Are you looking for the best W3 Total Cache alternatives? If you are, keep reading this post. Here, we will show you the top seven tools you can use instead of W3TC to speed up your WordPress blog or WooCommerce store.
But before getting into the list, let’s see what to look for in a WordPress caching plugin.
What to Look for In a WordPress Caching Plugin
When selecting a WordPress caching plugin, there are several key features and considerations to remember to ensure you get the best performance and functionality for your website. Here are some essential aspects to consider:
- Ease of Use: A user-friendly interface is crucial, especially for those new to caching plugins. Look for a plugin that simplifies the setup process and provides clear instructions for configuring and optimizing your site’s caching settings.
- Caching Options: Different caching plugins offer various types of caching, such as page caching, browser caching, and object caching. Ensure the plugin you choose supports the types of caching you need to optimize your site’s performance.
- Performance Optimization: An excellent caching plugin should cache your site’s content and help optimize its performance. Look for features like minifying HTML, CSS, JavaScript files, image optimization, and lazy loading.
- Compatibility: Ensure the caching plugin is compatible with your WordPress theme, other plugins, and hosting environment. Some plugins may conflict with specific themes or plugins, so checking compatibility before installation is essential.
- Support and Updates: A reliable caching plugin should have an active development team that regularly updates the plugin to fix bugs, improve performance, and add new features. Look for plugins with responsive support teams to assist you with any issues.
Now you know what to look for in a WordPress caching plugin. In the next section, we will move to the article’s core, listing all the seven plugins you can use.
Best 7 W3 Total Cache Alternatives
In a nutshell, the best seven plugins are:
- FlyingPress
- WP Rocket
- WP Super Cache
- WP Fastest Cache
- Swift Performance
- Breeze
- LiteSpeed Cache
Each of these options has unique speed optimization methods. Below, we will explain what makes these tools unique. You can pick one option based on your preferences.
Without any further ado, let’s get into the list.
1. FlyingPress
FlyingPress is a powerful WordPress plugin designed to optimize website performance and enhance user experience. Its comprehensive features make it a top choice for website owners and developers. FlyingPress generates static HTML pages and serves them directly from your web server, reducing server load and speeding up page load times.
Another excellent feature of the plugin is the modification. The plugin minifies CSS and JavaScript files, reducing file sizes and improving page load times. FlyingPress integrates with a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to further optimize your website, providing image compression, minifying CSS and JS files, and reducing latency.
You can use a third-party CDN or their in-house CDN provider called FlyingCDN. Database optimization is another notable feature offered by the plugin. This feature is designed to optimize and clean up database tables, ensuring your website runs smoothly and efficiently.
Features
- Defer scripts
- Lazy loading
- Minification
- Database optimization
- Google font optimization
Pricing
FlyingPress is a premium WordPress plugin that costs $42 a year. It can be downloaded from its official website.
2. WP Rocket
WP Rocket is a powerful WordPress caching plugin designed to optimize website performance and enhance user experience. With its comprehensive features, WP Rocket can significantly improve website speed, reduce load times, and boost SEO rankings. The plugin generates static HTML pages and serves them directly from your web server, reducing server load and speeding up page load times.
WP Rocket uses lazy loading to delay loading images and videos until needed, reducing the initial page load time. You do not need a third-party lazy loading plugin when you use the plugin’s lazy loading feature. Plus, the plugin has a Google Font optimization feature. The plugin optimizes Google Fonts to reduce the number of requests made to Google’s servers.
WP Rocket is also compatible with WordPress Multisite, making it an excellent choice for websites with multiple subdomains or domains. Finally, the plugin provides a range of developer-friendly features, including a REST API, a debug mode, and hooks and filters. It is one of the best W3 Total Cache alternatives.
Features
- Browser caching
- eCommerce optimization
- GZIP compression
- Lazy loading
- Excellent customer support
Pricing
WP Rocket is a premium plugin that costs $59 a year. You can get the plugin from their official website.
3. WP Super Cache
If you’re looking for an easy-to-use WordPress caching plugin, check out WP Super Cache. The WP Super Cache plugin offers a preloading feature that significantly enhances the performance of your WordPress website. This feature works by automatically generating cache files for all the pages on your site, ensuring that visitors always receive the fastest possible loading times.
With preloading enabled, WP Super Cache will cache every article on your site every 12 hours. This means that even if visitors access a seldom-visited page, they will still hit a cached version of the content, resulting in a faster loading experience. Another feature of the plugin is garbage collection.
Garbage collection feature that automatically removes old cache files to free up space and improve performance. This essential function of the plugin is to ensure your site’s cache remains efficient and up-to-date. Customizing the plugin is easy, and you do not need any technical knowledge. It is one of the best W3 Total Cache alternatives.
Features
- Preloading
- Garbage collection
- Browser caching
- Easy to configure
- Works with most web hosting providers
Pricing
WP Super Cache is a free plugin that you can download from the WordPress plugins repository.
4. WP Fastest Cache
The next option we have for you is WP Fastest Cache. It offers features like page caching, minification, Gzip compression, and browser caching to reduce page load times. The plugin supports CDN integration, image optimization, and database optimization to improve site speed and efficiency.
The WP Fastest Cache plugin offers a Cache Timeout feature that allows you to set a period after which the cache files will automatically be deleted. This feature helps ensure that your website’s cache remains up-to-date and efficient. The “Convert to WebP” feature in WP Fastest Cache is a premium feature that automatically converts your images to the WebP format, a modern image format developed by Google that provides superior compression and quality compared to traditional formats like JPEG and PNG.
This will help you serve image files quickly. The Render Blocking JS feature in WP Fastest Cache is designed to improve website performance by optimizing the loading of JavaScript files. JS files take a reasonable amount of time to load, so this feature can be handy for optimizing the JS file’s loading time.
Features
- Widget cache
- Browser caching
- Minification
- Static resource combining
- GZIP compression
Pricing
WP Fastest Cache is a freemium WordPress plugin that can be downloaded from the WordPress plugin repository. The premium version, which starts at $49 (one-time fee), can be purchased from the official website.
5. Swift Performance
If you need a lightweight WordPress caching plugin, check out Swift Performance. The Smart Font Delivery feature in Swift Performance is designed to optimize the delivery of fonts on your WordPress website. This feature intelligently detects the fonts used on your website, including custom fonts and icons. It then creates an optimized version of these fonts, reducing their file size without compromising quality.
The remote cron function in Swift Performance allows the plugin to manage WordPress cron jobs more efficiently. In a typical WordPress setup, cron jobs are handled by the wp-cron.php script, which runs on every page load. This can lead to performance issues, especially on high-traffic websites. Swift Performance’s remote cron function provides an alternative way to handle cron jobs.
Instead of running wp-cron.php on every page load, Swift Performance’s API server will call wp-cron.php and run WP cron jobs as real cron jobs. The image lazyloading feature in Swift Performance is designed to optimize the loading of images on your WordPress website. This feature intelligently detects the photos on your website. It loads them only when they are about to enter the viewport, which can significantly improve page load times and enhance the user experience.
Features
- Smart Font Delivery
- Lazy loading
- CDN integration
- Remote cron
- Regular updates
Pricing
Swift Performance is a freemium WordPress caching plugin that can be downloaded from the WordPress plugin repository. The premium version costs $49.99 a year.
6. Breeze
If you need to use a caching plugin with many active installations, check out Breeze. Breeze was created by the same team behind Cloudways, a popular cloud hosting provider. The Breeze WordPress Cache Plugin is designed to be user-friendly, making it easy for beginners and advanced users to optimize their WordPress website for performance.
The Breeze WordPress Cache Plugin integrates with Varnish Cache, an HTTP reverse proxy caching to optimize your WordPress website’s performance. Varnish Cache is a high-performance HTTP accelerator designed for dynamic websites with high traffic. It acts as an intermediary between the client and the server, processing all incoming requests. Breeze leverages Varnish Cache to cache content and speed up your site.
The caching exclusions feature in Breeze allows you to exclude specific pages or content from being cached. This can be useful for pages that need to be dynamic or contain sensitive information. Add the URL to the “Cache Exclusion” section to exclude a page from caching in the Breeze settings. Breeze will bypass caching for that page, ensuring it remains dynamic and up-to-date.
Features
- Database optimization
- Easy to setup
- Works with every theme and plugin
- WooCommerce optimized
- CDN integration
Pricing
Breeze is a free WordPress caching plugin. You can download it from the repository.
7. LiteSpeed Cache
LiteSpeed Cache is a revolutionary WordPress plugin designed to supercharge your website’s performance and deliver lightning-fast loading times. By leveraging advanced caching technology, this plugin ensures that your site is optimized for speed, resulting in improved user experience and higher search engine rankings.
With the dynamic caching feature, LiteSpeed Cache intelligently caches dynamic content, ensuring your website’s pages are delivered quickly to visitors. The plugin minifies and compresses your website’s code, reducing the overall file size and improving page load times. Image compression is another feature the LiteSpeed Cache has to offer.
Additionally, the plugin offers a free integration with QUIC.cloud for WordPress acceleration. QUIC.cloud is a global content delivery network built on LiteSpeed’s state-of-the-art server stack. This integration allows WordPress websites to take advantage of QUIC.cloud’s CDN capabilities include caching and delivering dynamic WordPress content globally. It is one of the best W3 Total Cache alternatives.
Features
- Free QUIC.cloud CDN
- Combine static files
- Minification
- Cloudflare API integration
- Import/export settings
Pricing
LiteSpeed Cache is a freemium WordPress plugin. You can get it from the WordPress plugins repository.
Conclusion
W3 Total Cache is one of the best caching plugins available for WordPress. This tool can improve a website’s performance and reduce server load. However, if you are not a fan of W3TC, plenty of W3 Total Cache alternatives are available. In this blog post, we have shown you seven of the best tools you can use instead of the W3TC plugin.
FlyingPress and WP Rocket are two of the best options with cutting-edge features. If you’re looking for a free option, check out WP Super Cache, WP Fastest Cache, or LiteSpeed Cache. All the caching plugins can help you improve the website’s speed with minimal effort.
Based on your preferences, you can choose a plugin.
Which plugin are you going to use?
Let us know in the comments!
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