WP-Optimize vs. Autoptimize: Which is the best WordPress optimization plugin?

Every day, it seems there is more and more competition for people’s time. Be it the internet, movies, TV, video games or streaming, these days, in order for your site to be successful and gain traction, you not only need to have an interesting and engaging website, but you also need to make sure it is fully optimized and loads quickly. 

Of course, as anyone that has set up and run a website will know, getting visitors to visit your website is one thing, but getting them to stay for an extended period is quite another. 

You may get visitors to your websites for any number of reasons, but they will only stay and return again in the future if it is efficient and professional. The most simple and obvious example of this is how long it takes for your site to fully load. New research by Google has found that 53% of mobile website visitors will leave if a webpage doesn’t load within three seconds. Page speed is a direct ranking factor, a fact known even better since Google’s Algorithm Speed Update. However, speed can also affect rankings indirectly, by increasing the bounce rate and reducing dwell time. Typically, the greater the speed of your website, the better your ranking will be. 

Having established the importance of page speed in trying to get your WordPress site fully optimized and on the first page of Google, which website performance-boosting plugin should you use? WP-Optimize and Autoptimize are two of the most popular plugins available for WordPress. In this blog we will look at both of them, evaluate performance and which one you should install

Website performance-boosting plugins

Your website should be performing to optimal speed if it hopes to attract visitors that will stay, interact and return in the future. Although you may have a great product and a modern and stylish design, it is not enough to just expect these factors to bring your success on their own. To help, you need to install performance-boosting plugins to ‘speed’ things along.. 

Your website has a reserved storage space called a ‘cache system’, and it’s specifically cut out for storing temporary data. Caching solutions will store static versions of your website in a cache. This allows WordPress to skip running heavier PHP scripts every time your site loads. This caching process helps to improve WordPress speed and performance and the overall user experience. This cache collects images, text, and other data when a visitor comes to your page for the first time. The essence of this is to give your site enough room to load faster and generally perfume more efficiently. 

But for your cache system to perform well, it has to have a decent CPU and RAM. But however great they are, they will soon run out with increasing traffic, leaving the site to render slowly. This is where performance-boosting plugins, such as WP-Optimize and Autoptimize help. They work round the clock to improve the efficiency and overall performance of your site.  

WP-Optimize

As the leading all-in-one plugin, WP-Optimize cleans your site’s database, compresses the images and caches the website. At the time of writing, WP-Optimize has more than a million active installations and a 5-star rating from hundreds of thousands of users on WP.org. WP-Optimize has become the plugin of choice for anyone that is looking to keep their WordPress site fast and efficient. 

Autoptimize

Autoptimize is another popular plugin for optimizing your WordPress website. Like WP-Optimize it works by aggregation and caching scripts and styles. Autoptimize will input CSS into the page head by default, as well as inline critical CSS. It will then defer the already aggregated full CSS, move the scripts to the footer and minify HTML. 

It features Google Fonts and image optimization, including Lazy Load with support for Web and AVIF formats. Autoptimize can be a good plugin to install if you want to improve your website’s performance. Like WP-Optimize, Autoptimize also has more than 1 million active Installations but has a lower 4.5 star rating. 

Comparison of WP-Optimize and Autoptimize (tabulated) 

Features

WP-Optimize

Autoptimize

Free version

Yes

Yes

Database Optimization

Yes

No

Browser Caching

Yes

No

Page Caching

Yes

No

Gzip compression

Yes

Yes

Lazy Load

Yes

Yes

Image Compression 

Yes

Yes

Cache Preloading 

Yes

Yes

HTML/CSS/JS minification

Yes

Yes

Backup

Yes

No

 

WP-Optimize and Autoptimize: Which is a better optimization plugin?

With both plugins having over a million active installs and a high star rating, the dilemma for every website owner is which plugin is more suitable for speeding up a website’s load time and improving the overall performance. As can be seen in the above chart, WP-Optimize has more features and tools and is clearly the better performance-boosting plugin.

WP-Optimize offers more value 

One thing WP-Optimize and Autoptimize have in common is that they both offer a free version of their popular plugin and optimizations functions. But both plugins are not created equal. Feedback from users who have used and compared the two plugins have shown that WP-Optimize is the superior of the two, both in features and in functions. 

WP-Optimize has a backup feature

WP-Optimize plugin comes combined with the UpdraftPlus backup service; the most trusted and biggest backup backup plugin in the world. By using WP-Optimize and UpdraftPlus, you can be rest assured that essential files, such as original high-resolution images on your WordPress site, are kept safe. The backup and restore functions for UpdraftPlus are so seamlessly built-in that they can be operated by just the press of one button – restoring your site or files to their previous state. Autoptimize lacks this feature and does not offer any kind of backup or restore service. So if you make a mistake while optimizing your site with Autoptimize, then you will be stuck with the changes you have made.

Image compression feature: Which is best?

Like WP-Optimize, Autoptimize has an image compression feature built into the plugin. But it is recommended that you disable the feature on Autoptimize, as it does not appear to function optimally. Even Autoptimize advise that users use a third-party plugin like Imagify to compress your images. The image optimization feature in WP-Optimize is a cutting edge and leading image optimization platform that works well and it’s easily the best in the WordPress market. One of the best ways you can improve the speed of your site via WP-Optimize is by optimizing your images. This process, which is commonly known as ‘smush’ or ‘smushing’ allows users to optimize, compress and resize all the images on a website, potentially saving many MB per image and improving loading speeds. This feature is available on both the free and premium versions of WP-Optimize.

WP-Optimize is easy to use

After installation, both WP-Optimize and Autoptimize still require some fairly simple and straightforward ticks within the plugin options to fully set them up. However, WP-Optimize is much more straightforward and easier to set up for both WordPress novices and experts. Users may find that Autoptimize is a bit more complex and that you may need some technical know-how to make the kind of changes that are more easily identifiable in WP-Optimize.

Autoptimize has minify-related issues

Many users have sent and reported feedback in which they complained about running into problems when they set Autoptimize to minify CSS and JS. The recommended solution is to exclude CSS and JS files when trying to minify files. This is obviously not ideal and limits the kind of optimization that a user can perform on their site. WP-Optimize does not have this problem. Users can minify CSS and JS on WP-Optimize to their heart’s content! This is just another example of why WP-Optimize is superior. 

Conclusion

If you have read the above blog, then you will have already figured out for yourself exactly which plugin is the best and why. If you want to improve any aspect of your site and improve its speed and performance, then WP-Optimize is the easy favorite for all the reasons listed in this article.

 

The post WP-Optimize vs. Autoptimize: Which is the best WordPress optimization plugin? appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

WP-Optimize vs. WP Rocket: Which is the best WordPress optimization and caching plugin?

More than 40% of your website visitors will close your site and leave if it takes over three seconds for your website to fully load. This phenomenon becomes more relevant as technology continues to advance with other devices vying for your attention, causing the global attention span to decrease. By now it should come as no surprise that site speed is crucial to the success and usability of your site and influences your website’s search engine rankings. Knowing this, if you run a WordPress based site, a common dilemma at this point will be ‘what website performance boosting and optimization plugin should I use?’ To answer that, we will compare and contrast two of the most popular optimization plugins: WP-Optimize and WP Rocket.  

What’s an optimization plugin?

Every website has a dedicated storage space reserved for keeping temporary data to ensure your WordPress website loads faster and generally performs more efficiently. This storage space is called a ‘cache’. When your website is opened for the first time it collects files, images, text and other necessary information about your device. It’s this data from the first visit that ensures your website loads faster on subsequent visits. 

Your cache system will require decent levels of RAM and CPU to properly carry out this function. But no matter how good they both are, increasing traffic will soon consume it, causing the page to render slower. This is where performance-boosting plugins come in. They are able to cache your WordPress site, clean your database and compress your images. This helps to increase the overall performance and efficiency of your WordPress site.

WP-Optimize

WP-Optimize is an all-in-one optimization plugin that cleans your database, compresses images and caches your website. Put all of these functions together and you get what the name implies, a well-optimized WordPress website, performing seamlessly and efficiently. 

WP-Optimize currently has over a million active installations. If you are serious about keeping your WordPress website in the best shape and providing a high-end user experience, you have to install WP-Optimize for your website.  

WP Rocket

WP Rocket is another optimization plugin that allows you to speed up your website in a few steps. It ranks among the most functional WordPress website performance plugins in the world. Like most optimization plugins (including WP-Optimize), WP Rocket can help to cut down your load time and boost your Google PageSpeed and Core Web Vitals scores. 

Comparison of WP-Optimize and WP Rocket features

Features WP-Optimize WP Rocket
Free version Yes No
Database Optimization Yes Yes
Browser Caching Yes Yes
Page Caching Yes Yes
Gzip compression Yes Yes
Lazy Load Yes Yes
Image Compression  Yes No
Cache Preloading  Yes Yes
HTML/CSS/JS minification Yes Yes
Mobile Specific Cache Yes Yes

Why is WP-Optimize a better caching plugin than WP Rocket?

WP-Optimize has a free version

You can install WP-Optimize on your WordPress website and start using it for free without any hidden charges. You get instant access to several features including database optimization, caching and image compression. WP Rocket does not offer a free version and as such, all of its features come at a premium. Buying a premium product without being able to test out it’s features and functionality can be an expensive and risky endeavor. With WP-Optimize, you can test out many of the major features and get a better feel for how the plugin can improve your site, without having to spend your hard earned money first. 

WP-Optimize is a better Premium option

While prices are subject to change over time, the general pricing levels of these two plugins show a significant difference of price and number of websites the plugin can be used on. While WP-Optimize not only offers a free version of it’s plugin, it also has a premium version that gives access to additional features, including logging, lazy load, multisite support and top-notch optimization scheduling. 

The premium version of WP-Optimize is more affordable than WP Rocket and will let you install it on more websites compared to WP Rocket.  

WP-Optimize

Name of plan Cost Number of websites 
Starter  $39 2
Business $69 5
Unlimited  $179 Unlimited 

WP Rocket

Name of plan Cost Number of websites 
Single $49 1
Plus $99 3
Infinite $249 Unlimited 

WP-Optimize comes with an image compression feature

In the bid to increase website speed and facilitate large file savings, WP-Optimize offers both Lossy and Lossless image optimization. Large, uncompressed images can be one of the leading factors on why a site could take so long to load. As an additional feature, you can also backup your original high-resolution image files, in case you need them in the future. WP Rocket does not come with a built-in image compression feature. You would have to install Imagify, a third-party plugin, to compress your images. 

WP-Optimize is integrated with UpdraftPlus backup

WP-Optimize uses UpdraftPlus to back up your site. UpdraftPlus is the world’s leading backup plugin and is an essential plugin to install in order to safeguard your files. The integration is so seamless that the backup and restore functions are automatic and super-convenient. WP Rocket does not have this option, which is an especially necessary and crucial feature when making any changes to your site.

WP-Optimize is more effective for page caching

Page caching gives your WordPress website the capacity to generate more than just a set of files for separate visits from different devices – This feature allows for an overall better website performance, and while both WP-Optimize and WP Rocket offer this feature, WP-Optimize is more effective in delivering noticeable results. 

Conclusion

As you have learned from this blog, both plugins will do a good job in optimizing your website. However WP-Optimize is the more effective option and can deliver better results. The addition of a free version of the WP-Optimize plugin also allows the user to experience and test out the basic features within the plugin, without having to make an expensive purchase. If you are looking to speed up your site, reduce image size and find the best caching option available, WP-Optimize is the plugin for you. Download and install it today!

The post WP-Optimize vs. WP Rocket: Which is the best WordPress optimization and caching plugin? appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.