Are you in search of the best WordPress speed optimization plugins to boost the speed of your website? Well, if that is your concern, you’re in the right place.
The performance of your website is an important factor to attract a large number of visitors. If your website is too slow and doesn’t work well, people lose their interest and don’t prefer visiting it again. So, you must keep your website optimized to increase the flow of visitors and rank well in the search engines.
In this article, we have made a list of some of the best WordPress speed optimization plugins that can be used to improve the speed of your website. So, let’s have a look at some of the best speed plugins for WordPress.
Why Do You Need a WordPress Speed Optimization Plugin?
WordPress speed optimization plugins are the extra tools that you can add to your WordPress site in order to increase its speed. They are also called WordPress performance plugins as they help to improve the performance of the site.
As your website grows, the contents added to your website also starts to increase. Due to the excessive amount of content on your website, your website can start having speed issues. When that happens, people don’t like visiting your website as it takes a lot of time to operate. This way, you’re likely to lose a huge number of customers.
In order to boost the speed of your website and save yourself from a huge loss, you must never compromise with the performance level of your site. You can use various WordPress plugins that are effective to increase site speed. They help you to optimize images, page speed, and make sure that your visitors have a good user experience.
Hence, WordPress speed optimization plugins are necessary to speed up your WordPress site and make it load faster. They improve the level of performance of a website which helps the customers to access the site without facing any trouble.
Best Speed Optimization Plugins for WordPress Sites
We’ve already discussed the necessity of WordPress speed optimization plugins for a website. Now, let’s discuss the best speed plugins for the WordPress website that you can use.
We’ve handpicked 17 best-speed plugins and tools for WordPress in 6 different categories; a) all-in-one plugins, b) caching, c) image compression, d) lazy loading, e) CDN services and others.
Let’s start!
a. All-in-one WordPress Speed Plugins
If you don’t feel convenient to add multiple plugins for optimizing the speed of your website, all-in-one WordPress speed plugins can be useful for you.
As the name itself explains, all-in-one WordPress speed plugins have all the basic functions related to speed. You get multiple features like caching, picture compression, lazy load, etc. in one single plugin.
1. WP Rocket (Paid)
WP Rocket is one of the best WordPress plugins designed to increase site speed. It increases the level of website performance and boosts the rate of traffic to your website.
It comes with a great feature of file compression which decreases the weight of heavy files like HTML, JavaScript, and CSS through minification. This results in faster load time as heavy files are converted to lighter files.
Another special function that you get with WP Rocket is it only shows images on request. Until and unless the visitors don’t scroll down the page, the images aren’t loaded. So, the website loads faster.
Let’s point out the features of WP Rocket:
- Page caching for super-fast load time.
- Compression of heavy files like HTML, JavaScript, CSS.
- Easy to customize
- Easy setup process
- Loads images only when requested by the user.
- Pre-loading of cache
- Optimization of database
- Integration with Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Price: It has three pricing plans.
- Single Plan – $49 for 1 website,
- Plus Plan – $99 for 3 websites,
- Infinite Plan – $249 for unlimited websites
2. Hummingbird (Free)
Hummingbird is a WordPress performance plugin that is developed to improve the performance of a WordPress website and make it more customer-friendly. It’s a product of the WPMU DEV team.
It optimizes your site performance and makes it work faster by boosting your Google PageSpeed. From scanning and fixing the problem that is slowing down your website to giving suggestions to improve the speed of your website, Hummingbird helps you to make your site function better.
Let’s point out the features of Hummingbird:
- Easy scan and fix the problems for performance improvement
- Different cache tools to load pages faster
- Reducing the size of heavy files like CSS, JavaScript through minification
- Use GZIP and transfer data at high speed.
- Can control Cloudflare browser cache
Price: Free
3. Autoptimize (Free)
Autoptimize is one of the WordPress speed optimization plugins using which you can easily optimize your website. It was created by a Belgian developer named Frank Gossens.
It minifies the JavaScript and CSS files of your website and makes it function better. This means it removes the unwanted characters from the source code without making any change in its functionality. It also optimizes HTML files to improve the speed of the website.
Let’s point out the features of Autoptimize:
- Optimization of HTML, CSS and JavaScript
- Optimization of Google fonts
- By default, it adds CSS in the page head.
- Lazy loading and optimization of images
- Option to remove WordPress core emoji
Price: Free
4. WP-Optimize (Free)
WP-Optimize is one of the most used all-in-one WordPress speed plugins. You can use this plugin to clean the junk files in the database and make space. Also, you can compress the images and cache your website. It keeps your website optimized so that it can function faster.
While using the WP-Optimize plugin, you can also choose the part of your website that you want to optimize. You can also delete old plugin tables stored in your database. The cleanups can be done either automatically or by scheduling it as per need.
Let’s point out the features of WP-Optimize:
- Cleaning and optimization of the website database.
- Caching web pages for faster load times.
- Images can be compressed to reduce the size.
- Minify CSS and JavaScript
- Automatic as well as scheduled cleanups
- Gives control over the area to be optimized
Price: Free
b. WordPress Caching Plugins
Those plugins that only have the caching features to speed up a WordPress website are the Caching Plugins.
Caching is a process in which data is stored in a temporary storage area called a cache. This is done so that the stored data can be accessed faster in the future. When the contents of your website are cached, it can be easily retrieved whenever a user tries to see them again. This saves time and increases the loading speed of your website.
So, you can use caching plugins to cache your website so that when a visitor revisits your website, it loads faster.
1. WP Super Cache (Free)
WP Super Cache is a caching plugin designed for a WordPress website. It operates under the Automattic company. It comes with features like page caching and browser caching.
It’s a WordPress performance plugin that works by generating a static HTML file from your WordPress website. These static HTML files are lighter and are used in place of heavier WordPress PHP scripts whenever a visitor visits your website. This makes the website load time faster and improves the user experience which leads to better conversion.
Let’s point out the features of WP Super Cache:
- Preloading of cached files
- CDN integration
- It has its own plugin system.
- Works well with multiple caching types (Mod_Rewrite, PHP, and Legacy)
Price: Free
2. LiteSpeed Cache (Free)
LiteSpeed Cache is a WordPress caching plugin that helps to increase the speed of a WordPress website. It’s a product of LightSpeed Technologies. You can also use this plugin for different platforms like Magneto, Drupal, etc.
It caches the web pages of your website that are frequently changing due to updates. This helps the web pages load faster whenever someone tries to access it. It works as a communicator between the web app and the cache engine. Using it, you can manage the cache files so that they can be stored for a longer duration.
Let’s point out the features of LiteSpeed Cache:
- Full-page caching
- Optimization of image
- Minification of CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
- Lazy Loading of images
- Browser caching support
- Optimization of database
Price: Free
3. W3 Total Cache (Free)
W3 Total Cache is one of the WordPress speed optimization plugins that help to optimize a WordPress site through caching. It caches every part of your website and ensures that your website loads faster. It’s developed by BoldGrid.
This WordPress plugin lets you minify the heavy CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files into lighter files. It also has built-in CDN support which reduces the user’s location and hosting server distance. As a result, the loading speed of your site improves.
Let’s point out the features of W3 Total Cache:
- Built-in CDN support
- Minification of heavy CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files
- Caching of browser
- Caching of database
- Improves SEO and user experience
- Compatible with shared hosting
Price: Free
c. Lazy Loading Plugins for WordPress
Lazy loading is a process in which the objects are loaded only when we need it. This means objects aren’t loaded unnecessarily on a website until needed.
So, lazy loading plugins help to delay the load time of objects so that it can only be viewed when a visitor desires.
1. Lazy Load by WP Rocket (Free)
Lazy Load by WP Rocket is a free WordPress plugin to increase site speed. This plugin loads the images on your webpage only when a visitor scrolls the page to see them. This decreases the rate of HTTP requests which makes the loading time better.
Let’s point out the features of Lazy Load by WP Rocket:
- Work on thumbnails, avatars, iframes, widget text, similies of a website
- Works on all the images of a website
- Reduces HTTP requests for better loading time
- Youtube iframes can be replaced by a preview thumbnail for better performance.
Price: Free
2. a3 Lazy Load (Free)
a3 Lazy Load is a flexible WordPress speed optimization plugin. It only displays the images that a visitor can see in their browser. As the visitor scrolls down the web page the remaining images load accordingly.
Apart from images, a3 Lazy Load also supports media like WordPress video, Youtube. You can make different adjustments for different media with the available settings.
Let’s point out the features of a3 Lazy Load:
- Highly compatible with WordPress
- On and off option for lazy loading images in a post, pages, widgets, thumbnails, etc.
- Lazy loading of videos added by URL in Post and Pages (all content area)
- Auto built-in support for WordPress AMP plugin
- Compatible with WordPress plugins like WooCommerce, JetPack, WordPress Offload, etc.
- Has full support of jQueryMobile framework
- Has backend support for RTL display
- Can be translated
Price: Free
d. Image Compression WordPress Plugins
Image compression is the process of data compression in which heavier images are converted into the lighter form so that they consume less space.
Those plugins that help you to optimize the images through that process are the Image Compression Plugins. They help to make the images lighter so that they load faster on your website.
1. Imagify (Free)
Imagify is a free image optimization plugin for WordPress. It’s the most advanced tool that automatically optimizes all the images and thumbnails after uploading them into WordPress. With Imagify, you get a monthly limit of 25 MB total image data size.
Let’s point out the features of Imagify:
- Automatic optimization of images and thumbnails that are uploaded in WordPress
- Works well with WooCommerce and NextGen Gallery
- Has three levels of compression: Normal (no change in image quality), Aggressive (some data may be lost but no change in image quality), and Ultra (loss in data as well as picture quality)
- Easy restoring of original images with a backup option
- You can directly resize your images.
Price: Free
2. WP Smush (Free)
WP Smush is one of the best speed plugins for WordPress that is used for image optimization. It removes extra space-consuming bytes from the image files and makes it lighter. It’s also an award-winning WordPress plugin that helps your website load faster.
Let’s point out the features of WP Smush:
- Compress image without losing image quality
- Processes all the files like PNG, JPEG, GIF
- Integration of Guttenberg Block
- Images up to 5MB in size can be optimized without limit in time
- Optimization of up to 50 images possible at a time
- You can resize the image
- Quickly identifies the images that are making your website slower
Price: Free
e. CDN Services
CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. It’s a group of servers spread in various parts of the world in order to distribute the website content in a faster and easier way. This means each time a visitor visits your website, they can view your site’s file from the nearest CDN location. There is no need to go to the main server every time.
The CDN services aren’t plugins built on WordPress. They’re independent web services on their own. However, we included them in the list as they’re greatly useful for optimizing WordPress speed.
1. KeyCDN (Paid)
KeyCDN is a CDN service that enhances the performance of your site. It’s easy to set up and comes with powerful features. You get various security features to secure your website from digital threats. Moreover, features like image processing, HTTP live streaming helps to deliver a high-performance content delivery network. Its services are available on 6 continents with 34 data centers globally.
Let’s point out the features of KeyCDN:
- Easy integration with WordPress, Drupal, Magento
- Can handle all labels of traffic either small blog or top 10 website
- High reliability due to resilient infrastructure and 24/7 customer support
- Security features like DDoS Protection, Two-factor Authentication
- Helps to rank your website higher
- Detailed reports about content delivery
- Complete account control using any application with RESTful API
Price: The price varies according to the continent you live in.
2. Cloudflare (Free + Paid)
Cloudflare is one of the biggest CDN service providers that can be used to protect your websites, apps, and teams. Various security and optimization features are available in Cloudflare. It ensures your website safety through Cloudflare Security Solutions.
You can use Cloudflare’s ‘Mirage’ technology to deliver an optimized image to your visitor. This technology detects the screen size and connection speed of your visitor to deliver a well-optimized image. Also, ‘Polish’ technology can be used to compress the image size and remove unnecessary bytes from it.
Let’s point out the features of Cloudflare:
- Security features like DDoS protection, Bot management, Web application firewall
- Easy to use dashboard
- Highly customizable CDN
- Fast reliable content delivery across the globe
- Free SSL protection
- You can register a website using Cloudflare Registrar.
- Image optimization features like Image resizing, Mirage, Polish
- Services for website optimization
Price: It’s available in 4 different options.
- Free,
- Pro ($20/month),
- Business ($200/month), and
- Enterprise (contact the company for price)
f. Other Popular WordPress Performance Plugins
You can also use other WordPress performance plugins to improve the performance of your website. We have listed below some of the best speed plugins for WordPress that you can install.
1. Perfmatters (Paid)
In WordPress, some options are enabled by default. These options are unnecessary to some of the websites and cause slow functioning. But with the help of Perfmatters, the unwanted options can be disabled to ensure better performance of the website.
Perfmatters offers several options for the improvement of your site performance. Using it, you can disable the options like an HTTP request, emojis, Google font, etc. that cause your website to slow down.
Let’s point out the features of Perfmatters:
- Easy to use dashboard
- Lightweight WordPress plugin
- Disable unwanted options that slow down a WordPress site
- Ensure a fast and updated database
- Built-in Script Manager for disabling scripts
- Supports WordPress multisite setups
Price: It has three pricing plans.
- Personal ($24.95/ year for 1 site),
- Business ($54.95/ year for 3 sites), and
- Unlimited sites ($124.95/ year)
2. Asset CleanUp (Free)
Asset CleanUp is another WordPress speed optimization plugin that works to improve the speed of a WordPress website.
You install different themes and plugins to your WordPress website to add some extra features. But these themes and plugins might load on each page of your site unnecessarily and affect its performance. Asset CleanUp disables the unwanted plugins and prevents them from loading on certain pages and posts.
This plugin works best when combined with a cache plugin (WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache), a hosting company that has server-level caching available (WP Engine, Kinsta) or page caching enabled service like Cloudflare.
Let’s point out the features of Asset CleanUp:
- Helps to decrease the rate of HTTP requests
- Unloads useless CSS/JS
- Reduces the HTML code of the page
- Minification of JavaScript and CSS files
- Increase site performance and ranking
Price: Free
3. Heartbeat Control by WP Rocket (Free)
Heartbeat Control by WP Rocket is one of the best plugins for WordPress that regulates the frequency of the WordPress Heartbeat API.
When you log in to your WordPress admin panel, there is a communication between the server and the browser. This happens due to the WordPress Heartbeat API feature. It makes AJAX calls from the browser using the /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php file.
Every 15 and 60 seconds, AJAX requests are sent on post edit pages and the dashboard respectively. This is a helpful process however when your WordPress admin is left open for a longer period, the AJAX request gets piled up. This causes high CPU usage and affects the performance of your website.
So, in order to limit or stop the activity of WordPress Heartbeat API, you need to use Heartbeat Control by WP Rocket.
Let’s point out the features of Heartbeat Control by WP Rocket:
- Controls the activity of WordPress Heartbeat API
- Helps to minimize CPU usage
- Option to choose a specific location like Dashboard, Post Editor to control the activity
Price: Free
4. ShortPixel (Freemium)
ShortPixel is an image optimization WordPress plugin to increase site speed. It compresses all the post images and PDF documents easily. The new images are resized and optimized automatically in the background with the help of ShortPixel.
You can do both lossy and lossless image compression to your JPG, PNG, GIF images as well as PDF files. It also offers glossy JPEG compression for very high-quality lossy optimization. Using minimal resources, it works well with any shared, cloud, VPS, or dedicated web hosting.
Let’s point out the features of ShortPixel:
- Easy optimization of any image including those in the media library or in galleries like NextGEN, Modula or added via FTP
- Automatic resizing and rescaling of new images
- Easy compression of JPG, PNG, GIF, and WebP images along with PDF files
- Designed especially for photographers
- Bulk optimization possible
- Highly compatible with watermarking plugins
- No limit for file size
- Compatible with eCommerce websites using WooCommerce
Price: It has 100 free credits/month. You can buy additional credits for a minimum cost of $4.99 for 5,000 image credits.
Conclusion
So, these are some of the best speed plugins for WordPress that you can use on your website. They’ll help you in making your website function better and faster as well as help your visitors gain a good user experience.
In this article, we have listed six different categories of the plugin.
- All-in-one plugins – Multiple speed features like caching, lazyload. Best options- WP Rocket, Hummingbird.
- Caching plugins – Caching related major features for improving a website’s speed. Best options- WP Super Cache, LiteSpeed Cache.
- Lazy Loading plugins – Lazy load related major features for improving a website’s speed. Best options- Lazy Load by WP Rocket, a3 Lazy Load.
- Image Compression Plugins – Image optimization related major features for improving a website’s speed. Best options- Imagify, WP Smush.
- CDN Services – Content Delivery Network related major features for improving a website’s speed. Best options- KeyCDN, Cloudflare.
- Other WordPress plugins- Plugins having features apart from the above five categories. Best options- Perfmatters, Heartbeat Control by WP Rocket.
You can install any one of them as per your requirement and convenience. All of them have different features and pricing plans (free, paid, and freemium). So, you can choose the one that best suits you.
We hope with the help of this article you’ll be able to improve your website’s performance by choosing the best plugin.
Also, you can check our other articles related with WordPress.
- Best WordPress Page Builder Plugins for 2020
- Essential WordPress Plugins and Tools
- Create a Contact Form with these Plugins (Free and Premium)
