“What is the WP Rocket plugin, and why should I use it?” Let me paint you a picture.
You build a website, publish it, and wait for the traffic to roll in. A few months go by, and you’re less than impressed by the numbers.
So you frantically research and discover an enormous web of strategies to improve your website traffic called SEO. You run your website through site audits to discover why it’s not ranking high, and the underlying villain finally surfaces.
Your website loads too slowly. Seems simple enough, right? If only.
You now start researching all the solutions to improve your site speed, only to drown in optimization tools that are absurdly complex and hard to use. You just want to increase your page speed; it shouldn’t be that hard.
WP Rocket is a speed optimization tool for WordPress website users that revolutionizes the page load game. Below, I discuss why WP Rocket is the best plugin for optimizing website speed.
What does WP Rocket do?
WP Rocket is a WordPress caching plugin that you can add to your WordPress site so it loads faster and performs better. I know; it almost sounds too good to be true.
Like other plugins, you deploy WP Rocket on your website, adjust the settings in the WP Rocket admin control center, then watch the effects take place.
WP Rocket optimizes your website content for you to improve loading speeds. Slow site speeds can happen from network problems, bandwidth restrictions, data filtering, issues with JavaScript and CSS, content filtering, and more. Something as simple as one large image could be the culprit.
WP Rocket checks for all the top problems that affect loading speeds and resolves them for you. In doing so, the tool also offers numerous features to enhance your website’s performance.
Why should I care about site speed?
“My website doesn’t take an hour to load, so why should I bother making it faster?”
Website speed is one of your most important metrics. Place yourself in your users’ shoes for a moment.
Imagine you Google “best tailor near me” and click on the first business that comes up. You wait and wait, but after 30 seconds, the page doesn’t load.
You give up, and click on the next result. The next company’s page loads instantly.
Now, imagine a few hundred people doing the exact same thing. Google will start to notice that people keep abandoning that first website for the second. As a result, the second one takes over that top-ranking position.
Slow site speeds ruin your user experience, prevent conversions, and harm your rankings. Google actively ranks websites with slow speeds lower than others.
Speeding up your website is one of the clearest ways to improve your rankings, and WP Rocket makes it easy.
Why choose WP Rocket over other plugins?
WordPress has over 60,000 plugins. What makes WP Rocket the right choice?
WP Rocket isn’t the only WordPress plugin for site speed optimization, though it offers significant advantages over the rest.
I have personally tried numerous solutions, though WP Rocket is an absolute favorite of mine for a few reasons.
1. Ease of use
I’ve tried all the caching plugins out there, so believe me when I say that WP Rocket is by far the easiest one to use.
Managing a website is hard enough. You don’t want a solution that’s going to complicate your life.
When you look at reviews for WP Rocket, you’ll find the top advantage listed in nearly every rating is its usability.
You can perform all your most important actions from the dashboard without viewing any overwhelming advanced settings. Then, you’ll find simple tabs on the left-hand menu with everything else you need.
The moment you activate WP Rocket, the tool instantly sets up all of your enhancements for you. Yes, you can mess around with advanced settings if you’re into that kind of thing, but you don’t need to. That’s what’s so special about WP Rocket—it works out of the box.
I set up everything in about 15 minutes.
And if I did want to mess with the settings, it wouldn’t be hard. Even for a novice, all the settings offer simple and clear configurations.
2. The results speak for themselves
Usability means nothing without results. The WP Rocket plugin provides immediate, significant effects.
End users can experience a fast-loading website while you will see better scores under Google PageSpeed Insights.
I’m sure you don’t just want to take my word for it, so let’s look at some actual figures.
In a test done by Astra, WP Rocket increased page speed from 3.1 seconds to 0.6 seconds by reducing the number of requests from 69 to 25.
In a similar test by aThemes, the plugin cut speeds by over 50%. The full test results showed a 51.9% decrease in Time to First Byte (TTFB), a 65.1% cut in Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), a 60.2% decrease in Fully Loaded Time, a 56.7% reduction in Page Size, and 76.7% fewer HTTP requests.
Items like LCP show great insight into the issue behind your slow loading speeds. Largest Contentful Paint refers to how long it takes for the biggest item on your page to load.
In the figures above, you can see how WP Rocket dives deep into your website’s core vitals to increase loading speeds. Clearly, the method works.
3. Safety
If you have any experience with trying out caching plugins, you know that sometimes a wrong move can completely hose your website. WP Rocket offers a simple return route for those occasional missteps.
If anything goes wrong while messing with settings or deploying the tool, you won’t have to suffer catastrophic effects. You can easily undo your adjustments and reset to a clean slate.
WP Rocket offers Safe Mode to quickly disable any mistakes that break your website. If you face an issue, you can apply Safe Mode to revert your settings and restore your site.
How does WP Rocket speed up my site
If you wanted to speed up your website manually, you could run it through a site audit, locate all the issues, and fix them yourself. This would probably take you weeks or months.
WP Rocket locates and resolves all site speed problems for you. A few of the tool’s top automatic tasks included with the “standard” optimization package include the following:
- Minification: Shrinks site code by eliminating unnecessary content, like whitespace
- File combination: Combines files (shocker!) to reduce requests
- Render-blocking: Removes the “Eliminate render-blocking resources” warning
- Lazy loading: Allows your website to load as users scroll rather than all at once
- Easy CDN integrations: Allows you to connect to Content Delivery Networks for reduced network issues
- Database optimizing: Helps you clear your database within the WP Rocket plugin rather than a third-party tool
- Unused CSS removals: Removes unused Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) on every page
- JavaScript execution delays: Delays JavaScript execution until the user interacts with the item
I know that some of these tasks may sound complicated, but that’s why WP Rocket does it for you.
All the details I know you’re wondering
“Rodney, this tool sounds too good to be true. It must cost a fortune. What if I can’t figure out how to use it? Does it offer anything besides site speed optimization?”
Here are all the details you need to know.
WP Rocket pricing
WP Rocket’s one and only downfall is its cost. Unlike practically every other WordPress plugin, WP Rocket does not offer a free version, free trial period, or anything like that.
If you want to enjoy the incredible features, you have to pay. Luckily, the prices seem relatively reasonable.
Essentially, you pay one annual premium that allows you to use the plugin for 12 months from the date of purchase. One site costs $49, three cost $99, and the unlimited site package costs $249.
After your first year, you can continue renewing annually at a 30% discounted rate. If you don’t like the plugin after 14 days, you can get a refund.
WP Rocket’s pricing may seem steep compared to free models, but you get an out-of-the-box tool rich with features. You won’t waste time learning to use it or waiting for results. It works immediately.
Support options
The WP Rocket Help Center features numerous self-service support options and live human channels. You can explore documentation, video tutorials walking you through processes, popular articles on common issues, and more.
WP Rocket even has a Facebook Group so you can learn new tricks and find support from community members.
92% of WP Rocket customers rate the support options as “great.” The company sends an average of 95 replies per day to resolve customer issues.
Additional features
Aside from basic site speed audits and optimization, the WP Rocket plugin offers numerous features setting it apart from the crowd. Here are a few that caught my eye:
- Google fonts optimization
- CloudFlare compatibility
- Mobile detection abilities
- Multisite compatibilities if you control numerous brands
- Works with eCommerce sites (Like WooCommerce)
- Compatible with multilingual sites
- Import and export actions
- Developer friendly
How can I get started?
“Ok, I get why WP Rocket is so great now. How do I set it up?”
I’ve broken the process down into three basic steps for you:
- First, install and activate WP Rocket. To do so, manually upload WP Rocket to your WordPress website. Now, navigate to: wp-admin > plugins > add new > upload then select “activate.”
- Configure the File Optimization tab: Next, navigate to wp-admin > settings > WP Rocket and click the tab for “File Optimization.” Here, you can adjust all of your settings for minifying and combining files.
- Control the Heartbeat tab: The WordPress API uses the Heartbeat across plugins and themes to make server requests, though it can impact site performance. Control how the Heartbeat works under this tab and consider toggling on the “Reduce activity” tab.
Final thoughts
I’ve tried a lot of caching plugins, and I can confidently say that the WP Rocket plugin is the simplest way to effectively boost your WordPress site speed. If you struggle with slow loading times, try the tool out to see how it works for you.
