WP Rocket Review

WP Rocket is one of the best performance optimization plugins. In fact, it is the leader of caching and performance optimization of WordPress.

In this WP Rocket review, I will be taking a close look at its features and the improvement that can be achieved by using it.

WP Rocket was launched in 2013. It is really easy to use and performance improvement is noticeable. Today, WP Rocket powers over 900,000 websites and continues to be the market leader in caching plugins.

Performance Benchmarks

Rather than talking theoretically, let me show you the improvements made by WP Rocket. The test site is set up on a digital ocean droplet with 4 GB ram and 2 core CPU. It’s using LAMP stack. WordPress version is 5.7 and PHP version is 7.4. Theme used is Astra.

Without WP Rocket

3.1 secs for 916 KB is not bad but let’s see if with WP Rocket we can do do better or not.

With WP Rocket

Now, this is not the performance we got with the default settings. Actually, there was hardly any difference with the default settings. After configuring the plugin for optimal performance, our loading time dropped to 2.5 secs and page size dropped to 830 KB. Also, the number of requests dropped.

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How to Configure Optimal Settings for WP Rocket

This is how you can configure WP Rocket for optimal performance

1. Install and Activate WP Rocket

As WP Rocket cannot be found in the WordPress repository, you will have to upload the plugin manually and then install and activate it.

2. Configure File Optimization

Open WP Rocket settings and go to the File Optimization tab.
Set the following options:
1) Minify HTML
2) Combine Google Font files
3) Remove query strings from static resources. 
4) Minify CSS files.
5) Combine CSS files.
6) Optimize CSS delivery. 
7) Minify JavaScript files.
8) Combine JavaScript files. 
9) Load JavaScript deferred. 
10) Safe mode for jQuery.

3. Enable Heartbeat Control

Heartbeat is a WordPress API that is used by WordPress plugins, themes and WordPress core. It consistently makes requests to your WordPress server which can slow down your site.
Enable Control Heartbeat and select Reduce Activity in WP Rocket settings.

WP Rocket Pricing

WP Rocket doesn’t have a free version of its plugin but they are so confident in their product that they offer a risk-free 14 days moneyback guarantee.

Here is their pricing structure:

WP Rocket Features

Here are some of the features of WP Rocket:

• Page Caching 
• Cache Preloading 
• Sitemap Preloading 
• GZip Compression 
• Browser Caching 
• Database Optimization 
• Google Fonts Optimization 
• Remove Query Strings From Static Resources
• Lazy Loading
• Minification and Concatenation 
• Defer JS Loading 
• Cloudflare and Sucuri Compatibility 
• CDN
• DNS Prefetching 
• Mobile Detection 
• Multisite Compatibility 
• eCommerce Friendly
• Multilingual Compatibility 

Why Should I Pay for WP Rocket?

With a plethora of caching and optimization plugins available for WordPress (most of them being free), one might question “why should we pay for it?”. The simple answer is due to their outstanding support and amazing performance improvement and compatibility with a vast number of plugins and themes.

In fact, their support has over 95% positive reviews. Once in a while you might find some negative reviews but contacting support usually solves the problems.

You will also find that WP Rocket is updated constantly with bug-fixes and new features. They are always improving the plugin.

Even after all these if you don’t want to pay for WP Rocket then WP Super Cache is a good enough alternative.

Verdict

WP Rocket is one of the best if not the best caching plugins available for WordPress. Their support is simply outstanding and you will see drastic improvement in performance once you use it. If you have any queries or suggestions, then please let me know in the comments down below.

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