but at the cost of increasing the consumption of server resources.

To help you choose the most appropriate WPO plugins for your website, we have selected some of the WordPress plugins according to the functions they perform.

This does not mean that you must install in your WordPress a plugin of each of the categories that we propose, since each project has different needs and, therefore, will require certain WPO plugins.

The speed of your website is important and it is one of the tasks that must be carried out beforehand.

Amazon calculated that for every extra load second, it would lose 1.6 trillion dollars in sales in a year.

But in addition to the loss of conversions and bad user experience due to falls and 500 error in WordPress.

Speed is a ranking factor and Google penalizes slow sites.

? In this guide, we are going to teach you everything you need to know to optimize WordPress speed and make it ultra-fast using best WordPress caching & performance plugins.

The Importance of a Fast Loading Website?

You, me and the rest of the world are the users of Google. In order for us to remain faithful to their tools, and thus continue to lead the sector, Google tries to offer us the best possible services. That is the reason why they give so much importance to the performance of websites.

How long would you be willing to wait to see your favorite artist play? And for your favorite website to load? Surely much less! At Google, they are aware that users do not want to wait forever to consult information online. So they prioritize websites faster.

This means that if your website is fast, it will have more possibilities of being among the first results of Google. This is not something new, since a few years ago Google applied this logic, especially since the appearance of the internet on mobile phones. For example, think about pages for smartphones; even with good mobile connections, inefficient websites can make waiting times unbearable.

What are WordPress Performance Plugins?

A content management system (CMS) is a system that helps in enhancing the functionality of your website. You might come across several free as well as premium plugins which you can download from WordPress.org and upload to your website. After the plugin is successfully installed, it is ready to use.

With over the availability of 55,000 WordPress plugins, it is a daunting task for beginners to find the best WordPress performance plugins for their needs. Having the right set of WordPress plugins can make a huge difference in the growth of your website or blog by generating the results you might be looking for.

Importance of WPO Plugins

It helps in speeding up the website loading time
It helps in securing the website from hack attacks such as brute force attack, malware attack on wordpress and many more.
It helps in scheduling full backups.
You can optimize the website using the WordPress plugin and help prevent various errors from popping up . These may include some common wordpress errors such as WordPress White Screen of Death (WSOD) Error, Pluggable.php File Errors, WordPress Logout Error, HTTP Image Upload Error, 503 Service Unavailable Error and many more.

Finding The Best Performance WordPress Plugins

When surfing for the WordPress plugins, you’ll come across thousands of WordPress plugins on WordPress.org directory. Apart from this, you’ll find several WordPress plugins on third-party websites that are sold as premium plugins. Now the question here arises is which one is the better option- premium or paid plugins.

Before making the decision you should have a look at the differences between both the plugins available.

Free WordPress plugins are available without any warranties and usually provide limited support. Plugin authors do not get any financial incentive for answering user questions on their free plugins. Thus, we can say that free WordPress plugins are available on an as-is basis with no warranties whereas, Paid WordPress plugins on the other hand offer premium support for their product come with a limited warranty. It also provides easy access to support which means you can get help much faster.

Also Read – How to Fix & Prevent WordPress SQL injection

How to Install a WordPress Plugin

There are two ways to easily install a WordPress plugin from the admin of your website.

Go to Plugins, Add new and search for the plugin you want to install.
Carefully look at the results and download the plugin you wanted for your website.
Click on the Install button and once installed, you will need to activate the plugin for use.

If you wish to download a WordPress plugin in a zip file, then you have to follow the below-mentioned method to install a WordPress plugin.

Go to Plugins
Add New page, and click on the ‘Upload Plugin’ button
You’ll find a page where you can upload the plugin zip file.
Choose the file button, locate the zip file on your computer.
Click on the install button.
Now, WordPress will upload the plugin file to your website.
Extract and install the plugin.
Once you are finished with the installation you’ll get a link to activate the plugin.
Activate a plugin and use it on your WordPress website.

Also Read – How to Backup WordPress Database Plugins?

Best WordPress Caching plugins

We all like fast loading websites, but we are especially interested in linking Google and our users. One of the best ways to improve the loading speed of our website is with a cache plugin. A WordPress plugin that is responsible for creating HTML copies of the web and using them to serve the user the content they are looking for; instead of asking the server directly.

WP Rocket

This plugin allows, with few and very simple configurations, to minimize loading times. In addition to its simplicity, WP Rocket hardly consumes resources on the server. The only disadvantage of this plugin for WPO is that it is paid, so if you have not yet considered the option to invest in WordPress plugins it may not be the most suitable for you.

WP Super Cache

Another perfect plugin to improve the WPO of a website developed in WordPress. Easy to install and configure, its only problem is that it only has a cache and CDN function. In return, its ‘easy’ mode will configure the plugin for you to make the cache system start working as soon as possible.

Also Read – Best WordPress Security Plugins in 2020

W3 Total Cache

Although it is a very complete plugin at the functional level, it is equally complex at the technical level. So, if you don’t have WordPress experience, we don’t recommend using WP Total Cache.

Best WordPress Image Optimization Plugins

The weight or size of the images on a web page is usually one of the most common problems in the performance of a website. If the images on our website are too large, or if they weigh too much, the website will take a long time to load (and it will also end the megabytes of those who visit it). Optimizing the images on the web does not mean reducing the quality of the images, only their weight.

Also Read – WordPress Website Maintenance Checklist

Regenerate Thumbnails.

As the name implies, this plugin makes all the thumbnails of your WordPress have certain dimensions. In addition, it offers you the possibility of removing those thumbnails that are not being used on the web to save space on the server.

Imsanity.

This plugin automatically resizes all images, whether you want to change their size or if you want to reduce their weight or determine the quality of all of them. You can assign maximum measures that will be applied to all images uploaded to WordPress.

WP Smush.

Like the previous two, WP Smush helps to have a website with lighter images, but of the same quality as the originals. In addition, it allows compressing both the images hosted on the website and optimizing those that are uploaded later. Like Insanity, it offers the option of setting the maximum dimensions of all WordPress images. The only problem with this WPO plugin is that it only optimizes a maximum of 50 images at a time; So if there are a large number of graphic elements on your website, you may have to perform several optimizations.

Imagify.

Another plugin, although this time for payment, to optimize all the images on the web to the same site. As in some of the previous ones, it allows establishing maximum dimensions, in addition to choosing between qualities. As a differential factor compared to the other free WPO plugins, Imagify saves the original images in case you need to recover them at any time.

Best WordPress Database Optimisation Plugins

Despite its many advantages, WordPress has a big problem: it stores everything we do in its database. From each of the reviews to the drafts of the pages or entries, spam, temporary files … everything. That is, every time you make a change to an entry in your blog, for example, WordPress saves a full version of that entry. Therefore, in addition to having a good database configuration, it is advisable to optimize its content from time to time.

WP-Optimize

A plugin that removes all irrelevant content from the WordPress database; such as the comments we have sent to the trash because it is spam or data that has become obsolete. In addition, this compact WPO plugin and defragmenting the tables of MySQL databases to ensure maximum efficiency of the WordPress database, it is recommended to use this plugin at least a couple of times a month.

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions. Similar to the previous one, this plugin allows us to determine how many versions of the same page we want to save and delete the additional ones stored in the database at a click. It is also possible to program these optimizations to save space on your server in the simplest way.

WP Rocket

Although more than a database optimization plugin is a cache plugin, you can also use WP Rocket to improve the performance of the WordPress database.

The WordPress heartbeat

Heartbeat API is a content manager functionality that, as the name implies, sends ‘the beats’ of WordPress to the server. Heartbeat’s main mission is to send information in short periods of time throughout the WordPress system as if it were the heart of the CMS. Although it is very useful in the case of websites managed by several people since it warns if someone is editing content so that the modifications do not overlap, the truth is that Heartbeat makes multiple requests and can slow down the loading speed of the administration of WordPress as a result of excessive consumption of server resources.

To prevent Heartbeat from continuously sending information, you can control API activity with Heartbeat Control. This way, you can increase the beat times of WordPress; set by default in 15 seconds per page or post and 60 from the desktop. This plugin allows you to greatly reduce the consumption of resources by Heartbeat with very few adjustments.

WPO plugins to optimize plugins

Yes, yes, although it seems strange there are WPO plugins that allow you to know the consumption and performance of other plugins. And, although many plugins facilitate many tasks, they can also end up being counterproductive. Sometimes these plugins can consume too many resources on the server or slow down WordPress administration. Therefore, it is advisable to check from time to time the behavior of each of the plugins installed in the CMS.

To check the performance of our WordPress installation, you can use one of the following WPO plugins:

WordPress Inspector

In addition to performing checks to improve the SEO of your website, WordPress Inspector helps with the optimization and performance of the installation. In addition to showing through performance indicators the loading speed of a website, it detects if any of the plugins or themes have security or performance problems.

Debug Objects

Especially recommended for developers or users with technical knowledge, it provides different tables with very useful information for development environments. Among all the information you will find the number of requests made by each of the plugins so that you can optimize them or replace them with similar ones before publishing a website.

Query Monitor

Similar to Debug Objects, Query Monitor is also a very useful plugin to know the performance of a WordPress installation, although not any user will know how to understand and take advantage of the data.

UsageDD.

A very simple plugin that shows how many MySQL queries are made, the memory used by the web scripts, the PHP version, the loading time of the web page and if the TTFB is high or low. Based on this data you can check if you are using plugins that consume too many resources or if there are things that do not work correctly on your website. Of course, the plugin itself will not tell you what is slowing your website, you will have to find out based on the information provided by the plugin and performing different configuration tests.

Tips to Speed Up WordPress Performance

Although choosing your WPO plugins well can be a good way to improve the performance of your website, the best advice to optimize WordPress is to use common sense.

Use a light template

Although we always tend to choose the theme of our WordPress based on design, we should also consider the amount of code it uses; since most likely we don’t need so many scripts for our project. You can use tools like GTMetrix to find out the CSS or JS scripts that your template uses and, if it has more than 10, our recommendation is that you decide on another topic; That is not correctly optimized.

Install only the plugins you need

Having in your WordPress installation only those plugins that you need, you avoid the unnecessary consumption of resources. And, although not all plugins have to be too heavy, using only those that really make sense on your website will prevent requests from being made that are not essential for WordPress to work and that will only slow it down.

Remove plugins that you no longer use

Although it may seem obvious, many times we deactivate the plugins that we no longer need, but do not remove them. In the end, these plugins, in addition to taking up space on the server, end up being outdated and posing a risk to WordPress security.

Hire a quality hosting or cloud server

Much of the optimization of a website is related to the quality of hosting. Thus, if your provider does not offer you a WordPress optimized server compatible with the latest version of PHP, HTTP/2, Gzip compression… no matter how much you optimize your website, there will be some aspects that you cannot improve.

Perform periodic consumption tests

The best way to know what the performance of your website is to check it from time to time. In this way, you can contrast the data of the different tests and see if any of the values are out of the ordinary.

Use a CDN

As you know, a CDN is particularly interesting if you have an international readership. If more than 80% of your readers come from the USA and your site’s server is located in the USA, you don’t necessarily need to set up a CDN. Obviously a CDN could be useful for the remaining 20% but it must also be borne in mind that using a CDN is not free. It is up to you to see if the game is worth the candle for you.

The optimization of your website is a factor that can be decisive to increase visits and scale positions in search results. Although you can use WPO plugins to improve the performance of your WordPress, common sense and quality hosting can be your best allies.

Best WordPress Speed Optimization Plugins 2021

Does it take your sleep to think about how you can speed up the loading of your website? For many it is a problem since this is an important factor if you want to succeed on a website.

This page also brings together the WordPress performance plugins to optimize and speed up a WordPress site. The slow loading speed can increase the bounce rate of the website and at the same time reduce the stay time of the visit, as users will get fatigued. This could negatively affect the positioning of the website.

Therefore, we will show you some WordPress Performance Plugins to speed up the load on WordPress that will help you enormously.

Be careful not to install similar plugins; for example, do not install WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache on the same WordPress site! Likewise, there is no need to install plugins like Autoptimize or WP Performance Score Booster if gzip compression is already activated on your server. As always, we invite you to think before activating new plugins;-)

Autoptimize:

Autoptimize allows you to speed up a WordPress site by compressing your site’s JS, CSS and HTML files. This extension is particularly useful if you don’t know how to enable gzip or deflate compression on your server. WP Performance Score Booster is a good alternative to Autoptimize, but this plugin requires the activation of gzip compression on your server. Note that these two extensions are useless if you are already using WP Rocket.

WP Super Cache:

WP Super Cache is one of the two best free cache extensions for WordPress. WP Super Cache is easier to configure than W3 Total Cache. The extension is partly developed by Automattic, the startup that is behind WordPress. If you are looking for an even more effective solution, I recommend using WP Rocket.

W3 Total Cache:

W3 Total Cache is a free cache extension for WordPress that offers a lot of customization options. If you are new to WordPress, I recommend that you opt for WP Super Cache or WP Rocket.

WP-Optimize:

WP-Optimize allows you to easily clean and optimizes the MySQL database of a WordPress site. Before using a plugin of this type, it is imperative to back up the database of your site. If you are new to WordPress, we recommend that you do not touch the options indicated in red in the plugin.

Disable Emojis:

WordPress 4.2, support emojis into the core for older browsers. The emojis generates an additional HTTP request on your WordPress site to load the wp-emoji-release.min.js file. And it loads on every single page. While this file is only 10.5 KB, things like these add up over time and can become a major issue. And for most businesses, they are never going to use emojis. So it is highly recommended to use a free plugin called Disable Emojis.

WP Rocket:

it is one of the best WordPress plugins for performance that provide all the caching functionality along with a bunch of below-mentioned features you might be looking for your website.

It provides a user-friendly interface
It provides minimal tweaking required for speed improvements
Minify CSS, HTML and Javascript
It offers Page caching, cache preload, image lazy loading using advanced caching rules
It offers easy database optimization and CDN integration
It provides direct Cloudflare integration and Google Analytics integration to load the code from your server

Perfmatters:

It uses a different approach to improve page load times. It also disables the options that slow down the performance of most websites. It also allows you to disable the HTTP requests on a per-page basis enabling you to stop the plugins from loading the code where it isn’t needed. Apart from this, it provides you with different performance-boosting features like reconnect, DNS prefetch, local Google Analytics script hosting and so on.

WP Fastest Cache:

It is one of the performance plugins that focus on caching. It comes with great features balanced with ease of use. It is neither too basic nor too advanced and can be installed, activated and run through the settings. The plugin is used by over 200,000 people as it sets cache expiration times for certain URL strings. The plugin has received great reviews on WordPress.org.

Cache Enabler – WordPress Cache – WordPress plugin

It is a great lightweight plugin that comes for the team at KeyCDN and can be set up in minutes. You can set up a cache expiry time, minification set using this plugin for your website. You can use the sister plugin- CDN Enabler if you wish to add a content delivery network service.

WP Super Minify:

You can combine JS, HTML and CSS files in a compressed form and can serve the visitors with a reduced website loading times. The plugin should be used very carefully as sometimes particular themes and plugins can conflict with this plugin. It is extremely straightforward and easy to use a plugin that also provides an option to disable compression of CSS/JavaScript.

WP Smush.it: Compress, Optimize and Lazy Load Images

The plugin is based on the Yahoo Smush.it service and is used to optimize the images. You can remove unnecessary bytes from image files using this plugin using a lossless format. It strips unused color from images and strips metadata from JPEG. It also integrates with Smush.it API and optimize JPEG compression. The plugin can be used to run existing images.

LazyLoad:

The plugin helps in loading the specific elements of the page when a visitor hits your website providing you the less loading time by replacing your YouTube iFrames with preview thumbnails. it is an ultra-light plugin and does not use jQuery or Javascript and helps in better performance of your website.

If you’re struggling to speed up your website performance, the installation of WordPress performance plugins can have a dramatic improvement on your page load times.

In short, the loading speed of your website depends on its optimization and on everything you save on it. Therefore, keep these plugins in mind to speed up the loading in WordPress, if you do so, the loading speed will be correct so that more users benefit from your business or information.