Top 5 Website Speed Plugins 2022
Website speed is an important aspect of a website. Browsing speed is one of the factors that will have a direct impact on the user experience of your visitors. If the browsing speed of the website is not up to standards, it is likely that visitors will be detracted from the website, and they will be less likely to be interested in the content of your website. In fact, the bounce rate, the rate of people entering your website and then leaving on the spot, rises to 90% when the site's loading speed goes up to 5 seconds.
For this reason, improving your website's browsing and processing speed is crucial when designing a website for your business. Conveniently, there are many ways to greatly improve your website speed, of which plugins are some of the most effective. Installing the right plugins into your website will greatly improve your WordPress performance. As a result, the overall user experience on your website will be much better, and visitors are much more likely to be converted into buying customers.
That said, it can still be challenging for non-professionals to find the right plugin for their website. This is because there are so many different plugins out there with different functionalities and compatibilities. If you wish to find the right plugin to boost your website speed, check out these top choices, handpicked by experts in the field.
Why must your WordPress website be optimized for speed?
Everyone hates slow-loading websites. Don’t you hate it when you have to wait several minutes just for the website to load a video? Or if you have to wait for the images to load. The frustration is real and can severely hurt the visitors’ overall satisfaction with your website.
Furthermore, the problem might be worse than customers’ satisfaction only. If your website has a slow browsing speed, likely, it will not rank very high on Google ranking. Thus, optimizing your WordPress website's performance is a good strategy if you wish to preserve your current ranking or improve your overall ranking.
WordPress performance plugins to the rescue
Performance plugins are the best way to achieve a better page speed for your website. These high-quality plugins will help to optimize WordPress pages, allowing them to run noticeably faster with ease. The best part is that these plugins don’t usually change the coding structure of the page, messing with the backend assets. Instead, they will clear any clutter you might have while loading the website. These plugins will also help you identify the shortcomings your WordPress websites currently have so that you can deal with them immediately.
Security breaches are also some of the main reasons why websites slow down over time. WordPress performance plugins will help to prevent these security breaches by providing security measures. As a result, your websites will be much less likely to be targeted by brute force attacks or malware attacks. These plugins will help you make precious backups if your website gets attacked. Backups are the files that save the state of your websites at a certain point in time. With these files, you can easily restore your websites to a previous state, ensuring that you will not lose data during the attacks.
A free plugin can also dramatically improve the image compression process. They can help to optimize images and prevent scaling, ensuring that the website will display the images in high quality without slowing down the users’ experience.
The best plugins, picked by experts
Performance plugins are highly effective in boosting the loading speed of your website, but not all plugins are made equal. Some of these plugins are easier to use and more intuitive than others, but it can be pretty difficult for a non-professional to know which ones are worth investing time into. The following ranking list will help you find the perfect WordPress website plugin for your website.
WP Rocket
This is the top-tier choice for website owners who wish to dominate their rivals. WP Rocket reviews are raving, and this plugin is the most powerful web performance plugin in the world. The plugin will instantly improve the performance of your website after some easy configuration steps. WP Rocket is also incredibly easy to use, and you don’t even need to have prior coding experience in order to fully utilize all the benefits offered by the plugin.
Although it does not come with a trial version, its premium version comes with a refund policy valid within 14 days after the purchase. This policy is a great way to help you backtrack if you think you have made the wrong decision.
More benefits to its users:
- Fast page cache preloading
- eCommerce optimization
- Browser caching
WHR Marketing has had outstanding results with WP Rocket which is why we recommend it as the Best Cache Plugin for Website Speed in 2022.
W3 Total Cache
A great choice for experts, W3 Total Cache, is also a popular option to boost the page speed of your website. The one thing that sets W3 Total Cache apart from the others is the fact that it is the only web host agnostic Web Performance Optimization (WPO) framework, making it a tool that has been trusted by many experts and web publishers for years.
W3 Total Cache is a tool that comes with a wide range of solutions to help you manage your web page more easily. Some notable features from W3 Total Cache include:
- Wide compatibility with shared hosting and private servers
- Superb mobile support
- SSL support
WP Super Cache
True to its name, WP Super Cache is a highly recommended tool for caching. It will generate HTML files for the vast majority of the users on your website. These users are the passers-by who do not leave comments on your website and also users who are not logged in. By providing HTML files for these visitors, you can avoid using expensive and heavy PHP files for every user, considerably freeing up resources for your website.
WP Super Cache is easily configurable, and it does not take an expert to fully optimize this plugin's benefits. The downside, however, lies in its limited functionalities. WP Rocket is still a better choice if you want a more comprehensive solution.
Hummingbird
Hummingbird is another great performance plugin that has been proven to work. Developed by experts with years of experience in WordPress, this is an all-in-one tool that will give you total control of your website and help you figure out what is not working for your website. With Hummingbird, it will be much easier to improve the page speed of your website and get a better ranking for your website.
The best features that Hummingbird has to offer are:
- Accurate scans of your website to identify any potential clutter
- A complete set of caching tools
- Easy to use and simple setup
Imagify
Imagify is the premier plugin for image compression. Image files take up a lot of space on your website, and they are also notorious for hogging hosting resources, which will considerably slow down the processing time of your website. Imagify will help you to deal with the issue of file sizes and compress image files. As a result, your website will run considerably faster.
This plugin offers three main modes of image compression, each with its own benefits and downsides. This table will offer a comprehensive look into image compression modes.
Other tips to improve the loading speed of your WordPress website
Using plugins isn’t the only way to boost your WordPress site performance. Below are some amazing tips that you can take into account.
Employing faster themes
Themes are the graphic elements that determine the overall aesthetics of your website. Creating a unique theme for your website is a good way to distinguish your business from the others, but there is one noticeable downside: Some themes can severely affect the website's performance and slow it down to a crawl. Thus, you should look for the fastest WordPress theme if you wish to improve the loading time.
Get help from independent services
Independent services are not plugins but rather independent components of your website provided by third-party companies. They will provide extra security and optimizations that will improve the loading speed of your website, thus improving its overall ranking. Cloudflare is a notable CDN service that you should not miss out on. Cloudflare is a premier protection barrier against DDOS attacks, protecting it from malicious intent. It should be noted that Cloudflare can also directly improve the performance of your website by reusing many copies of your site.
Fast Web Hosting
Check out Rocket Hosting. This management tool lets you control all aspects of your website from one control panel and features built-in CDN and WAF. Rocket.net hosting reviews are extremely positive, with many praising it as the fastest web hosting provider with a simple-to-use interface and image cache convenience.
As a matter of fact, WHR Marketing recommends Rocket as the best web hosting provider in 2022.
Best Plugins for Website Speed FAQ
Using a WordPress plugin can be quite a challenging experience for non-professionals. There are bound to be plenty of questions that linger on your mind, so this section will help provide some comprehensive answers to the most frequently asked questions, helping you to fully utilize all the functionalities that plugins offer.
Which ones are the best cache plugins?
While the competition is quite tough, WP Rocket is the clear winner here, especially if you can get your hands on its premium version. This plugin is incredibly easy to use and helps you preload caches whenever you change your website. This will ensure that visitors can enjoy a smoother and faster surfing experience.
My images are taking too long to load. What should I do?
You might have an issue with image compression. Image files that are too large can clutter your website by taking a bit too long to load, irritating visitors to your website. A good way to offset this is to use an image compression plugin such as Imagify or TinyPNG. However, you should keep in mind that the quality of your images might be severely affected if the files are too aggressively compressed. The key is to find a good balance.
Is it a good idea to skip plugins for my website?
Plugins are very powerful tools that can help you manage many different aspects of your website. While it is theoretically still possible to run your website without performance plugins, you will risk losing your Google ranking due to the low processing time and loading time. Furthermore, the risk of security breaches will be greatly elevated if you do not employ security plugins. These security breaches can lead to disruptions or data leaks that can potentially harm your business.
No one enjoys a slow website that takes forever to load, but you are not at your wit’s end. With the help of several performance plugins as well as independent services, the loading speed of your website will see notable changes in a short time frame. The result will be a fast and high-ranking website that will put a smile on your customers’ faces, making it much more likely that they will take action after spending time on your website.