Poll: Best Caching Plugin for WordPress?
New Poll! We’ve got several polls running in the sidebar at DigWP.com, and the latest asks which caching plugin is best. Sure it’s all anecdotal and subjective, but user feedback is a fun way to see trends and get an idea of the top plugins.
Amazingly enough, there currently are over 1,000 plugins tagged as cache at the WordPress Plugin Directory. That’s a mind-boggling number, so for this poll we’re focusing only on caching plugins that improve overall site performance (as opposed to plugins specifically for caching images, feeds, stylesheets, and everything else). If you have a favorite that isn’t on the list, leave a comment and we’ll mention it when we post the results.
Poll Results
What is the Best Caching Plugin for WordPress?
Total Voters: 7,802
About the author
Jeff Starr is a professional web developer and book author with over 15 years of experience. Jeff works with WordPress every day, designing themes, developing plugins, and securing sites. His books include Digging Into WordPress, WordPress Themes In Depth, and The Tao of WordPress.
44 responses
-
quicotoW3 Total Cache FTW :)
-
Tanner+1
Love W3TC!
It’s a bit cumbersome, especially if your like me and turned it on during development. Won’t do that again.
-
-
fahirschWhen I first determined that I needed a cache as my site wasn’t able to withstand many hits, I tried SuperCache, but it didn’t work,. As far as I recall, it was related to the php preferences set by my provider. With Hypercache I did (do not) not have that problem. And it works
-
I’m a big fan of Quick Cache !
-
Rev. VoodooI’m with you! Works great for me, and freakin simple!
-
NathanI use Quick Cache as well. I serve up different themes for different devices (there’s a desktop version, iPad version, and a iPhone/mobile version) and Quick Cache was the only one I could play nice with this setup. (You can edit the MD5 Version Salt to create different caches for each specified device)
-
Jeff Starr Post AuthorQuick Cache looks great! I’ll be trying it on my next site. Thanks :)
-
John HoffI have to say, because of the comments on this article I’ve decided to try the Quick Cache on my blog and I like it a lot. Very easy and works great. I’ll be using it from now on.
-
-
RichardI wanted to try it but I can’t find it, where the heck is it?
-
CliffWhere is it? The Quick Cache link is 404 – which tells me it’s entirely gone from the repository, no?
-
Jeff Starr Post Author
Yeah, it looks like it was removed quietly from the Directory.. and I’m not seeing anything about it in the search results.. I’ll tweet about it and see if anyone knows what’s up.
-
-
-
-
Nicolas MesserI’m still not a 100% sold on the caching. There are some situation where I use and see the importance but I don’t think it matters for a regular or small personal site/blog. WordPress is doing a pretty good job without any caching Plugin.
-
Something is seriously wrong with your site:
i.imgur.com/PDJ9X.png
i.imgur.com/7Uvh2.png-
Jeff Starr Post Author
Hey john, which browser are you using and we’ll take a look..
-
skip405I get the same thing and I’m using Opera 11.10
-
Jeff Starr Post Author
Now working in Opera. Had to remove this line from the WP-Poll plugin stylesheet:
.wp-polls ul li:before, .wp-polls-ul li, .wp-polls-ans ul li:before, #sidebar ul ul li:before { content: ''; }Thanks for the heads up, and let me know if anything else weird happens.
-
-
-
-
Here’s an answer I got regarding caching plugins best practices over at WP’s stackexchange, there’s a pretty extensive walk through there.
-
I want to put another vote in for Quick Cache. Recently used it on a WordPress MultiSite install and it worked great. I could control it all from the main network admin dashboard. Really was quick and easy. Not as many options as W3 Total Cache, but I rarely use all of those options.
-
Hi
To my mind, there isn’t one best Cache plugin, but several solutions for several websites.
On my blog, I use WP SuperCache with DB Cache Reloaded : this couple gives me the bests results I have ever seen (I’ve tested and compared with W3 Total Cache, which is a good solution when the server can implement APC Cache… But on “small” websites, with less than 5000 unique visitors/day, my solution is the best)
-
BoomboomFor a small site I would say WP Super Cache gives the best results. It does the trick but without the so many options W3 Total Cache offers. For a big site W3TC wins hands down.
-
YeahleeThe W3 is the best ..I think
-
AndrewDoesn’t the use of caching really depend upon what your server supports, and thus which of the plugins would work best for the setup that you are using. For many of us using shared hosting, we are limited as to the server setup, and thus which caching plugins work, correct?
-
DarinI haven’t yet had a need for W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache as most of the websites I’ve developed are for personal or small business use. Hyper Cache is very simple and works well if your website/blog is on cheap shared hosting and you are not utilizing a CDN. This coupled with a tweaked .htaccess file, my client’s sites have significant improvements in performance and speed.
I’ve simply added the following to the default .htaccess file:
3. Combine gzip and caching – from this excellent article at WPShout > 10 Ways to Use .htaccess to Speed Up WordPress
-
MaximHi! I use new premium plugin from WordCompress. WordCompress is a compression and cache total that takes the existing code layout of a WordPress blog which includes CSS files, JavaScript files and HTML code. I am happy with work and competent technical support.
-
public image…and what about QuickCache ?
-
Jeff Starr Post Author
It’s new to me! But will definitely give it a shout out when we post the results. Was also maybe thinking about adding to the poll, but at this point, it may not make sense to do so. QuickCache does look tasty though )
-
-
MartinI really like WP Super Cache … still not sure if it helps a lot
-
this article states that using W3 Total cache on shared hosting can actually slow down the site, what’s your opinion? Is it better to use WP Super cache on shared hosts?
-
John Hoff
I’ve been using WP Super Cache but I hesitate to take the poll because I haven’t really tested many other plugins. I tried W3 Total awhile back and for some reason it wasn’t working with my site. Maybe another plugin or something.
On thing I do, however is use PHP to enable gzip compression of my content. I think WP Super Cache does this but I figured why not. I hope you don’t mind a link, but here’s the article I did on it which included testing.
I do have a quick (unrelated) question though which I hope someone here can answer for me.
I’m moving a blog which is aged and has a number of links pointing to various articles. Obviously I want to transfer as much link juice from the old blog and articles to the new blog’s home (a new domain).
I know I can do a 301 redirect for each article, but I’ve got way too many articles to do a line-by-line 301 redirect. Would take forever.
I found this .htaccess redirect code:
RedirectMatch 301 /blog(.*) http://www.NewDomain.com$1This redirects every article on my old blog to the new blog, but I’m curious if it will also transfer the link juice the same way as if I did a 301 article by article.
Thanks for your help.
-
Jeff Starr Post Author
Hey John, Yes something like that redirect code will transfer the same juice as if you did it line by line. The search engines have no way of knowing what’s in your htaccess/config file(s). Cheers :)
-
John Hoff
Thanks Jeff.
-
-
-
I voted for Quick Cache because it was the only one that played nice with an integration of WordPress & Xsilva LightSpeed Web Store. I think it has something to do with not using .htaccess or using .htaccess with a lighter hand. In any case this plugin saved my hide!
-
Oh, actually I voted for Other. I meant to write I would have voted for it. Anyway, great poll!
-
-
LauraLynnI use to use W3 but with the latest update for some reason it totally messed up my website in Internet Explorer, I’m not sure what the problem was and didn’t really take time to investigate it, but I now use Quick Cache and it seems to work just fine. My site is just my freelancing business/portfolio website, it doesn’t get a lot of traffic.
-
Ricardo NuñezI’m sure most of the people are voting by the plugin they are using instead of the best plugin. I’m using W3 total cache. I know some large blogs like Mashable are using it (which shouldn’t be good example, Mashable is slow at times, but they have a lot of traffic). I tested other two, but I switched just because more people are using it. I had a problem with my theme in chrome, but it hasn’t happened in a while so I’m sticking to it.
-
Chris ColemanWhile I’m not sure I have things working totally right, I like WP Super Cache because it works with the CDN Sync Tool plugin so I can serve my static files from Amazon S3.
It seems like a decent enough way to squeeze a little more reliability and performance out of cheap hosting.
-
Dave ClementsI made the switch from WP Super Cache to W3 Total Cache about 6 months ago. It was getting a lot of good press and seemed a lot less complex than WP Super Cache, which turned out to be true. Since switching, I’ve noticed a dramatic improvement in load speed and have now also taken advantage of the CDN capabilities. It’ll take a lot to convince me to switch from W3 Total Cache.
-
Craig MarshallI’m not sure which one is the best. Actually nothing can be perfect. everything has it’s own functionality. So no one can cover the entire requirement. From my point of view Quick cache does well.
-
Used WP Supercache,
and Hyper Cache + DB Cache ReloadedI really liked the page load on the first … but I have opted finally for the combo at the end as i intend to put less strain on the host as well as get a reasonable page load. (decide this after i saw a benchmark about 8-9 months ago)
Seeing the link posted for the W3 Total Cache on a previous comment really makes me want to give it a try. Curious whether it performs better.
-
I think wp super cache is the best
because it is featured on wordpress plugins -
bauhausWEBDESIGNW3 Total Cache – best overall performance in compare to the others…
-
suyeshi want to go for w3 total cache but when i use minify settings all my disqus comments box and simple share bar dissappears
-
john@cannabisseedsx.comI agree the w3 total cache is working great on my site and has it loading much quicker. Recently changed it from Hyper Cache which also worked well but users couldnt see comments posted.
-
Zaki UsmanComments section is closed but thought this could be of interest to your audience.
We ran some tests and found that w3-total cache seemed to work the best (without much tinkering) for our specific theme. we have some stats to backup what we did.
