{"id":36769,"date":"2022-03-07T16:12:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-07T16:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/authorityhacker.com\/?p=36769"},"modified":"2024-04-10T15:13:25","modified_gmt":"2024-04-10T15:13:25","slug":"wp-rocket-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-rocket-review\/","title":{"rendered":"WP Rocket Review 2024 Your One-Stop-Shop Caching Plugin For WordPress"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Google\u2019s Core Web Vitals have been the talk of the town since May 2021, when they became a ranking factor for mobile searches. In January 2022, they became important on desktop as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And everyone scrambled to understand what the largest contentful paint is and how to optimize it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Luckily, site owners don\u2019t have to take care of it manually. In our WP Rocket review, we\u2019ll look at one of the best \u2014 and most expensive \u2014 caching plugins out there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is it worth the money? Will WP Rocket help you pass Core Web Vitals?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WP Rocket is a good plugin. It\u2019s excellent for sites that need help cleaning the clutter, speeding up their pages, and ticking all the boxes to pass Core Web Vitals. It has impressive customizability and advanced options you won\u2019t get with any other caching plugin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, it might not be worth the hefty price tag. If you have a smaller site that can\u2019t benefit from all the advanced customizations available, WP Rocket is not for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s the bottom line of our WPRocket review: If you need a faster site, any caching plugin will help. You don\u2019t need the fancy tricks of WP Rocket. But if you have stubborn diagnostics in Google\u2019s Page Insights, WP Rocket might be a requirement. It depends on each site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WP Rocket has a lot of things going for it. It\u2019s the only caching plugin we found that features so many delicate retouches often needed to pass the Core Web Vitals. And this is on top of just speeding up your site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s not a perfect tool, either. WP Rocket is pretty pricey in a market with many free competitors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And while WP Rocket is worth the money for some sites, it still lacks some services you\u2019d expect to get for $49\/year. These are the lack of image optimization (unless you pay extra on Imagify) and the lack of any form of script management. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both of these are important for passing the CWV. And WP Rocket doesn\u2019t cover them, at least at the time of writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before we dig into the details of our WP Rocket review, let\u2019s clarify some terms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WP Rocket promises to speed up your site, and it delivers. Here\u2019s what it can do:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It does an excellent job of it, too. WP Rocket helps sites load faster and pass the Core Web Vitals with flying colors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Caching is a technique to store data so you can access it much quicker when requested a second time. For example, think about the blog post you\u2019re reading now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are images on this page, embedded articles at the bottom, and probably a button or two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of these files are stored in the cache of the site server and in the cache of your browser. This way, they load much faster than resources that have to be computed for the first time when you open the page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, this type of WordPress plugin optimizes how your site does cache.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This makes your WordPress site faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a WordPress caching plugin like WP Rocket does more than speed up your site. It\u2019s an invaluable tool if you\u2019re trying to pass Google\u2019s Core Web Vitals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019ll help you make delicate retouches that can improve key metrics like Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It does it by changing the order in which your elements are loaded. For example, they delay a lot of the javascript loads. They also reorganize your files for faster loading. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, WPRocket generates \u201ccritical CSS\u201d which is a CSS file that ONLY includes above-the-fold elements and is, therefore, a lot smaller than the full page\u2019s file. This helps your loading speed and First contentful paint, which are crucial for passing the CWV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In turn, passing the Core Web Vitals is crucial for sites that want to rank high on the SERP. Google has been monitoring these vitals for a while. Since early 2021, they have also made them a ranking factor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what can WP Rocket do, more specifically?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WP Rocket has a stacked deck of advanced options and settings to improve your site\u2019s performance. While many of them are standard for web performance plugins, WP Rocket has a few aces up its sleeve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s what makes WP Rocket worth the money for many sites. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
WP Rocket\u2019s caching tab lets you set some things, like whether or not to enable caching for mobile devices or site users. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It also lets you edit the lifespan of the cache, but we only recommend you focus on this if Google PageInsights prompt you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The default cache lifespan should be good enough for most sites as most WordPress themes are responsive these days and don\u2019t need a separate mobile cache.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All in all, caching isn\u2019t that special. WP Rocket settings are on par with its free alternatives in this category.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Minification, though – that\u2019s where WP Rocket comes online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n File optimization is probably WP Rocket\u2019s crown jewel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The plugin offers tons of options for minification and many options in how files are minified. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For starters, WP Rocket lets you take care of the basics. To optimize your page delivery, you can minify all the CSS and Javascript on your site. But if you have Cloudflare<\/a>, that\u2019s not a huge benefit. You can do it for free with their services.<\/p>\n\n\n You can also optimize CSS delivery and load and delay Javascript files. This includes the generation of critical CSS, which can set you back $10\/month without WP Rocket.<\/p>\n\n\n We don\u2019t recommend you combine CSS files since newer HTTP protocols use separate files. Ticking this option can mess up your performance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But here\u2019s where the real kicker comes in: WP Rocket lets you exclude content from minification which can help prevent some bugs or issues. <\/p>\n\n\n As far as we can tell, it\u2019s the only tool on the market that lets you do this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And it can be a massive benefit for bigger sites that want to optimize their content. For example, you can exclude pop-ups from optimizations since minifying them tends to mess things up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n WP Rocket is also the only tool on the market that lets you remove unused CSS. Unused CSS is one of the most common offenders in Google Pagespeed Insights so that this option can be useful.<\/p>\n\n\n It\u2019s a beta feature at the moment, so it might not provide results for everyone. But we appreciate it and it works well in most cases.<\/p>\n\n\n And the WP Rocket review gets even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lazy loading is when sites delay the initialization of resources until they\u2019re needed. It\u2019s a common development practice, and it can help improve performance a lot, especially on resource-heavy pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n WP Rocket lets you implement lazy loading on your site. It\u2019s nice, but this is actually a default feature on WordPress since 5.5<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n There are a lot of individual plugins for lazy loading. But web performance plugins rarely feature this (except for W3 Total Cache<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moreover, WP Rocket also lets you exclude images and iframe content from lazy loading. They\u2019re the only plugin to offer that. And it\u2019s VERY<\/strong> helpful because it prevents all the BS JS files from YouTube from loading and plumbing your speed score.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s great if you want to customize the user experience on your site or want to make sure large content is always loaded in. It\u2019s especially helpful to improve LCP if you have a featured image above the fold. Moreover, you can exclude it with CSS class names, so you don\u2019t have to input each image\u2019s URL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Preload cache is not necessarily the biggest advantage of WP Rocket. It just loads content into the cache even if a page is not visited by someone.<\/p>\n\n\n What WP Rocket does on top of that is DNS requests prefetching. This lets you prefetch things like fonts and, in turn, improve your LCP score.<\/p>\n\n\n Like most web performance plugins, WP Rocket lets you exclude URLs from caching. This is important for pages that get updated often or for pages with sensitive information like login pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But WP Rocket again lets you target very particular issues better than its competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n You can target particular cookies and agents that you never want to cache. You can also cache query strings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is helpful if you have a lot of traffic from external campaigns. For example, if you get traffic from Facebook ads, you can add the \u201cfid\u201d query in this field:<\/p>\n\n\n This way, when visitors from Facebook end up on your site, you won\u2019t create a new cache for existing pages. The page should also benefit from caching for them too, even if they have unique tracking IDs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So add one more feature to the list of things no other WP Rocket competitor can do but that not all sites can use to their advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ll inevitably gather some new drafts, tons of comments, and transients when running a site. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Database optimization helps you remove the clutter.<\/p>\n\n\n This is not that important for new sites. It\u2019s a great thing to have further down the line, but it\u2019s not something you should worry about initially. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When you want to clean up your database, though, don\u2019t forget to create a backup. You can end up deleting stuff you need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Database optimization is not a unique feature in any way. Most web performance plugins have it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A content delivery network is a geographically distributed network of servers that help improve your site speed. CDNs will track your site visitor\u2019s location and save files for them on the closest server they have.<\/p>\n\n\n This is a great way to improve site speed and to make sure your site gets great speed metrics all around the world by reducing the physical distance between the servers that host your biggest files and your visitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n WP Rocket doesn\u2019t offer a CDN for free, but it integrates well with third-party CDNs.<\/p>\n\n\n WP Rocket also has its CDN, RocketCDN, which you can get for $7,99\/month. However, we haven\u2019t tested this one yet. Also, it\u2019s quite expensive. BunnyCDN is cheaper, and WP Rocket probably just resells Bunny in a white-label, as most companies their size do these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We know for sure that WP Rocket works great with Cloudflare<\/a>. You just need to add your account email and product key in the add-ons tab. If you don\u2019t use Cloudflare, you can also manually add any other CDN you\u2019re using. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These options, too, are pretty stock standard. Bar maybe from the option to remove individual files from the CDN instead of entire directories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The WordPress Heartbeat API is a built-in feature that helps deliver front-end updates. It\u2019s a great tool, but it can also limit your site speed at times. DDOS attacks can also exploit heartbeat, so it\u2019s good for protecting your site, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With WP Rocket, you can take control of the API and reduce its activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It can provide some results to limit the harm of WordPress updates, snapshots, and the like. <\/p>\n\n\n It\u2019s a great option to avoid DDOS attacks, even if many hosting plans already manage Heartbeat by default. Just make sure you don\u2019t reduce Heartbeat too much. It directly affects autosave, so you might lose the work you\u2019re doing on the site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n WP Rocket has excellent integration with Cloudflare. The same is true for Sucuri and Varnish. These all offer minor tweaks and tricks that can help optimize your site for different browsers. They\u2019re a nice add-on.<\/p>\n\n\n Moreover, WP Rocket has quality-of-life tools like importing and exporting your settings or rolling back to a different plugin version. If any update messed up your site or WP Rocket settings, this is nice to have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, WP Rocket does drop the ball in some areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, for a complete WP Rocket review, let\u2019s see what it\u2019s lacking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a tool that costs you $49\/year, WP Rocket should feature some image optimization capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it doesn\u2019t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Probably because there are API or processing costs associated with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But still, you expect they\u2019d at least take care of part of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want a tool that compresses and optimizes your images<\/a>, you\u2019ll need to get something else on top. <\/p>\n\n\n\n WP Rocket does offer another plugin \u2014 Imagify \u2014 which can take care of this. But it costs $9.99\/month. And some of the services they provide, like compressing images, are taken care of for free by other plugins.t<\/p>\n\n\n The same thing is true for script management. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s the thing \u2014 many WordPress plugins load scripts even on pages where they\u2019re not present. For example, your form plugin might load scripts on your home page or \u201cabout us\u201d page, even if there\u2019s no form there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A script management tool like AssetCleanup takes care of this. For free. And it\u2019s a crucial step in the process of optimizing your site and passing the Core Web Vitals. It makes no sense to minify Javascript files and CSS that you\u2019re not using anyway. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, a comprehensive WP Rocket should also offer some form of script management. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Enough looking at the theory. Let\u2019s do some testing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, some disclaimers first. We have used WP Rocket on a lot of our sites. And it provided outstanding results. So we recommend it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a great tool. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019re not trying to test that. In this WP Rocket review, we\u2019re trying to see whether or not it\u2019s worth the $49 price tag when most WordPress caching plugins are free. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The site we used for this is a testing playground. So it\u2019s not an active site, although it does mimic one pretty well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are the results:<\/p>\n\n\n As you can see, the site has some issues that need to be fixed. <\/p>\n\n\n One of the biggest problems we had was render-blocking issues.<\/p>\n\n\n Besides that, we had to fix these issues:<\/p>\n\n\n\n They\u2019re arranged in order of priority. Let\u2019s see how the plugins fared in the tests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Breeze<\/a> is one of the most used WP Rocket alternatives<\/a>, and it\u2019s free. If you\u2019re running your site on a budget, you\u2019ll be happy to know that it\u2019s a perfect choice. Before revealing our results though, keep in mind that Breeze is Cloudway<\/a>\u2019s plugin. That\u2019s the host we used on this test site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was an improvement with Breeze. But it didn\u2019t quite get us over the finish line to pass the Core Web Vitals test.<\/p>\n\n\n We still need to reduce unused CSS and JavaScript. That was a fix for some of the issues already on the site. However, installing Breeze created more problems with unused CSS.<\/p>\n\n\n As well as a completely new diagnostic:<\/p>\n\n\n Moreover, our biggest problem (eliminating render-blocking issues) is still there. Breeze doesn\u2019t do that good of a job at optimizing CSS.<\/p>\n\n\n So, Breeze might do good work for some sites, but it can also miss the mark. In our case, it ended up doing more harm than good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And even if it worked without a hitch, it\u2019d still miss features we need on our site to pass the CWV, like image optimization and removal of unused CSS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n WP Rocket helped us improve the CWV metrics by a lot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are the results:<\/p>\n\n\n Although the FCP still has some issues, we pass the CWV with flying colors, and not too much work optimizing the plugin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We still had some issues:<\/p>\n\n\n The image elements still show up as not having width and height attributes. That\u2019s because, in our particular case, the images were pulled from Amazon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We can\u2019t replace them due to ToS, and Amazon doesn\u2019t optimize them. This is probably the reason some issues still persist, although they\u2019re not as impactful anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But in most cases like this one, WP Rocket\u2019s media optimization features are enough to keep you covered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And even without them, the core issues of optimizing CSS and JavaScript were solved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that we covered features and use let’s talk about WP Rocket\u2019s offer. Its pricing is the criticism most often leveled against the WP Rocket. And that\u2019s because most other WordPress caching plugins don’t ask for a dime.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s their pricing scheme:<\/p>\n\n\n Compared to premium WordPress plugins, it\u2019s pretty standard stuff. And we do like the 14-day money-back guarantee. You can give it a try without committing for an entire year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We touched on pricing a lot in this review. In short, WP Rocket justifies its price point with advanced customization features you can\u2019t find anywhere else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For some sites, it\u2019s these little targeted options that can make the difference between passing the CWV or not. For other sites, they might not prove that valuable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For all sites, it\u2019s a drawback that WP Rocket has no script management or image optimization features. For the price tag, they should be there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Support is great but not really \u201cexcellent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n A support agent from the WP Rocket team responded to our ticket in under 24 hours, and they cleared up any questions we had. Not to mention, their knowledge center and documentation are very comprehensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, there\u2019s no live support, and their help center doesn\u2019t feature a history of your messages. So it could be better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That depends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you have a small WordPress site and you just want to speed it up a bit, you shouldn\u2019t buy WP Rocket. Other free WordPress caching plugins like Breeze are what you need. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re on a tight budget, also try to make it work with free tools. And most importantly, focus on the other parts of SEO. The core web vitals are a big part of ranking, but they\u2019re not the only ones. They\u2019re not even the most important ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re serious about your authority site<\/a>, though, and you\u2019ve already seen some growth, WP Rocket is the next step. Even if it\u2019s pricey compared to the competition, and it doesn\u2019t have everything we\u2019d like in a paid web performance tool<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s the only one that can help you tweak the little stuff needed to pass the Core Web Vitals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For medium and big sites that need to do some tweaking to pass the Core Web Vitals, WP Rocket is definitely worth the money. It has advanced features like excluding files from minification or removing unused CSS.\u00a0<\/p>\n For smaller sites just getting started, though, WP Rocket is not a requirement. If you get it, it probably won\u2019t be worth the money. You can\u2019t make the most out of its advanced features.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n WP Rocket is a web performance plugin. It speeds up your WordPress site and helps you pass the Core Web Vitals. It does all of that mostly automatically. And you get tons of customizability options for things like caching minification or preloading.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n W3 Total cache is a fantastic option if you\u2019re on a budget. However, if you want to get advanced features that you wouldn\u2019t get in free caching plugins, WP Rocket is the way to go. It\u2019s the safest bet you\u2019ll pass the Core Web Vitals.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n WP Rocket is not a free plugin. It costs $49\/year, even if most of its competitors are free. However, WP Rocket has a 14-day money-back guarantee, so you can technically give it a shot that way. If it doesn\u2019t work for your site, you can always ask for your money back.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
File Optimization and Minification<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Media Optimization<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nPreloading<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Advanced Rules<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Database Optimization<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Content Delivery Network<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Heartbeat Tab<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Other Features and Add-ons<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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What WP Rocket Is Missing<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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WP Rocket Speed Test Results<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Test Site Performance without any performance plugin<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Test site performance with Breeze<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Test Results After WP Rocket Optimization<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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WP Rocket Pricing and Support<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Conclusion: Should You Buy WP Rocket?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
FAQ<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
Is WP Rocket worth the money?<\/h3>\n
What does WP Rocket do?<\/h3>\n
Which is better, WP Rocket or W3 Total cache?<\/h3>\n
Is WP Rocket a free plugin?<\/h3>\n