Do you want to make your WordPress website faster? Website loading speed is a very important aspect of your site’s success. If your website takes more time to load, no one likes to visit your site. They will wait a few seconds and then click on the back button to exit your website.

In this article, I’m going to share some of the plugins to speed up a WordPress site.

Why is Website Loading Speed Important?

Speed is one of the Google ranking factors. When Google ranks a page, it uses a number of factors, one of which is website speed. If your website loads fast, then it will perform better in search engines. Because Google gives priority to faster loading sites.

Furthermore, fast loading website improves user experience, increase your website traffic, reduce bounce rate and many more.

Best Plugins To Speed Up WordPress Site

Here is a list of plugins to speed up a WordPress site. These are specially designed to improve WordPress website loading speed. You can choose the plugin for your website according to your requirement.

W3 Total Cache is the best WordPress caching plugin that enhances the user experience by making WordPress site faster. It can also integrate the content delivery network (CDN), which makes your WordPress lightning fast. In addition, It provides minification and gzip compression to reduce the page size.

W3 Total Cache comes with many options to speed up a WordPress site. It is available in both versions (free + premium). You can also increase your website loading speed to a great extent by using its free version. Here is a guide on W3 Total Cache Settings.

This is another most popular and best WordPress cache plugin. It is a perfect choice for Shared Hosting. The plugin generates static HTML files from your WordPress site and when a visitor visits your site, it serves static HTML files to visitors. As a result, your site loads super fast in the visitors’ browser. WP super cache settings are very easy and fast.

WP Fastest Cache is also a very popular WordPress cache plugin. Its setting is also very easy and fast. It has many options that help to speed up a WordPress page speed. This plugin provides the simplest and fastest WP-Cache system for your site.

It is available in both free and premium versions. You can make your WordPress site faster by using its free version. Here is a guide on WP Fastest Cache Settings

Note: If you use the multiple cache plugin on your site, then this can create issues on your site.

WP Smush is a very popular image compression and optimization plugin in WordPress.org. When you upload images to your site, it automatically compresses the image size and reduces your webpage size. As a result, your website loads super fast.

With its help, you can compress and optimize old images on your site. Bulk image optimization support 50 images at a time. To remove Bulk smushing limits, You will need to upgrade to WP Smush Pro.

Like WP Smush, EWWW Image Optimizer is also a very good and popular image optimizer WordPress. This plugin automatically optimizes newly uploaded images on your site, as well as optimize older uploaded images.

Furthermore, you can also choose the compression level and can convert your uploaded images to the best file format.

The plugin minify CSS & JS files from your website and make WordPress site faster. Even Google recommends minifying JavaScript and CSS files from a site. This plugin also reduces HTTP requests by merge CSS and Javascript files. This plugin has many options for developers and advanced users. However, its default settings work perfectly for most sites. Here is a guide on Fast Velocity Minify Settings

Autoptimize is a very good plugin to speed up a WordPress site. It makes your work easier and saves your time by minifying and combine the CSS & JS files. In addition, it also removes query string, Google fonts and more. Here is a guide on Autoptimize Settings.

Removing Query Strings is very important to Improve WordPress Performance. If you do not remove query strings from your site, then these can cause caching issues. Some proxy caching servers and CDNs do not cache the static assets of your site due to query strings and it directly affects your website loading speed.

There are many methods to remove Query Strings from WordPress Static Resources. You can read our article – How to remove query strings from static resources in WordPress

If you install the lazy load plugin on your WordPress website, then your image will be loaded when a user scrolls down your page. This lazy loading will greatly improve your website loading speed and save bandwidth.

All WordPress site uses databases and stores all information in it. However, your database can affect your website loading speed. Therefore it is very important to optimize WordPress database timely.

You can optimize your Database with 1-click by WP-Optimize Plugins. Here’s another guide – How to Delete Unused Database Tables in WordPress

WP Disable is a great plugin that reduces high CPU usage on your WordPress site by disabling Emojis, Gravatars, Embeds, Remove query strings and many more. Here is a guide on WP Disable Plugin Settings

Benefits of using the WP Disable plugin

Reduce HTTP requests

Disable Emojis, Gravatars, Embeds

Remove query strings from static resource

Disable trackbacks and pingbacks

Disable all comments and more

Disable XML-RPC

Heartbeat Control

SpeedUp WooCommerce

Remove Windows Live Writer tag

Remove Shortlink Tag

Remove WP API from header



Final Thought

These are some of the best plugins that make a WordPress website faster. You can install these plugins on your site according to your need.

If you use multiple plugins for one task on your site, then it can generate bugs on your site.

Apart from this, it is also very important to choose a fast loading WordPress theme for your site. If you do not choose a well-coded WordPress theme for your site, it badly affects your website loading speed and performance.

If you want to use the free fastest WordPress theme on your site, I’ll recommend GeneratePress or Mythemeshop theme and for the paid theme Genesis Framework is the best.

Apart from this, you should also choose the right web hosting for your WordPress website. There are many hosting companies in the market that promise to provide fast loading to your WordPress website, but after buying the hosting from them, you think they have cheated you and your hosting expenses have gone waste. Here I have listed 8 Best WordPress Hosting Services that you can use.

I recommend Bluehost web hosting which offers good service at a low price. Apart from this, it gives free a Domain for one year. It is also recommended by official wordpress.org

Like the listed plugins to speed up WordPress site? Don’t forget to share!