18 Essential WordPress Plugins to Boost Your Site’s Speed

SEO September 30, 2024

0 4 7 minutes read

You put so much work into making your WordPress website; it’d be a shame if one little thing could be its entire undoing.

What’s that thing?

Speed.

If your website takes longer to load than it took you to read this paragraph, then you’re in trouble.

Luckily, there are WordPress plugins that’ll make your website load so quickly your visitors won’t even notice they’re already using it.

Why Should Your WordPress Load Quickly?

Here are a few reasons why you want your website to load in under 3 seconds:

53% of mobile users bounce if the website takes more than three seconds to load.
Upwards of 87% of carts are abandoned if the load time is two seconds or more.
79% of users who have a negative experience with a website are less likely to buy again.

How to Test Your WordPress Load Speed

Here are some popular options for testing your website load speed:

Load Impact
Google Page Speed
GTmetrix
Web Page Test
Pingdom Website Speed Test
IsItWP

What Can I Do to Make My WordPress Load Faster?

There are several things you can do to make your website load faster:

WordPress Hosting

When choosing hosting, make sure it:

Fits the size of your site.
Can support traffic levels.
Can handle increased traffic levels.
Is configured properly.
Runs top-of-the-line hardware and software.

WordPress Size

The size of your site can affect loading speed, so make sure you have suitable hosting and proper optimization to get the size down as low as possible without compromising the user experience or quality.

Number of Posts

Your website’s homepage is the first impression you make, so it’s important that it be optimized and load as quickly as possible. It helps to show only excerpts of content and reduce the total number of posts.

Keep Your WordPress Simple

Remove everything you don’t need and focus on content and functionality. Even something as small as a widget should only exist because of its use for visitors.

WordPress Theme Quality

A poorly coded WordPress theme will affect:

Load time
Security
The number of plugins necessary to get the most granular level of control over your theme.

WordPress Plugins

Plugins should only be installed when they’re used because they only slow down your website if they’re:

Bloated
Inactive
Not current

How Can Plugins Optimize Your WordPress?

WordPress optimization plugins tend to focus on several key features:

Cache
WordPress HeartBeat API
Reducing or disabling Ajax
Deferring Scripts
CDNs
Lazy Loading
Minification
Concatenation

What Is Cache?

Caching is one of the most frequently employed methods of getting your website to load faster. Caching results in a faster WordPress website and improved performance. Cache is data that’s temporarily stored for fast access upon request, speeding up the process by storing the most commonly accessed data in temporary storage.

WordPress websites can use caching to create copies of pages after the first visit, using those copies for subsequent visits, thus significantly optimizing your website.

What Is Ajax?

Simply put, Ajax updates part of a web page without reloading the entire page. While helpful, it can also be a drain on your central processing unit (CPU).

What Is HeartBeat API?

Heartbeat API is WordPress’s built-in simple server polling API. It allows for almost real-time frontend updates, and controlling it saves you CPU usage and keeps your AJAX at a reasonable amount.

What Does It Mean to Defer Scripts?

To defer scripts means to load your CSS or JavaScript files last so your website becomes accessible to visitors faster.

What Is a CDN?

A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is a network of servers spread out across a particular geographic location to deliver faster content based on the server closest to you.

What Is Lazy Loading?

Instead of loading an entire page at once, which may take too long, this plugin seamlessly loads only the parts being viewed by the visitor at that moment.

What Is Minification?

Minification reduces website load time by eliminating redundancies and superfluous content in:

HTML files
JavaScript files
CSS files

What Is Concatenation?

This is the process of combining separate files into one file to reduce how many requests are on your site.

What Plugins Can Make My WordPress Load Faster?

Here are some well-reviewed WordPress plugins to optimize your website:

1. WP Super Cache: Faster Rendering

With over 2 million active installations and a 4.3 out of 5-star rating based on 1,254 reviews, WP Super Cache is a popular choice for speeding up your site.

Pros

Free
Developed by the company responsible for WordPress, WooCommerce, and Jetpack.
Easy to use.
Advanced settings for:
- Gzip compression
- Browser caching
- Content caching
- Cache update frequency
You can preload content into the cache.
Can help you set up a CDN.

Cons

None

2. W3 Total Cache: Faster Rendering

Boasting over 1 million active installations and a 4.4 out of 5-star rating based on 4,602 reviews, W3 Total Cache offers significant performance improvements.

Pros

Free
At least 10x improvement in overall site performance.
Increased conversion rates.
Higher search engine rankings.
Up to 80 percent bandwidth savings.

Cons

Can be complex and feature-heavy for new users.

3. WP Super Minify: Compressing JavaScript & CSS Files

With 10,000+ active installations and a 4 out of 5-star rating based on 50 reviews, WP Super Minify is effective for minification.

Pros

Free
Simple three-step installation process:

Download the plugin.
Upload it to the directory.
Activate it through the plugins menu.

Many users see a 2 to 4% increase in Google page speed.

Cons

More technical plugins may offer higher increases in Google page speed.

4. WP Smush: Reducing Image Size

With over 1 million active installations and a 4.8 out of 5-star rating based on 5,251 reviews, WP Smush is a go-to for image compression.

Pros

Free
Reduces the overall size of every image without compromising quality.
Supports JPEG, GIF, and PNG formats.
Removes unused colors from images.
Compatible with other plugins.
Compresses any image in your directory.
Removes metadata from JPEG images.
Can handle upwards of 50 images at once.
Find and prioritize images slowing down your site.
No monthly limits.

Cons

None

5. BJ Lazy Load: Decreasing Pageload

With 80,000+ active installations and a 4.2 out of 5-star rating based on 88 reviews, BJ Lazy Load is essential for lazy loading.

Pros

Lazy loading

Cons

Last update was 3 years ago.
No tech support.

6. WP-Optimize: Optimizing the Database

With 900,000+ active installations and a 4.8 out of 5-star rating based on 1,199 reviews, WP-Optimize excels at database optimization.

Pros

Free
Cleans up and optimizes databases.
Schedule automatic clean-ups for revisions, spam comments, trashed content, and more.
Compact and defragment MySQL tables.
See database statistics and potential savings.
Compress images.
Cache pages for faster load times.
Defer CSS JavaScript.
Granular control over optimizations.
Configure pre-optimization backup data.
Set automatic pre-optimization backups.

Cons

None

7. Autoptimize: Script Optimization

With over 1 million active installations and a 4.7 out of 5-star rating based on 1,145 reviews, Autoptimize is reliable for script optimization.

Pros

Free
Minification
Concatenation
Defers some scripts
Lazy load images
Toggle basic scripts on and off.

Cons

Can be buggy at times, but tech support is responsive to incorporating fixes in future versions.

8. ShortPixel: Image Compression

With 200,000+ active installations and a 4.6 out of 5-star rating based on 562 reviews, ShortPixel excels in image compression.

Pros

Automatically resize images to max dimensions and compress them upon upload using lossy or lossless compression algorithms.
WebP conversion available for browsers that support it.
PNG to JPG conversion.
Optional ShortPixel Adaptive Images plugin for image optimization with CDN delivery.

Cons

100 credits per month free; additional credits cost $4.99.

9. Lazy Load by WP Rocket: Lazy Loading

With 100,000+ active installations and a 4.2 out of 5-star rating based on 110 reviews, Lazy Load by WP Rocket is effective in lazy loading.

Pros

Free
Supports lazy loading for images, iFrames, and YouTube videos, including the option to embed a thumbnail until activated.

Cons

None

10. Cache Enabler: Faster Rendering

With 90,000+ active users and a 4.3 out of 5-star rating based on 92 reviews, Cache Enabler is a straightforward and efficient choice.

Pros

Free
Easy to set up.
Clear cache with a click of a button.
Programmatic cache clearing (e.g., clear cache after new posts).
Minification
Option to exclude posts from clearing.
Schedule cache clearing

Cons

None

11. Asset CleanUp: Granular Optimization Dashboard

With 90,000+ active installations and a 4.9 out of 5-star rating based on 803 reviews, Asset CleanUp offers granular control over optimizations.

Pros

Free
Toggle scripts and plugins on and off.

Cons

Doesn’t offer bloat removal.
Premium updates and features start at $47 per year.

12. Compress JPEG & PNG Images: Image Compression

With 200,000+ active installations and a 4.4 out of 5-star rating based on 134 reviews, this plugin integrates seamlessly with TinyJPG and TinyPNG.

Pros

Integrates TinyJPG and TinyPNG.
Bulk optimization for JPEGs and PNGs.
Compresses animated PNGs.
See usage settings during bulk optimization.

Cons

100 images free; more require a small fee.

13. WP YouTube Lyte: Lazy Loading

With 20,000+ active installations and a 4.8 out of 5-star rating based on 140 reviews, WP YouTube Lyte is effective for lazy loading YouTube videos.

Pros

Free
Inserts a thumbnail of a YouTube video that only activates when clicked.
Works on YouTube playlists as well.

Cons

Doesn’t lazy load photos or iFrames, which Lazy Load by WP Rocket does in addition to YouTube videos.

14. Heartbeat Control by WP Rocket: Heartbeat Control

With 100,000+ active installations and a 4.3 out of 5-star rating based on 50 reviews, Heartbeat Control by WP Rocket offers efficient Heartbeat API control.

Pros