In this video we’re going to talk through the WooCommerce caching and speed optimization plugins we recommend and why.
We’ve optimized 5000+ WordPress sites, many of them running WooCommerce and the subtle differences in plugin choice can make a huge difference to overall site speed.
One important fundamental to keep in mind when optimizing a WooCommerce site is that reliability beats speed and we never want to sacrifice site speed for reduced reliability. These are the plugins we’ve used on thousands of websites and have found them to be reliable, predictable and with great support.
Table of Contents
Page Caching
In WordPress, a page cache prebuilds pages so they’re ready to go on the server once requested. All the database lookups, PHP processing and HTML generation are done in advance and saved in the page cache.
Some WordPress hosts like WPEngine and Kinsta have page caching built in but can still benefit from these plugins as they help better manage the cache. They do this by helping build the cache in advance and clearing the cache when pages are updated. Cache management is important especially in a WooCommerce environment where products can go in and out of stock and where stale cached pages may incorrectly show a product as in stock or out of stock which ultimately frustrates customers and hurts sales.
WPRocket Plugin – Best for the DIYer
WP Rocket is the plugin we typically recommend for someone less technical and DIYing. It’s very simple to use and is “safe” in terms of the settings to use.
Learn more at https://wprocketplugin.com
Flying Pages Plugin – Best for Performance or more technical users
Flying Pages is a bit more technical and we recommend this for developers or users looking to squeeze more performance out of their site. There’s more technical settings to configure and a bit more scope to break things so be mindful
Learn more at https://flyingpress.net
Important Optimization Notes For Page Caching Plugins & WooCommerce
Here’s some important things to keep in mind regardless of which plugin you use. These are common mistakes we see that can hurt site speed or hurt SEO.
1. Never use two caching plugins together, this makes things slower
2. Avoid Minify-ing CSS and JS
Don’t use Minify for CSS or JS. Both plugins still have the option to Minify CSS and JS – this is BAD for speed as it impacts cache-ability and doesn’t nothing to actually speed up your site.
When a plugin Minify’s the CSS or JS, it rewrites the filename to a temporary saved file. Every time the Page Cache is cleared this file is renamed. This means that the cached version on your visitors browser no longer works which makes their next visit slower and it means that search crawlers like Google will try and load that file on their next visit, generating a 404 error which has a negative impact on SEO.
Modern web servers use Gzip and Brotli compression which are far superior to minification. Cloudflare in fact removed Minify as one of their features in 2024.
3. Avoid Combining CSS and JS
Avoid combining CSS and javascript. On the modern web, with HTTP3 protocol support, combining these files generally will make them slower. Similarly to Minify, combined CSS and JS files end up with a temporary filename that changes on every cache clear which ultimately leads to slower performance and search crawlers seeing 404 errors more regularly.
4. Avoid Combining CSS and JS
Be very careful with “delay JS” – this is a feature in both plugins where the javascript is delayed until the user interacts with the site. This makes the site appear faster in a speed tool BUT especially on WooCommerce, which is very javascript dependent, this can make the site slower and break features in the real world.
5. Enable Caching for Logged-In Users
This is important for WooCommerce. By default, the cache is not enabled for logged-in users. In a Woocommerce environment, many users log in before buying and their sessions will be extremely slow without this feature. There’s near zero risk to enabling this feature and it’s typically off by default.
Object Caching (a form of database caching)
Object caching is a form of database caching and will speed up the backend and database heavy activities like the My-Account area, cart and checkout.
Many hosts have this built in and don’t need a plugin BUT if you need a standalone plugin the one to use is the Redis Object Cache Plugin
CDN or Content Delivery Network
The only CDN we recommend for WooCommerce is Cloudflare. At a minimum, use their $5/month APO service which is a form of page cache on the CDN servers. It’ll dramatically reduce the load on your hosting and speed things up for users substantially.
The $25/month plan is worth it for bigger Woo sites as it adds several speed optimization features and a real firewall.
NEVER use two CDNs together as this will make things substantially slower.
Visit Cloudflare.com to learn more
If you’re on a tight budget, use the FREE Cloudflare plan.
There’s several Cloudfalre rules we recommend for WooCommerce which will help speed things up and protect the site from things like brute force attacks. Check out this post with our Cloudflare Rules for Wordpress.
Other Optimization Plugins
There’s several other plugins and optimizations that aren’t necessarily plugins that we recommend for WooCommerce. Note that there is overlap in many of these plugins and tools. You never want to duplicate speed optimization features – for example, multiple plugins can do lazy loading but you only want it enabled in a single plugin.
Perfmatters – a fantastic general purpose WordPress optimization plugin. We heavily rely on the lazy load and image preload features to speed up above the fold elements on WooCommerce sites.
Robots.txt file for WooCommerce – https://www.wpspeedfix.com/woocommerce-robots.txt
This is a custom robots.txt file for WooCommerce that will help reduce load, improve security and improve SEO for WooCommerce sites. Video explanation below
Database Optimization for Woocommerce – this post on speeding up the WooCommerce backend has several steps around database optimization and general WooCommerce optimization.
We have some additional posts that may also help:
Speed up Woocommerce Add-to-Cart
Speed up Logged-In Users in WordPress
Vital Signs Tracker – VST is our Core Web Vitals Analytics platform. It tracks the speed of every single user session on your site and monitors for performance gaps or issues. It’s the same tool we use in our speed optimization work available as a standalone purchase.