Are you looking to enhance your WordPress Website Performance? Then you are at the right post, with the right WordPress Performance Plugins you can achieve that without any issues. No complexity of coding is required, just install the plugin and you are ready to go.
Hence, in this post, you will be provided with some of the Best WordPress Performance Plugins that enhance or boost your website performance drastically. Also, determine the possible reasons or culprits that are hindrances to your website’s overall performance.
If there are any plugins or settings that might affect your website performance, then it becomes essential for you to work on them. There are some latest plugins available that help you to ensure the optimal functioning of your WordPress website. In addition, you can able to provide the actual performance to your visitors.
Even on WordPress, you have an edge over other CMS in terms of flexibility. It became easy for anyone to add some functionality and improve the speed of WordPress Sites by just adding some plugins.
In addition to it, it become very easy for anyone to determine which plugins are heavy and which plugins can affect a website’s loading time. WordPress Speed Optimization requires WordPress Optimization techniques that help to reduce the effect of other web elements such as plugins and hence enhance loading speed. In addition to this sometimes you may be required to use WordPress Caching plugins too but it doesn’t mean you loath your website by installing too many plugins else instead of enhancing the website performance, it can degrade too.
One thing you must also keep in mind is that some plugins might consume too many resources rather than help your website. However, it is also possible that some plugins might help your website, but at the cost of increasing the usage of more resources.
Hence, for your convenience, we provide you with a list of some of the best WordPress Performance plugins for your website so that you won’t choose the wrong plugin that might affect your website performance rather than help it.
The Speed and performance of your website are so crucial that if you are running a multi-trillion online e-commerce business such as Amazon, even a slight second’s delay in performance would affect about 1.6 trillion dollars per year.
In addition to it, if your website doesn’t perform well and loading time is high search engines like Google also penalize and you won’t like it to happen with your website.
But you do not need to worry, in this post, we guide you about how to optimize WordPress speed and What WordPress performance Plugins you can use.
Why loading time of the website need to be less?
Nobody can deny the fact that when talking about search engines Google has the dominance. Hence to maintain this huge market share, google offers a series of tools to provide the best possible services. This is the main reason they do not compromise the performance of Websites.
You do not want your visitors to wait for the content to load on your website and even slow websites have poor retention rates. This problem Google knows very well and this can lead to a bad reputation for Google. Hence, Google’s search ranking algorithm gives priority to websites with good performance and speed.
It simply means that if your website’s loading time is less and have a good performance report, it will have a good possibility to get good Google rankings. Here, google ranking means getting a position in the top 10 results. This ranking factor is not new, it has been applied since the internet and web pages have been accessible through smartphones. Hence, it is not only limited to desktops or PCs now, the website must perform well on all the devices available.
What do you mean by WordPress Performance Plugins?
WordPress is a famous CMS or content management system that helps to improve and enhance the features/functionality of a website. Since, being a WordPress user, you might come across different types of free plugins as well as some premium plugins either downloaded from the WordPress directory or third-party websites and uploaded/installed on your WordPress website. Once the plugin is installed successfully it is ready to go.
There are more than 50K WordPress plugins available on the internet. Due to this, it has become a very daunting task to find the right WordPress Performance Plugins for your WordPress websites, especially for beginners. It is so crucial to pick up the right WordPress Performance Plugins, that it can make a huge difference in the growth as well as Google rank of your website. It can also influence the results drastically.
Why do you need to have WordPress performance Plugins?
There are some advantages that you must look into to better understand the importance of having WordPress performance plugins for your WordPress website.
- WordPress Performance Plugins help in boost up the website loading time.
- Protects from different attacks such as malware attacks, hacker attacks, and many more.
- Take regular Website backups.
- Helps in reducing common WordPress errors and optimizing your website.
How to pick up the Best Performance WordPress plugins?
Since, I have already mentioned in the above section that whenever you go through WordPress plugins, you will find thousands of plugins out there in the WordPress directory. In addition to that, there are thousands of other WordPress plugins that are available on third-party websites and are premium ones.
But again, the main question arises, which one you should go for either free or premium plugins? Before hopping on any decision, I would suggest you look at the main differences and the features they can offer. Match your requirements and then go for that particular plugin.
When consider Free WordPress Performance plugins, these are various plugins that are available to install for free but with limited features and support. It is because the author or the support will not get any charge to answer your queries. Hence, these plugins are best suitable for new users or beginners who have a limited budget or they are ok with limitations.
Whereas, when you consider Premium/paid WordPress performance plugins, they offer you a complete package of features without any limitation and even their support system is premium in which quick and 24×7 assistance is offered. But within a specific warranty.
How would the installation and setup of Plugins be?
Almost all the WordPress plugins that are available on the WordPress plugins have a similar installation process. It does not require any technical skills to install and activate the plugins on your website directly from the WordPress directory.
All you need to do is just follow the mentioned below steps which apply to all the WordPress plugins available in the WordPress directory.
Step 1: Log in to your WordPress Dashboard.
Step 2: Go to your Plugins options on the left-hand side of the WordPress dashboard.
Step 3: Now Plugins > Add new > type the name of the plugin in the search bar
Step 4: When you find your plugin in the search results, click on the Install button followed by Activate Now.
On the other hand, if you have downloaded a plugin from outside the WordPress directory, say from third-party websites, then the plugin would be downloaded in zip file format. You need to follow the given below steps to install them on WordPress.
Step 1: Log in to your WordPress Dashboard.
Step 2: Go to your Plugins options on the left-hand side of the WordPress dashboard.
Step 3: Click on Add New page > Now click on the “Upload Plugin” button.
Step 4: A new page will appear asking you to upload the zip file.
Step 5: When you can upload the zip file, click on the install button to continue.
Step 6: Now WordPress will unzip the plugin file and upload the file to your website.
Step 7: WordPress will unzip or extract all the files in the zip folder and install the plugin automatically.
Step 8: After successfully finishing up the installation process, the page will show you an activation button.
Step 9: click on the Activate button and now you are ready to use it on your website.
Some Best WordPress Performance plugins
Since, the performance of a website depends on various factors such as website cache memory, Image optimization, Database Optimization, Individual optimization plugins, and other essential steps you must take. Which you will get to know in this particular section.
WordPress Performance plugins: Caching plugins
Since the main factor that a website’s performance is judged by its loading speed. We are all very familiar with the fact that fast-loading websites have the advantage of getting better Search engine rankings. Hence, to improve the loading speed of a website, there are some plugins available as WordPress cache plugins.
These plugins will be responsible for creating copies of the website in HTML format and using them whenever the visitor visits the website.
1. WordPress Performance Plugins: Hyper Cache
Hyper Cache is one of the unpopular WordPress caching plugins but it doesn’t mean that it’s bad. Hyper Cache is one of the best free WordPress caching plugins as it offers an abundance of features. It automates your website by changing your active WordPress theme by analyzing the user visiting your website on a smartphone.
It is a PHP caching plugin that does not require any complex configuration. It contains separate caches for desktop and mobile users. This plugin also allows you to cache efficiently even on sites with quite an active user commenting and discussion participation.
Features of Hyper Cache Plugin
Now, let’s have a quick discussion about the features provided by the Hyper Cache plugin:
- One of the rare plugins that offer mobile caching
- Offers the ability to switch the theme
- Offers its own type of compression
- Provides broad control over pages, posts, and post types while excluding caching
- The cache is automatically refreshed once a new post is published
What more you can expect from a free WordPress caching plugin!!! Hyper Cache offers the most amazing features.
Plans & Pricing of Hyper Cache Plugin
Hyper Cache plugin is a completely FREE WordPress caching plugin. This plugin does not come up with any premium plans. But it offers all the features that one must look for in the best WordPress caching plugins. You can install this free from the WordPress directory. To install this plugin, stay connected with us!!! Our next section is purely devoted to the installation and setup of the Hyper Cache plugin.
Hyper cache updates and Reviews
We checked withHypercache customer reviews on WordPress Directory and have been pushing and found the following results for its latest version, 3.4.0.
- It has 20,000 + active installations right now.
- For us, it shows that it was updated 3 months ago. [ regularly updating ]
- It has been currently tested up to WordPress 5.8.2.
- According to the WordPress Directory, its average rating is 4.5/5. 66 users out of 80 gave it 5 stars.
2. WordPress Performance Plugins: WP Super Cache
WP Super Cache is a static WordPress caching plugin that generates HTML files that are served by Apache without processing heavy PHP scripts. You can significantly speed up your WordPress website by using this plugin. It is also a free plugin for caching your website.
WP Super Cache plugin contains all the recommended caching functionality that you want to speed up your website. This involves zip compression, page cache, preload cache, CDN support, advanced preload cache, and much more. It provides a comprehensive section setting with a separate tab for simple configuration.
Features of WP Super Cache Plugin
Here we go with the features of the WP Super Cache plugin:
- It has the reputation and track record to ensure excellent caching services regardless of size.
- opensource product from Automattic so will be updated regularly.
- Pretty easy to comprehend and activate settings.
- Uses a process of garbage collecting for out old files from the cache
- Integrated with a unique CDN setup
- Built with a unique feature called Cache Rebuilding, where the cache on the blog isn’t clear whenever a comment is posted, instead, it rebuilds the cache
So, this was all about the features offered by the WP Super Cache plugin.
Plans & Pricing of WP Super Cache Plugin
WP Super Cache plugin is a completely FREE WordPress caching plugin. This plugin does not come up with any premium plans. But it offers all the features that one must look for in the best WordPress caching plugins. You can install this free from the WordPress directory. In order to install this plugin, stay connected with us!!! Our next section is purely devoted to the installation and setup of the WP Super Cache plugin.
WP Super Cache updates and Review
We checked with WP Super Cache updates and customer reviews on the WordPress Directory and have been pushing and found the following results for its latest version, 1.7.4.
- It has a whooping 2+ Million active installations right now.
- For us, it shows that it was updated 2 months ago. [ regularly updating ]
- It has been currently tested up to WordPress 5.8.2.
- According to the WordPress Directory, its average rating is 4.3/5. 945 users out of 1278 gave it 5 stars.
3. WordPress Performance Plugins: Cache Enabler
Cache Enabler is a plugin released by KeyCDN which proves to be a very popular CDN. Cache Enabler will be the best option for you if you are looking for a quite lightweight caching plugin for your website. It creates static HTML files and stores those files on your web server.
Supports the migration of inline-image URLs to the Web and the pre-compression of Gzip cached pages. This basic but effective plugin is easy to use, requires minimal setup, and best of all helps in increasing site loading speed.
Features of Cache Enabler Plugin
Let’s move to the features that are being offered by the Cache Enabler plugin:
- The fast and efficient cache engine
- Automatic smart cache clearing
- Manual cache clearing
- WP-CLI cache clearing
- Cache size display in the WordPress dashboard
- Minification of HTML excluding or including inline CSS and JavaScript
- WordPress multisite network support
- Gzip pre-compression support
So, that’s all about the features of the Cache Enabler plugin.
Plans & Pricing of Cache Enabler Plugin
The cache Enabler plugin is a completely FREE WordPress caching plugin. This plugin does not come up with any premium plans. But it offers all the features that one must look for in the best WordPress caching plugins. You can install this free from the WordPress directory. To install this plugin, stay connected with us!!! Our next section is purely devoted to the installation and setup of the Cache Enabler plugin.
There are many more plugins you can also check out here in our detailed post on the 11 best WordPress caching plugins.
Cache enabler updates and Review
We checked with Cache Enabler updates and customer reviews on the WordPress Directory and have been pushing and found the following results for its latest version, 1.8.7.
- It has a whooping 100,000+ active installations right now.
- For us, it shows that it was updated 1 month ago. [ regularly updating ]
- It has been currently tested up to WordPress 5.1.
- According to the WordPress Directory, its average rating is 4.4/5. 97 users out of 121 gave it 5 stars.
WordPress performance plugins – Image optimization
The size, resolution, and Quality of an image is also the major factor for a Website’s Performance. If the images on the website are either too large it will add extra weight to the website and its loading time will increase. Hence, to avoid such issues, optimizing the plugin without affecting its quality becomes an important step. Here are some of the WordPress performance plugins that help you to optimize images on your website.
4. WordPress Performance Plugins: Imagify
Imagify is one of the best WordPress performance plugins that help to optimize image size without compromising its quality. This plugin lets you choose whatever quality or size you would like to have on your website. While comparing with other WordPress performance plugins, Imagify saves an original copy of the images, in case you want to recover them at any moment.
Some key features of Imagify
- Optimize your Images in every format (JPGs, PNGs, PDFs and GIFs)
- Resize your Images on the fly
- Easy and user-friendly
- Easy to integrate images with content
- Dedicated servers
- Save space and money
- Files are safe and secure
Plans & Pricing of Cache Imagify
Although Imagify is available free to install and use from the WordPress directory it has certain limitations. To use all the features you need to upgrade to their premium plans starting at $4.99 to $9.99 per month.
Imagify updates and Review
We checked with Imagify updates and customer reviews on the WordPress Directory and have been pushing and found the following results for its latest version, 1.10.
- It has a whooping 500,000+ active installations right now.
- For us, it shows that it was updated 2 months ago. [ regularly updating ]
- It has been currently tested up to WordPress 5.8.2.
- According to the WordPress Directory, its average rating is 4.4/5. 891 users out of 1098 gave it 5 stars.
5. WordPress Performance Plugins: Regenerate Thumbnails
From the name itself, you can easily get an idea of what this plugin is capable of. This plugin lets you make all the thumbnails of your WordPress with certain dimensions. In addition to that, it also lets users delete or remove those thumbnails that are not required on the web to save space on the server.
Some key features of Regenerate Thumbnails
- Can change old thumbnails with desired sizes
- Can delete old thumbnails to save server space
- Simple and light
Plans and Pricing of Regenerate Thumbnails
Regenerate thumbnails are an open-source WordPress plugin available to download and install absolutely free on your WordPress website.
Regenerate Thumbnails updates and Review
We checked with Regenerate thumbnail updates and customer reviews on the WordPress Directory and have been pushing and found the following results for its latest version, 3.1.5.
- It has a whooping 1+ Million active installations right now.
- For us, it shows that it was updated 8 months ago. [ regularly updating ]
- It has been currently tested up to WordPress 5.7.4.
- According to the WordPress Directory, its average rating is 4.4/5. 318 users out of 368 gave it 5 stars.
6. WordPress Performance Plugins: WP Smush
If you like to see other options for image optimization on your Website, Smush can be also a perfect fit. This plugin will help you to create a website with lighter images but retain the same quality just like the original one. Another plus point of using this plugin is that it lets you compress the images on both areas of the website as well as future image uploads.
The only downside of this plugin is that you can only optimize up to 50 images at a time. It means if you have a huge number of images or graphics on your websites, then you may have to repeat the optimization again and again
Some key features of WP Smush
- Compress images and graphics without compromising the Quality
- Bulk Smush
- Automated Optimization
- No monthly limits
- Multisite Compatible
- Process all your files and many more.
Plans and Pricing of WP Smush
Although WP Smush is available free to download and install from the WordPress directory with certain limitations. But if you like to use this plugin without any restrictions or Limitations with some added benefits, you can upgrade to the pro version starting at $24.17 and going up to $32.50.
WP Smush updates and Review
We checked with WP Smush updates and customer reviews on the WordPress Directory and have been pushing and found the following results for its latest version, 3.9.2.
- It has a whooping 1+ Million active installations right now.
- For us, it shows that it was updated 2 weeks ago. [ regularly updating ]
- It has been currently tested up to WordPress 5.8.2.
- According to the WordPress Directory, its average rating is 4.8/5. 5185 users out of 5737 gave it 5 stars.
WordPress Performance Plugins – Database
Apart from WordPress’s many good features and advantages, there is one big problem associated with it. That is, it tends to store all the information about whatever you do in its database such as temp files, spam, etc. It means, that whenever you make changes or edit your blog, WordPress always stores or saves a complete version of the same on the server. Hence, it becomes necessary to optimize the content regularly to have a good database record.
7. WordPress Performance Plugins: WP-Optimize
WP Optimize is an all-rounder WordPress performance plugin that has the feature to cache your site, clean your database, and compress your images. This all-in-one compact solution works by defragmenting the table of MySQL databases to maximize efficiency, hence we highly recommend you to use these WordPress Performance plugins at least two times a month.
Some Key features of WP-Optimize
- Cleans the complete Database
- Compress images
- Caches Pages
- Minify and combine CSS and JavaScript
Plans and Pricing of WP-Optimize
Since it is a WordPress plugin and easily available to download from the WordPress Directory there is a catch. The Free version has limited features, but you also have the option to choose the paid version starting at $42 per year to $399 per year.
WP-Optimize updates and Review
We checked with WP Optimize updates and customer reviews on the WordPress Directory and have been pushing and found the following results for its latest version, 3.1.12.
- It has a whooping 1+ Million active installations right now.
- For us, it shows that it was updated 4 months ago. [ regularly updating ]
- It has been currently tested up to WordPress 5.8.2.
- According to the WordPress Directory, its average rating is 4.8/5. 1549 users out of 1665 gave it 5 stars.
WordPress Performance Plugins to optimize other WordPress Plugins
It sounds a little weird or unusual that there are some even WordPress plugins available that help to optimize other WordPress plugins. It is required because majority of the WordPress plugins do many tasks simultaneously and due to this sometimes it can affect their performance instead of becoming productive for the website they start consuming all the resources and slow down the server.
Hence, it becomes essential to analyze and examine the performance and behavior of each of the plugins from time to time.
8. WordPress Performance Plugins: Query Monitor
Query Monitor is the developer tools panel for WordPress. It is one of the very useful plugins with the help of which you can easily know the performance of a particular WordPress Plugin. It enables you to inspect and debug many aspects of your website.
Some key features of Query Monitor
- Shows Database Queries
- Shows template File name
- User capability checks
- Enqueued scripts and stylesheets and many more.
Plans and Pricing of Query Monitor
Query Monitor is available free to download and install from the WordPress directory. This plugin is open-source software just like WordPress.
Query Monitor updates and Review
We checked with Query Monitor updates and customer reviews on the WordPress Directory and have been pushing and found the following results for its latest version, 3.7.1.
- It has a whooping 100,000+ active installations right now.
- For us, it shows that it was updated 6 months ago. [ regularly updating ]
- It has been currently tested up to WordPress 5.7.4.
- According to the WordPress Directory, its average rating is 4.9/5. 377 users out of 387 gave it 5 stars.
Some best tips and tricks to enhance WordPress Performance
We have already provided you with a list of the best WordPress Performance Plugins but there are some areas still you need to improve and Optimize WordPress.
1. Install only essential Plugins
No doubt, WordPress plugins can be a panacea for any individual to add an extra benefit to your website. But ask yourself do you need them? Unnecessary installing plugins can lead to the consumption of resources and ultimately lower the performance of your website. Hence, it is highly advisable that you only install plugins that are essential for your website with multi-functionality.
2. Host your website on high-quality and reliable Web hosts
The major performance part of a website depends on the cloud server or web hosting on which your website is being hosted. Hence, if your web hosting service provider is unable to bring you regular WordPress updates and the server is not available with the latest version of PHP or HTTP/2, then it won’t help you to optimize your website.
3. Use light themes or templates
Many users tend to choose themes and templates based on their design rather than their size and the amount of code they use. This has to be considered because in most cases we do not require you to have some scripts for your project. And heavy themes or templates can unnecessarily affect your website performance.
4. Do performance tests on your website Regularly
Another thing you can best do is to run performance tests from time to time. From the performance data, you can analyze which part of your website needs improvement and which things are not working.
5. Remove/Uninstall unnecessary plugins
As we have already mentioned earlier, how unnecessary plugins can potentially degrade your website performance. The best thing you can do is to completely remove or uninstall the unused plugins rather than just deactivating them. Not only they are an extra burden to your website but also take up the space on the server and in the end, it can increase the risk to WordPress security.
6. Use Content Delivery Network (CDN)
CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. It is, very simply put, a network of servers, which are distributed over various locations around the globe, which help deliver web content faster to the user based on their geographic location, the origin of the web page, and a content delivery server.
It can be very helpful if you have an international audience. For example, if the majority of your audience or visitors are coming from the USA and your website’s server is located in the same region, i.e. USA, then you are not required to have a CDN. No doubt, if you still use CDN it can be helpful to serve the remaining minority of visitors, but it can cost you a lot. CDNs are not free and usually come with expensive plans. But still, it all depends on you and your budget.
All these Optimization tips and tricks can do wonders for many and can result in good website ranking and hence web traffic. However, you can still use WordPress performance Plugins to enhance the performance of your website in addition its best web hosting provider can be the cherry on the top.
Summary
From reading the above post, anyone can probably tell how obsessed we are with providing all the possible ways to Boost up the Website performance. Whether with the help of WordPress Performance Plugins or with the help of some tips and tricks. Whatever it is, one thing is sure having a great performing website with a low loading time can boost up your search engine rankings, it becomes easy for crawlers to crawl your website, increases retention rate, increases conversions, and hence reduces bounce rate.
I hope the above WordPress performance plugin recommendation along with some essential tips or tricks can be helpful for you and you will be able to take some guidance from it to apply on your website.
However, if you still find anything that we missed to mention or you would like to add more points to it. Please do let us know in the comment section below.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I check my WordPress plugin’s performance?
To check which WordPress plugin is doing well and its performance, there are plenty of Plugins available on WordPress such as Query Monitor you can use. In addition to this, there are some steps you can follow.
1. Run a speed test
2. Make a copy of your website in a staging environment
3. Deactivate all the plugins
4. Reinstall your plugins one by one and check
How can I improve my WordPress site performance?
Although there are some WordPress performance plugins available that can help you to boost your WordPress site performance such as:
1. Hyper Cache
2. WP Super Cache
3. WP Optimize and many more.
In addition to that, there are some essential tips you can also follow such as,
1. Install only essential Plugins
2. Host your website on high-quality and reliable Web hosts
3. Use light themes or Templates
4. Perform on your website
5. Remove unused plugins
6. Use CDN
Why is WordPress so slow?
The main reason for being your WordPress so slow can be your poor quality of web hosting service that does not match your website requirements. i.e. its compatibility with the server and the web traffic it receives. Another possible reason can be no usage of cache plugins, and you are not using CDN especially if you are running high high-traffic website. Although there are some WordPress Performance Plugins that are also available that help you to determine the main culprit of your WordPress being so slow.
Rahul Kumar is a web enthusiast, and content strategist specializing in WordPress & web hosting. With years of experience and a commitment to staying up-to-date with industry trends, he creates effective online strategies that drive traffic, boosts engagement, and increase conversions. Rahul’s attention to detail and ability to craft compelling content makes him a valuable asset to any brand looking to improve its online presence.
