A website’s speed is a key contributing factor in its success. It can be the difference between a site being a roaring success or a complete failure. A slow website will get you nowhere fast. A fast site can get your brand and your business noticed.
If you want to get your website noticed and your business off the ground, then it has to be fast.
We all know that caching can help your site’s speed and traffic and that Google considers how fast a site loads and ranks it. We also know that speeding up our site is a fantastic way to increase its traffic and rankings.
But we don’t always know how to do this.
In this blog, we’re going to look at how you can increase your site’s speed with free cache plugins like Cache Enabler, You also learn how to set up a cache enabler with other free WordPress plugins to further speed up your WP site and honest comparison with other caching plugins.
Get ready to get your site off the ground.
What is Cache Enabler?
What if we could (almost) make your WordPress website load much faster? And what if we could do it pretty easily and in a hassle-free way?
Cache Enabler is a free plugin for caching static HTML files, which can increase the speed of your WordPress site.
It uses static files instead of generating (and then consuming) dynamic server-side output, such as PHP or SQL queries.
This means that your WordPress site will not only improve in performance, but you will also reduce overhead by speeding up the resource-intensive backend operations without resorting to expensive hardware or cloud hosting.
Cache Enabler is available in the WordPress directory, but it doesn’t have any premium plans. It offers all the features one would expect from a caching plugin, though, can be used paying nothing at all!
Let’s look at the important features Cache Enabler offers now that we’ve got that out of the way.
- The fast and efficient cache engine
- Automatic smart cache clearing
- Manual cache clearing
- WP-CLI cache clearing
- Cache expiry
- WebP support (convert images to WebP with ShortPixel)
- Mobile support
- Brotli and Gzip pre-compression support
- Minification of HTML excluding or including inline CSS and JavaScript
- Real-time cache size display in the WordPress dashboard
- Custom post type support
304 Not Modifiedsupport- Works perfectly with Autoptimize and most other third-party plugins.
Real World Cache Enabler Speed Test Results
For this test, I am using the MaxKVM VPS with the Nginx web server managed by Webinoly. For WordPress, I am using the Digital Marketing homepage demo of the Divi theme.
Keep in Mind: All tests are done with default settings or identical settings with extra plugins(Cache Enabler requires extra plugins when it’s compared to WP Rocket) and these tests and repeated four to five times.
Test Site Before Cache Enabler:
| GTmetrix Grade | B |
| Performance | 79% |
| Structure | 96% |
| LCP | 2.4s |
| TBT | 60ms |
| CLS | 0.13 |
| First Contentful Paint | 1.3s |
| Time to Interactive | 2.3s |
| Speed Index | 1.6s |
| Backend Duration | 487ms |
| TTFB | 1.2s |
| First Paint | 1.3s |
| Onload Time | 2.6s |
| Fully Loaded Time | 2.9s |
| Requests | 27 |
| Page Size(Compressed) | 924KB |
| Page Size(Uncompressed) | 1.38MB |
11% Speed Increase After Activating Cache Enabler(Default Setting):
| GTmetrix Grade | B |
| Performance | 87% |
| Structure | 89% |
| LCP | 1.7s |
| TBT | 0ms |
| CLS | 0.13 |
| First Contentful Paint | 1.2s |
| Time to Interactive | 2.0s |
| Speed Index | 1.3s |
| Backend Duration | 228ms |
| TTFB | 908ms |
| First Paint | 1.2s |
| Onload Time | 2.4s |
| Fully Loaded Time | 2.6s |
| Requests | 27 |
| Page Size(Compressed) | 923KB |
| Page Size(Uncompressed) | 1.38MB |
Cache Enabler Comparison Table:
| Before Cache Enabler | After Cache Enabler | |
| GTmetrix Grade | B | B |
| Performance | 79% | 87% |
| Structure | 96% | 89% |
| LCP | 2.4s | 1.7s |
| TBT | 60ms | 0ms |
| CLS | 0.13 | 0.13 |
| First Contentful Paint | 1.3s | 1.2s |
| Time to Interactive | 2.3s | 2.0s |
| Speed Index | 1.6s | 1.3s |
| Backend Duration | 487ms | 228ms |
| TTFB | 1.2s | 908ms |
| First Paint | 1.3s | 1.2s |
| Onload Time | 2.6s | 2.4s |
| Fully Loaded Time | 2.9s | 2.6s |
| Requests | 27 | 27 |
| Page Size(Compressed) | 924KB | 923KB |
| Page Size(Uncompressed) | 1.38MB | 1.38MB |
| Speed Increase | 11% |
Cache Enabler Settings
Cache Behavior:
- Expiration: You will set cache expiration here, the default is 0, Unless you’re often adding content to your site regularly, we recommend leaving the function at the default setting. But you have to manually clear the cache every time after updating the contents.
- Clearing: You can see five checkboxes with conditions displayed here, so every time you hit the saves button, caches clear automatically.
- ✅ Clear the site cache if any post type has been published, updated, or trashed (instead of the post cache).
- ✅ Clear the site cache if a comment has been posted, updated, spammed, or trashed (instead of the comment cache).
- Clear the site cache if a term has been added, updated, or deleted (instead of the term cache).
- Clear the site cache if a user has been added, updated, or deleted (instead of the user cache).
- ✅ Clear the site cache if a plugin has been activated or deactivated.
- Versions:
- Create a cached version for WebP support. Convert your images to WebP with Optimus or ShortPixel.
- Create a cached version for mobile devices.
- ✅ Create a cached version pre-compressed with Gzip. (Needs to be disabled if the decoding fails in the web browser.)
- Minification: You have two choices here, I choose including inline CSS and JavaScript, you can choose excluding inline CSS and JavaScript.
- ✅ Minify HTML in cached pages including inline CSS and JavaScript.
Cache Exclusions: If you don’t want any of your posts or pages cached, you can simply add them to the list in the Cache Exclusions POST IDS or PAGE PATH text area. To do this, simply go to the Edit Post or Edit Page screen for whichever post or page you’d like to add then look at the URL for that specific post/page, find your blog’s post/page ID listed there at the end, and just type it into the Cache Exclusions field here.
Cache Enabler vs WP Rocket
If you read my WP Rocket review, then you can find how easy to configure it and make WordPress faster.
Cache Enabler is the free solution for your caching needs, but if you compare it with WP Rocket, you’ll find it’s missing some most important features like minification of CSS and JS files, Lazy Loading images, and videos, and database cleaner.
So comparing apple to apple, I am using Fast Velocity Minify, and Rocket Lazy Load with Cache Enabler.
✍ : Rocket Lazy load created by WP Media, creator of Imagify and WP Rocket plugins.
Cache Enabler Default Settings with Fast Velocity Minify and Rocket Lazy Load:
| GTmetrix Grade | B |
| Performance | 82% |
| Structure | 98% |
| LCP | 2.1s |
| TBT | 0ms |
| CLS | 0.07 |
| First Contentful Paint | 1.6s |
| Time to Interactive | 1.7s |
| Speed Index | 1.6s |
| Backend Duration | 228ms |
| TTFB | 889ms |
| First Paint | 1.6s |
| Onload Time | 2.0s |
| Fully Loaded Time | 2.2s |
| Requests | 17 |
| Page Size(Compressed) | 373KB |
| Page Size(Uncompressed) | 851KB |
WP Rocket with Optimal Setting:
| GTmetrix Grade | B |
| Performance | 80% |
| Structure | 98% |
| LCP | 2.3s |
| TBT | 57ms |
| CLS | 0.13 |
| First Contentful Paint | 1.5s |
| Time to Interactive | 1.9s |
| Speed Index | 1.5s |
| Backend Duration | 241ms |
| TTFB | 930ms |
| First Paint | 1.5s |
| Onload Time | 1.9s |
| Fully Loaded Time | 2.3s |
| Requests | 15 |
| Page Size(Compressed) | 394KB |
| Page Size(Uncompressed) | 880KB |
For a fair comparison with Cache Enabler, I tick ✅ Combine CSS and JavaScript files, and untick ❌ Optimize CSS and JavaScript delivery.
Cache Enabler + Fast Velocity Minify + Rocket Lazy Load vs WP Rocket (Optimal Settings):
Keep in Mind: All tests are done with default settings or identical settings with extra plugins(Cache Enabler requires extra plugins when it’s compared to WP Rocket) and these tests and repeated four to five times.
| Cache Enabler + Fast Velocity Minify + Rocket Lazy Load | WP Rocket (Optimal Settings) | |
| GTmetrix Grade | B | B |
| Performance | 82% | 80% |
| Structure | 98% | 98% |
| LCP | 2.1s | 2.3s |
| TBT | 0ms | 57ms |
| CLS | 0.07 | 0.13 |
| First Contentful Paint | 1.6s | 1.5s |
| Time to Interactive | 1.7s | 1.9s |
| Speed Index | 1.6s | 1.5s |
| Backend Duration | 228ms | 241ms |
| TTFB | 889ms | 930ms |
| First Paint | 1.6s | 1.5s |
| Onload Time | 2.0s | 1.9s |
| Fully Loaded Time | 2.2s | 2.3s |
| Requests | 17 | 15 |
| Page Size(Compressed) | 373KB | 394KB |
| Page Size(Uncompressed) | 851KB | 880KB |
| Speed Increase | 5% |
As you can see, Cache Enabler is 5% faster than WP Rocket but require two extra plugins.
If you tick ✅ Optimize CSS and JS delivery then WP Rocket beat Cache Enabler and doesn’t require extra two plugins.
You can beat or come close to the premium WP Rocket result but it requires you to play with lots of free plugins and configurations. WP Rocket provides you the ease of mind which costs money.
Verdict
By following the above steps, your site can be one of the fastest in your niche. Generating more traffic and leads for your business. The best thing about cache enabler is that it’s easy to install and set up. There’s no need for any technical knowledge.
Everyone loves faster websites; no one enjoys waiting around for pages to load.
That’s why we want to know: Have you tried any of the latest caching plugins out there?
Which WordPress caching plugin have you experienced on your site and what do you think is the best solution for WordPress caching?
Is it important to have a solution that supports HTTP/2 web protocol and Google’s WebP image formats?
We want to hear from you, so leave us a quick comment below!
Nice tech breakdown here. Blogs need to load fast in this day and age or people will exit stage left quickly. It is the quick, or the dead. Thanks for sharing with us.