Honest WP Rocket Plugin Review 2021 (+Important Settings)

Want to use WP Rocket on your blog but are not sure whether you should invest your money in it or not?

If yes then I promise you that after reading this honest WP Rocket plugin review 2021 you won’t have a single doubt left whether you should invest in this plugin or not.

So without wasting any more time.

Let’s jump straight to our topic.

What is WordPress caching?

Before knowing what actually is WP Rocket you first have to understand what actually is WordPress caching.

In simple words, when a visitor visits your blog a lot of data is transferred to and forth from your hosting server to the visitor’s browser.

Which can utilize a lot of your hosting’s resources especially if you are on shared hosting with limited resources.

So, to reduce that you can use caching on your WordPress website.

Caching basically makes a static copy of your WordPress website in your server which would be shown to your visitor if they visit your website.

It saves your hosting resources and makes your website load faster.

You should definitely enable it if you are on shared hosting with limited bandwidth and storage.

There are three types of cache:

How to enable caching on your WordPress website?

After understanding what actually is caching now another question might come into your mind that “How can I actually add caching to my website”.

You can do that in two ways first either buy a hosting that provides you an inbuilt caching such as Hostinger, Bluehost, and more.

But one thing I should tell you is that the hosting plans which inbuilt caching comes under are not cheap.

So, if you want to enable caching without spending too much money then you can use any of the cache plugins which would do that work for you such as

Why does your WordPress website need caching?

There are several reasons why WordPress websites need caching some of the major ones are:

With all these benefits there is a drawback of website caching if you frequently update your website.

As you know that caching makes a static copy of your website and it is possible that if you update your page it won’t show on the live page as it would show the old cached version.

However, you can easily fix this by clearing the cache of your website.

What is WP Rocket?

After knowing the basics of caching and why you need it now let’s jump to WP Rocket.

WP Rocket is a caching and website performance-enhancing WordPress plugin that can significantly improve your website’s speed and core web vitals.

It is a premium plugin which means to use it on your website you have to pay for it.

Currently WP Rocket powers more than 19 lakh WordPress websites despite being a premium WordPress plugin.

The best part of this plugin which I personally like is that to use this plugin to its full potential you won’t need any extra ordinary coding skills.

So, if you are a beginner and want to improve your website speed then WP Rocket can help you do that easily.

What does WP rocket actually do?

WP Rocket don’t do anything out of the box it has the same features as other caching plugins such as caching, website code minification, and more.

But the best thing about this plugin is its simplicity which many cache plugins fail to provide.

You don’t have to go through a long learning phase in order to know all the settings of this plugin and make it work perfectly for your website.

So, if you are a guy like me who wants to make his website fast without much hassle of learning then WP Rocket is the perfect choice for you.

WP Rocket Speed Test – Can it really make your slow website fast?

As we know that WP Rocket is a cache plugin and a cache plugin review is incomplete without a proper speed test.

So, here is the speed test of my website with and without WP rocket.

So let’s get started.

Test #1 – GTmetrix speed test

To conduct the speed test I first tested my website on GTmetrix which is a popular website speed checker tool.

It is a great tool that accurately tells you the speed, structure, and core web vitals of your website.

As you can see LCP is not looking good and also I have got a “C” GTmetrix grade.

As you can see now I got an A GTmetrix grade and also all the core web vitals are now in control.

WP Rocket killed it in this test.

Test #2 – Page speed insights test

The next speed analyzing tool is Google page speed insights which is Google’s own version of GTmetrix.

First I tested my website without WP Rocket.

You can see that the desktop score still looks good but the mobile score is below average.

And with mobile-first indexing, this score can run you into some big trouble.

Here is the page speed insights score after using WP Rocket on my website.

Now you can see that on the desktop I have got 100 out of 100 scores and on mobile I have got over 95 which is pretty well on limited resources shared hosting.

So, WP Rocket clearly won this test.

Test #3 – Web page test

Web page test is another great tool that can be used to test the speed of your website.

Especially if you want to fix the core web vitals then it could really help you fix it by telling you the exact reason for that problem.

As you can see that in the test without WP Rocket the CLS and TBT are lower than that of the test with WP Rocket.

However, in the test with WP Rocket you would get low LCP, lesser number of requests, and total website loading time.

So, in this test WP Rocket won here too with a small margin.

Test #4 – Dotcom tools speed test

The last test is done by dotcom tools speed test which doesn’t offer many deep insights about page speed like other tools but is a good speed analyzing tool for beginners.

As you can see that here WP Rocket seems to fail in terms of first average visit duration.

However, the average repeat visit load time is less with WP Rocket.

Also, the performance score with WP Rocket is much better than without it.

But nothing has changed much in the score with using WP Rocket.

So, here WP Rocket failed to make a mark.

WP Rocket speed test conclusion

As you can see that from the four speed tests WP Rocket won in three of them and in the last it didn’t made any significant improvement.

However, I don’t trust the last test much because it doesn’t give many details about the website’s speed like core web vitals and more.

So, here is the table summarising all the speed tests:

	Before WP Rocket	After WP Rocket
GTmetrix LCP	2.5 seconds	572 ms
GTmetrix TBT	0 ms	6 ms
GTmetrix CLS	0	0
Page Speed Insights (Desktop)	93	100
Page Speed Insights (Mobile)	78	96
Web Page Test LCP	1.806 seconds	1.028 seconds
Web Page Test CLS	0	0.01
Web Page Test TBT	Less than 0 seconds	Less than 0.150 seconds

I haven’t included the last results here because it hasn’t given much information about the speed of the website.

Best WP Rocket features

WP Rocket comes with a lot of awesome features which you won’t even get in premium cache plugins.

I personally use it on this website and it has helped me fixed my core web vitals easily.

Which has resulted in increasing my website’s ranking.

Here are some major features that you get in the WP Rocket plugin:

1. 80% optimization on the GO!

WP Rocket automatically does 80% of your website speed optimization just after installing it on your WordPress website.

So it would make your website fast even if you haven’t tweaked any of the settings yet.

Here are the features that WP rocket automatically activates right after installation:

2. Extensive documentation, guides, videos to get started

With WP Rocket you would get a lot of tutorials that would help you configure this cache plugin properly.

To access the tutorials and documentation you first have to go to your plugin’s dashboard and on the right, you would get the tutorials.

Also, you can go to the Tutorials section in your plugin’s dashboard where you would get a lot of important videos tutorials to properly configure this plugin.

Along with that, there are a lot of tutorials available on the documentation page of WP Rocket which would help you fix any problem regarding this plugin.

3. Advanced blog media optimization

Media elements on your blog like images, videos, and graphics can significantly hamper your website speed if not optimized correctly.

WP rocket knows it and that is the reason why they have provided advanced blog media optimization settings in their plugin.

It helps you properly optimize your website’s graphics and makes your website fast.

Here are all the media settings which WP rocket provides:

All these settings optimize the media of your blog to the fullest.

Along with that, you can also download the imagify plugin which would optimize all your website images by compressing them without losing their quality.

4. Code minification at its best!

Do you know which is the main reason for your website’s slow speed?

The coding of your website!

Here is how an unoptimized website code looks like:

Properly organized!

But is it good for your website speed? Actually not.

Because this properly organized coding increases the page size of your website which makes your website super slow.

But you can reduce it by minifying your code which looks something like this:

WP rocket gives you a lot of code optimization features that help you minify your code without breaking your website.

Here are the code optimization settings of WP Rocket:

5. Extra Add-ons to supercharge your website

WP Rocket comes with a lot of add-ons that would help you increase your website speed more.

For example, you can easily integrate Cloudflare with WP Rocket by using these add-ons which would improve your website more.

6. Cache preloading – Website loaded in a blink

WP rocket comes with an awesome cache preloading feature that automatically generates the cached version of your page.

It helps in loading your website super fast in front of your readers which also helps in SEO too.

This feature is a boon for all those cost-cutting bloggers who are using shared hosting with very few resources.

You can change the cache preloading time from the cache section of this plugin.

7. Seperate mobile caching to make your website fast on mobile

The main problem that I have faced with the majority of WordPress cache plugins is that they don’t have effective mobile caching options in them.

But that’s not with WP Rocket because it comes with great mobile cache options which can make your website super fast on mobile as well.

Also, you might know that Google has mobile-first indexing which means that Google will index your mobile version first which makes it super important to make your website on mobile fast.

You would get the mobile cache setting in the cache tab of WP Rocket.

8. Best cache plugin for E-commerce website

E-commerce speed optimization is one of the toughest tasks to accomplish.

First e-commerce websites have a lot of product pages which makes it difficult to clear the cache of all of them.

Along with that caching can cause problems in the purchasing process as well.

But what if I say that there is a plugin that can fix both of these problems and make your eCommerce website fast.

Actually, it is there which you know as WP rocket.

But the best part is that this plugin comes with all the eCommerce settings pre-enabled so you won’t have to put your mind to it.

Great isn’t it?

9. Reduce latency and drive international traffic

Do you want to drive international traffic to your website?

If yes then you have two options to do that

If you are on shared hosting then you have to go with the second choice.

You can easily integrate CDN with the help of the WP Rocket plugin.

For adding CDN you first have to go to the CDN tab in the plugin’s dashboard.

There you can use RocketCDN which is the official CDN of WP Rocket or if you have a subscription to any other CDN then you can also add it from here as well.

Adding CDN to WP Rocket would make your website much snappier and fast.

10. Exclude indivisual pages or posts from cache

Is there a specific page or post which you don’t want to cache?

If yes then you can also do that with WP rocket.

For that, you first have to go to the Advanced rules tab in your plugin’s dashboard.

Just put the post or page URL here.

What makes WP Rocket different from other WP Cache plugin?

WP Rocket is not a regular WordPress caching plugin which would make some minor changes to your website speed and done.

It can make your slow-loading website fast and contribute in making your website a lot more user-friendly.

Here are some of its unique features that make WP rocket different from other caching plugins:

1. Compatibility with different hosting

Before the WP rocket plugin, I have used Swift performance lite on my website to speed it up.

It was all great but the major problem was that I use Hostinger hosting which uses the LiteSpeed server which was not fully compatible with this plugin.

And this is a major problem with the majority of hosting and cache plugins.

But this is not with WP rocket because it is fully compatible with the majority of hosting providers including WP Engine which doesn’t allow any other caching plugin on its hosting.

Also, if there is any compatibility issue of WP rocket with your hosting then WP rocket would automatically turn off that setting which is a great feature of this caching plugin.

2. Beginner friendly setup

The majority of cache plugin out there have a problem that they don’t offer a beginner-friendly setup.

They throw a lot of different settings on the face of bloggers which makes it difficult for them to configure the cache plugin properly.

But with WP Rocket you don’t have to worry much about the settings because it automatically does 80% of your website speed optimization just after activation.

The rest of the settings is quite easy to configure and if you face any kind of problem then you can contact its premium support or read their tutorials from here.

3. Can fix your core web vitals easily

With the recent Google Page Speed Update, core web vitals are now an important ranking factor.

However, I have used a lot of cache plugins to fix that but most of them failed to do so.

But then I started using WP Rocket and the rest is history.

Here is the core web vitals score of my website after using WP Rocket.

Also, it didn’t took me more than 10 minutes to configure the right settings of WP Rocket for my website which made my website fast and fixed my core web vitals.

4. Minification don’t kill your website

I have previously told that before using WP Rocket I was using the Swift performance lite plugin on my website.

Which was actually working great but there was a major issue of CSS minification in it which was breaking my website’s design and user experience.

It was the thing that I can’t afford and that is the reason why I shifted to WP rocket.

Its CSS settings didn’t broke my website instead it made my website faster.

So, my investment was worth it.

5. Automatic database cleaning on the go

A fully filled database is one of the main reasons why your website is so slow.

Over time post revisions, spam comments, transients, etc fill up your database and pull down your website’s speed.

You can easily clean your database by using a cache plugin on your website easily.

But with WP Rocket you don’t need to do it manually because WP rocket would do it automatically.

Just go to the database section in WP Rocket, scroll down, check the schedule automatic cleanup box, set the frequency of it, and you are DONE!

6. Single plugin = Multiple features

WP Rocket is a multi-functional website optimization plugin that gives you a lot more features than normal cache plugins.

If you want to optimize and fix the images on your website you just have to go to the image optimization tab in WP Rocket and do the necessary settings.

You can go to the preloading tab to activate its advanced pre-loading settings.

And if you want to show your website images in WebP then you can also do that with WP Rocket.

Not to worry I would tell you how to configure the settings of WP Rocket later in this post.

After adding this plugin I removed a lot of my plugins like Shortpixel, A3 lazy loader, and more which removed a lot of load from my website.

7. Can speed up your website like no other plugin

I have used a lot of cache plugins on my website over the last 2 years but trust me no cache plugin has fully satisfied my needs except WP Rocket.

WP Rocket has made my website fast and fixed the issue of my website’s core web vitals fully.

Before WP Rocket I have used Swift Performance, W3 Total Cache, Litespeed cache, and many other plugins on my website they worked great and speed up my website but were lacking in some features.

But with WP Rocket it was not the case because it totally revamped and optimized my website speed.

WP Rocket vs Free Cache plugin – Which is better?

I know that you might have a question that there are 100s of free cache plugins out there then what’s different with WP Rocket.

Free cache plugins would make my website load fast, optimize your website’s images, etc and the same goes with WP Rocket.

“So why should I invest in WP Rocket?”

Actually, I can’t answer that to you because I was in the same position as you when I was thinking of buying this premium cache plugin.

But trust me you can only feel the difference between the free cache plugins and WP Rocket once you get your hands on it.

It would make your website super fast in all aspects which even many premium cache plugins can’t do.

And that’s why I love this plugin so much.

Also, this plugin gives 14 days money-back guarantee which means that you can try it and if you didn’t like then you can take back all your money.

Pros and Cons of WP Rocket

Like every WordPress plugin there are some pros and cons of WP Rocket as well which we are going to discuss in this section:

Pros of WP Rocket

Cons of WP Rocket

What real users of WP Rocket are saying about this plugin?

In this section, I will tell you some unbiased reviews of WP Rocket by its real users which would tell you whether this plugin works or not.

In the first two reviews, people are telling that WP Rocket is the best cache plugin according to them.

In the next review, the person is telling how WP Rocket has helped him make his e-commerce stores faster.

Umit Tiger on Trustpilot is telling that WP Rocket has helped him increase his website’s page speed insights score. Along with that WP Rocket’s blog posts have helped him become a professional page speed improver.

Kenneth in his WP Rocket review is telling how WP Rocket has helped him achieve 100/100 score on Google page speed insights and that’s why he is fully satisfied with this plugin.

A review on G2.com is telling how WP Rocket has helped him sleep peacefully at night without any worry of making his website fast.

Another review is telling that how WP Rocket is much more than an ordinary cache plugin for WordPress websites.

However, he also mentioned that this plugin sometimes crashes his website.

This user of WP Rocket is telling that using this plugin didn’t break his website and there are a lot of things that you can do with WP Rocket.

Also, he is telling how the developers of this plugin are working hard to improve it regularly.

Dave in his review of WP Rocket is telling how this plugin is the best WordPress performance plugin on the planet which gives all the features required to improve your website’s performance.

In total WP Rocket has got more than 1000s reviews on Trust Pilot and has got 4.9 stars out of 5 which is quite amazing.

However, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t any bad reviews of WP Rocket.

Here is one

And here is another.

On these review websites, one thing I saw was that there are mixed reviews about the WP Rocket support.

Some were saying that it is great and some are saying that it is terrible.

So, I would request the WP Rocket team to fix this issue ASAP.

Best WP Rocket Settings 2021 – How to properly set up this awesome cache plugin?

As I have previously said that you don’t have to do a lot of settings in WP rocket to make your website fast.

However, to fine-tune your website speed and core web vitals you have to do some settings in your WP Rocket plugin which I am going to tell you in this section.

So let’s dive into the important WP Rocket settings:

Step 1 – Buying and installing this WordPress plugin

To use WP Rocket on your website you first have to buy and install it on your WordPress website.

And this is what I am going to tell you:

First, click here to go to WP Rocket’s official website and click on the “Buy WP Rocket” button on the top navigation bar.

After clicking you would be redirected to the pricing page, choose the plan whichever you like.

I am personally using the one-site license on this website which costs me $49 per year.

After choosing the plan you would be redirected to the payment page where you have to fill in your details and choose the payment method.

Scroll down, click on the “place order” button and that’s how you can buy WP Rocket.

Next download the zip file of WP rocket, go to the plugin section of your website, click on upload plugin and drop the zip file here.

Add the API key in your WP Rocket dashboard and validate it so it can start optimizing your website.

Step 2 – Dashboard Tab

After successfully installing and activating this cache plugin now let’s break down each of the WP Rocket tabs given here.

Scroll down you will first see your license and expiration date. Along with that on the right, you would see some quick actions like:

Also if you scroll down more then you would get some videos and FAQs which would help you get familiar with WP Rocket.

Step 3 – Cache Tab

The next tab is the cache tab which is super important to make your website fast.

First, check the “enable caching for mobile devices” option and leave all the other things there as it is.

However, you can increase the time duration of cache lifespan if your website is a static one that doesn’t update regularly.

Click on the Save changes button.

Step 4 – File Optimization Tab

In the file optimization tab, you can optimize and compress your website code to make it faster.

First, check the “Minify CSS files” option and optimize the “CSS delivery option”.

You can also check the “combine CSS files option” but do check your website after enabling this option.

Next in the javascript section check the “minify javascript option”, “load the javascript deferred option” and “delay javascript execution option”.

Leave the “combine javascript files” option as it is or you can test it yourself as well.

Step 5 – Media Tab

Next comes the media tab which would help you optimize the multimedia of your website properly.

The first thing under this section is Lazy load and in that check “enable for images”, “enable for iframes and videos” tab.

Also, check the “replace the YouTube iframe with preview image” option.

You can add any image or iframe code in this box if you don’t want them to be lazy-loaded.

Next under the image dimensions section check the “add missing image dimensions” option.

In embeds check the “disable WordPress embeds” option and at last, you can also “enable the WebP caching” option if you want to show your website images in WebP format with help of this plugin.

Click the save changes button to save the changes that you have done.

Step 6 – Preload Tab

Preloading is my favorite feature of this plugin which helps you load your website like a cheetah.

Under the preload cache section of this tab check “active preloading”, “activate sitemap-based cache preloading”, and “rank math XML sitemap” options.

You can uncheck the rank math sitemap option if you have made a custom sitemap for your website. To preload your custom sitemap you just have to put its URL here.

Also, you can uncheck the rank math sitemap XML option if it is causing some problems on your website.

Next under the preloading links section check the “enable link preloading” option.

After that, you can use this option to prefetch DNS requests which helps load external files faster.

And here put the fonts URLs here which you want to preload.

If you run a blog type website then don’t do anything the last two settings.

At last click on save changes to save the changes, you have done.

Step 7 – Advanced Rules Tab

In the advanced rules tab of WP Rocket, you can fine-tune the settings that you have done till now.

The first section is “never cache URLs” where you can add the URLs of your website that you don’t want to cache ever.

Next is the “never cache cookies section” where you can add cookies on your website which you don’t want to cache.

The third section is “never cache user agent” where you can add user-agent strings which you don’t want to cache.

The next setting is “always purge URLs” where you can add the link of the pages of your website which you always want to purge after every update.

The last section is “cache query strings” where you can add query strings that you always want to cache.

However, if you are a complete beginner then I would recommend leaving this section as it is.

Step 8 – Database Tab

The database tab in WP Rocket is the place from where you can clean all garbage from your website’s database and make it faster.

You can check the options which you want to clean from your website’s database.

I would recommend these options to get cleaned from your database

Also, don’t forget to check the “scheduled automatic cleanup option” and put it on weekly frequency.

This means that your database would be cleaned automatically every week.

Step 9 – CDN Tab

In the CDN tab, you can easily connect any CDN with your WP Rocket plugin.

Also, you can check out this plugin’s own CDN Rocket CDN if you haven’t bought any CDN yet but are planning to do so.

However, if you are using any CDN first check the “enable content delivery network” option and put the CDN CNAME here.

Also, if you want to exclude any specific URL(s) from your CDN then you just have to put it here.

However, if you are using Cloudflare as a CDN then I will tell you how to configure it in a bit.

Step 10 – Heartbeat Tab

Next is the heartbeat tab which is pretty easy to configure.

First, check the “control heartbeat” option and put every option under the “reduce or disable heartbeat activity option” to reduce activity.

Don’t disable it because it can break your theme and plugins on your website and click on save changes.

Step 11 – Add-ons Tab

The addon’s tab of WP rocket is for all those who want no stone to left unturned for your website’s speed.

Here are all the add-ons in WP Rocket:

The most important add-on is Cloudflare one as many people are using Cloudflare as the CDN for their website.

First on the Cloudflare add-on from here and then click on the “modify options” button.

After that, you would redirect to another page where you first have to fill in your Cloudflare Global API key, account email, and zone ID.

Next, if you have a live website then check only the optimal settings option.

Click on the “clear all Cloudflare cache files” button and at last click on save changes.

Step 12 – Image optimization, tools and tutorials tab

There is nothing to do in the image optimization tab just you have to install imagify plugin which is also made by this cache plugin.

It is an all-in-one plugin to optimize your images and serve them in next-gen image formats like WebP.

Next in the tools tab, you can export your WP Rocket settings, import any other website’s WP Rocket settings to your website, or roll back to the previous version of this plugin.

And in the last tab, you would get tutorials that would help you configure the WP Rocket plugin easily.

My personal WP Rocket settings

Don’t want to configure the WP Rocket plugin on your own?

If yes then I would give you my own WP rocket settings which give me this

Just purchase your WP Rocket plugin from any of my WP Rocket affiliate links in this article and send me your purchase receipt at [email protected]

After confirming the purchase I will send you the settings and some other freebies as well.

WP Rocket Pricing and Renewal

As WP Rocket is a paid plugin so you have to pay for it to use it on your website.

It offers three pricing plans which don’t have any features difference but the difference is in the websites on which you can use it.

Each plan of WP Rocket comes with an awesome 30% renewal discount.

This means that you would get a flat 30% off on WP Rocket if you continue its license after one year.

Isn’t it great?

Also, WP Rocket offers 14 days full refund policy so you can try this plugin on your website and choose whether you want to continue it or not.

Best WP Rocket Alternatives

I am totally in love with WP Rocket and would recommend it to anyone who really wants to load their website fast.

But it could be possible that you don’t want to use it on your website because:

So, for all those of you guys here are my two favorite WP Rocket alternatives.

1. Swift Performance

Swift performance is my second favorite cache plugin for WordPress which I have tried and tested on my website for more than one year and it has been a great experience to use it on my blog.

It made my website fast and snappy which improved my website’s overall experience.

Here are some benefits and drawbacks of this cache plugin:

Pricing

Swift performance comes in a lite version which you can simply install on your website and use it.

However, if you want to use premium then this plugin offer three plans:

2. W3 Total Cache

Another superb alternative of WP Rocket is the W3 Total cache which comes with many advanced features even in the free version.

These features would help you make your website faster and more efficient than before.

Here are some benefits and drawbacks of this plugin:

Pricing

As mentioned that pricing structure of the W3 total cache premium is not great.

You have to pay $99 per website without any multi-site discount.

However, if you want it for a single site then the deal is not bad when compared to the features present in the premium version.

But if you want to use it for more than one website the I won’t recommend you w3 total cache premium.

Along with that here are two more WP Rocket alternative which can make your website faster.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion of WP Rocket review

WP Rocket from now is my favorite cache and speed optimization plugin for WordPress which has significantly increased my website speed.

Also, it has reduced all my stress of making my website fast so I can not focus on other aspects of my website.

Let me know in the comments if you have any queries about WP Rocket.

Also, if you want any help regarding WP Rocket then you can simply email me at [email protected]

I would be more than happy to fix your problem.

Join our Facebook group to ask me any question and also follow on Twitter for more blogging, SEO, and affiliate marketing tips.