What Wordpress Speed Optimizing Plugins do you use?

[austins36]

Hello!

I'm trying to find the best page speed optimizing plugin and wanted to see if anyone had any experience or preferences?

I have used in the past:
Smush
Auptomize
W3 Cache (caused issues with other plugins, might be my fault though)
and a few others I don't remember and don't like.

I'm really just looking for something that won't mess up what I currently have and is consistent with updates.

So far I would say Auptomize is my favorite but it can cause issues for me sometimes. Anyways I'm curious to get some opinions thanks!

 

[Yan Gilbert]

I usually install Autoptimize but I've found that sometimes different plugins work better with different themes.

Also, I always install Asset CleanUp: Page Speed Booster which lets you unload JS on a per page basis. Lots of plugins load up scripts sitewide even though the functionality is needed on only a few pages of a site.

 

[Conor Treacy]

90% of the time I use the Autoptimize plugin. I've also used WP Fastest Cache on some sites, but I nearly always come back to Autoptimize.

 

[djbaxter]

I actually did quite a bit of testing to identify which of these types of plugins worked best without a negative impact on page load speeds.

The results were surprising to me in that the most popular were not necessarily the best. Some had a very noticeable negative impact on page load, some added a lot of page bloat, and some really didn't play nicely with other plugins.

These are the ones I now use routinely:

reSmush.it : The original free image compressor and optimizer plugin

reSmush.it is the FREE image compressor and optimizer plugin - use it to optimize your images and improve the SEO and performance of your website.

wordpress.org

Speed Booster Pack ⚡ PageSpeed Optimization Suite

PageSpeed optimization is vital for SEO: A faster website equals better conversions. Optimize your Core Web Vitals metrics (CLS, LCP, TBT) today!

wordpress.org

Make sure you choose Speed Booster options carefully and check them against page load speeds).

WP Super Cache

A very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static html files.

wordpress.org

And if you use a social sharing plugin, this one is much faster than its competitors (especially AddThis which is extremely slow):

Social Sharing Plugin – Sassy Social Share

Slickest, Simplest and Optimized Share buttons. Facebook, X (Twitter), Reddit, Pinterest, Whatsapp, Gab, Gettr and over 100 more.

wordpress.org

 

[Rich Owings]

If you've inherited a site that has too many large images (file size or pixel dimensions), this plugin can help: Imsanity. There are plenty of image compression options out there, but this is the only plugin I know of that will resize dimensions of images in a pre-existing media library.

 

[austins36]

Thanks to everyone for the great responses! Feel free to keep them coming, I'm currently researching all these options and going to try what works best for me.

 

[mborgelt]

I built a platform called bionicwp.com that is hosted on Google's network and leveraging our best hyper optimized solution to get 90+ on GTMetrixs. We also offer white label unlimited 30 min edits for less than $25 per site. If you are interested in a "try before you buy" let me know! (meaning we will take a copy of your site and put it on our staging environment and show you the amazing results). We currently host roughly 1000 Wordpress sites on this platform.

 

[jmshap]

We have tested a bunch and honestly don’t see a real world speed difference regarding number of requests and page size. Autoptimize gives the lowest numbers but not the fastest load times. We get the best overall load times with WP Rocket hands down.