Website speed is a critical factor for success. It can decide whether a site succeeds or fails. A slow website leads nowhere, while a fast one boosts brand and business visibility.
For your website to gain attention and your business to take off, your website must be fast.
Caching improves site speed and traffic, and Google considers loading speed for ranking. Speeding up a site is an effective way to boost traffic and rankings. However, implementing this can be challenging.
In this blog post, you and I will explore how to increase site speed using caching plugins like Cache Enabler. You will also learn how to set up Cache Enabler with other free WordPress plugins to enhance your WP site’s speed, including an honest comparison with other caching plugins.
Prepare yourself to take your site to new heights.
What is Cache Enabler?
Imagine significantly speeding up your WordPress website with ease and without any hassle. What if a free plugin could accomplish this with minimal effort and no hassle?
Cache Enabler, a free plugin, increases the speed of your WordPress site by caching static HTML and other files.
It replaces resource-intensive dynamic server-side output, like PHP or SQL queries, with static files. Not only improves site performance but also reduces overhead by speeding up the resource-intensive backend operations without the need for expensive hardware or cloud hosting.
Cache Enabler is a free plugin in the WordPress directory that provides all the expected features of a premium caching plugin. Unlike others, it’s not offering any premium plans, allowing you to use it without spending money.
Let’s explore the key features offered by Cache Enabler,
- 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 Modified support
- Works perfectly with Autoptimize and other third-party plugins.
Real World Cache Enabler Speed Test Results
In this test, I used the MaxKVM VPS with the powerful Nginx web server managed by Webinoly. As for WordPress, I am using the Digital Marketing homepage demo of the Divi theme.
Note: All tests are conducted with default or identical settings, including additional plugins (Cache Enabler requires extra plugins compared to WP Rocket). These tests are repeated four to five times for accuracy.
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 Increased | 11% |
Cache Enabler Settings
Cache Behavior:
- Expiration: Set the cache expiration here, with the default value being 0. Unless you frequently add content to your site, please keep the function at the default setting. However, clear the cache manually each time you update the content.
- Clearing: Here, you will find five checkboxes with specific conditions. Whenever you click the save button, caches will be automatically cleared.
- ✅ 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 options: I choose to include inline CSS and JavaScript, and you can exclude them.
- ✅ Minify HTML in cached pages, including inline CSS and JavaScript.
Cache Exclusions: If, for any reason, you wish to prevent caching for specific posts or pages, you can easily add them to the list in the Cache Exclusions POST IDS or PAGE PATH text area. Go to the desired post or page’s Edit Post or Edit Page screen to do this. Locate the post/page ID from the URL and enter it into the Cache Exclusions field.
Cache Enabler vs WP Rocket
In my WP Rocket review, you’ll discover how simple it is to configure and speed up WordPress.
Cache Enabler is a free caching solution. However, compared to WP Rocket, it lacks essential features such as CSS and JS file minification, Lazy Loading for images and videos, and a database cleaner.
I used Fast Velocity Minify and Rocket Lazy Load with Cache Enabler to make a fair comparison.
⚠️: WP Media, the creators of Imagify and WP Rocket plugins, developed Rocket Lazy Load.
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 |
To ensure a fair comparison with Cache Enabler, I enable ✅ the option to combine CSS and JavaScript files while disabling ❌ the optimization of CSS and JavaScript delivery.
Cache Enabler + Fast Velocity Minify + Rocket Lazy Load vs WP Rocket (Optimal Settings):
Note: All tests are conducted with default or identical settings, including additional plugins (Cache Enabler requires extra plugins compared to WP Rocket). These tests are repeated four to five times for accuracy.
| 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 Increased | 5% |
Cache Enabler beats WP Rocket by a 5% margin but requires two extra plugins. However, by enabling ✅ the option to optimize CSS and JS delivery, WP Rocket beats Cache Enabler without requiring additional plugins.
You can achieve similar or near-premium results to WP Rocket but require experimenting with multiple free plugins and configurations. WP Rocket offers convenience and peace of mind at a cost.
Summary
As we all know, Faster websites are universally loved, as no one enjoys waiting for pages to load.
By following the above steps, your site can become one of the fastest in your niche, attracting more traffic and generating leads for your business. The most significant advantage of Cache Enabler is its ease of installation and setup, requiring no technical knowledge.
We’re curious: Have you experimented with any of the latest caching plugins available? Which WordPress caching plugin have you used on your site, and which do you consider the best solution for WordPress caching?
Do you prioritize solutions that support the HTTP/2 web protocol and Google’s WebP image formats?
We value your opinion, so leave us a quick comment below!
Ryan Biddulph
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.