Do you want to increase the speed of your WordPress website? You’ll need the right plugins and tools to assist you.

This post will provide you with the best WordPress speed optimization plugins for this purpose. There are both free and paid plugins available.

And don’t worry if you’re not very tech savvy; some of these plugins can improve WordPress performance with a few clicks – no need to become a web developer.

Table of Contents

Perfmatters

In contrast to the majority of plugins on this list, Perfmatters optimizes pages using a different method.

WordPress comes pre-configured with a few options that slow down performance and aren’t needed for most sites. With a few button clicks, Perfmatters allows you to turn these options off.

All unnecessary HTTP requests, however, are the main cause of rendering page delays.

You can even turn off these scripts for individual pages with Perfmatters. It is therefore possible to prevent plugins from loading unnecessary code.

Moreover, you can benefit from performance-enhancing features like preconnect, DNS prefetch, local hosting for Google Analytics scripts, and more.

Therefore, you should use Perfmatters even if you have a WordPress caching plugin installed.

Price: 

Starts from $25/year.

WP Rocket

For the majority of users, WP Rocket is the greatest WordPress performance plugin.

Along with a ton of features you probably wouldn’t expect, you get all the caching functionality you would expect.

All of this is encased in the most intuitive user interface I’ve seen in a WordPress plugin.

Compared to other WordPress caching plugins, WP Rocket makes the setup process incredibly simple, requiring you to study an entire course to figure it out.

I adore that it has features for which you would typically need to install a few additional plugins.

For instance, these features come with the package, so you won’t need a separate plugin for database optimization or lazy loading.

A few sophisticated features are relatively simple to use. Delaying Javascript execution time is one way to do this, and it can significantly affect Core Web Vitals and page load times.

If you’re looking for a one-stop speed optimization plugin, WP Rocket is definitely worth looking into. I was able to remove three other plugins from my WordPress website after installing WP Rocket.

Price:

From $59.

NitroPack

NitroPack is a comprehensive speed optimization platform that goes beyond just a WordPress performance plugin.

This platform’s concept is to make website speed optimization easier. NitroPack optimizes everything for you, saving you the trouble of using multiple plugins and manually selecting what needs to be optimized.

Install the connector plugin and add your website. The degree of optimization aggression is then selectable.

At that point, NitroPack will begin automatically optimizing your website.

It will implement a global content delivery network (CDN), different caching strategies, image optimization, compression, minification, serving images in next-generation formats (like SVG), DNS prefetching, deferring JavaScript, and more.

Additionally, since their servers handle all of these optimizations, your own server usage is decreased.

All of these adjustments can reduce main-thread work, increase your Web Core Vitals, and enhance time to first byte (TTFB).

You can adjust the settings to extract even more performance, but even on the “strong” setting, page load times and Google PageSpeed scores will significantly improve.

Furthermore, Colin used Elementor to cut load times by more than three seconds during our review. I was able to get my mobile PageSpeed score in the nineties by using GeneratePress.

Price:

A powered by badge is added to your footer; however, the free plan is ideal for testing or very small websites. More resources and the removal of the badge are provided by paid plans.

Becoming a beta tester will allow you to remove the badge. For users of the free plan, this also means more resources.

Cache Enabler

The KeyCDN team has created a fantastic plugin called Cache Enabler.

You can set up this lightweight caching plugin in a matter of minutes.

It includes settings for minification setup, cache expiry time, and a few other things. Apart from that, not many features, but that is the whole purpose of this plugin.

Use the sister plugin, CDN Enabler, if you need to add a content delivery network service. The same idea holds true: lightweight and simple to assemble.

Price:

Free.

WP Super Cache

One of the most popular caching plugins for WordPress is WP Super Cache. As of the writing of this post, more than 5.5 million downloads have occurred.

Although it is simple to set up, there are some advanced user settings available so you can maximize the functionality of the plugin.

Features:

• Multiple caching types (Mod_Rewrite, PHP, and Legacy) are supported.
• Caching in browsers: 
• Serve static HTML files
• Preload cache 
• Support for DNS

Price:

Free.

WP Fastest Cache

A caching-focused performance plugin is WP Fastest Cache. It has a fantastic feature set that is well-balanced with usability.

This plugin’s developer has undoubtedly struck a middle ground; some plugins are too sophisticated, while others are too basic.

Simply install, turn on, and navigate through the settings. Once you’ve hit “save,” you can proceed.

The ease of setting cache expiration times for specific URL strings is particularly appealing to me.

And it gets better, since over a million people use this plugin and it gets excellent reviews on WordPress.org.

Price:

Free.

Smush

Smush is built on the Yahoo Smush.it service, which optimizes photos and eliminates extraneous bytes from their files.

Smush uses lossless formats, so you won’t notice any difference in quality, unlike most tools that use “lossy” formats, which lower quality.

Features: 

• Removes unnecessary color from pictures
• removes meta data from JPEG images (which is never needed)
• JPEG compression optimization
• incorporates Smush.it API integration
• Select which existing images to use with the plugin.

Price:

Free plugin.

Final Thoughts

If you’re having trouble getting your website to load faster, even one of these WordPress performance plugins can significantly reduce the time it takes for pages to load.

It’s crucial to note that installing each of these should not be done blindly. Install only what you require, and keep in mind that less is more.

While there are undoubtedly other ways to speed up your website, using some of these plugins is a great place to start.

NitroPack optimizes for you, including a global CDN, and provides the maximum performance boost. For small sites, they offer a free plan.

A powerful combination for cutting expenses and speeding up page loads would be WP Rocket and Perfmatters.

You’ll have easy access to a tonne of functionality with these optimization plugins, including caching and lazy loading.

It’s also important to note that WP Rocket is the only caching plugin that Kinsta allows if you host with them.

I was able to improve the mobile page speed of one of my smaller sites from 59 to 95 by using these two plugins. Incredible.