Litespeed Cache VS WP Fastest Cache - Best Cache?

Hey guys, There are many people who own WordPress website asking which is the best caching plugin, is it Litespeed cache or WP Fastest cache? 

 

Here is my experience on both of these plugins below;

 

Litespeed Cache Main Features

Litespeed cache is very advanced and requires loads of manual configurations, it comes with features such as;

• 5 pre-designed presets which can be employed with just a click of a button, beware of employing the extreme settings, as these will usually break any website with extreme optimizations.
• Enabled with QUIC.cloud services.
• Comes with guest mode, great for web vitals and, excluding and adding any certain script, as well as IP targeting (tuning) from the selections such as;
  • Lighthouse
  • GTmetrix
  • Google
  • Pingdom
  • bot
  • PTST
  • HeadlessChrome
  • add any extra guest modes you wish to add.
• Supports and comes with a wide range of advanced caching features.
• TTL support.
• Comes with cache purse setting features.
• ESI (Edge Side) features.
• Object cache features, use this with caution.
• Browser cache settings.
• Advanced cache settings such as Ajax cache, login cookie if you have a forum, and extra HTTPS improvements such as an on and off toggle to "Improve HTTP/HTTPS Compatibility."
• CDN features for Quick.cloud, Cloudflare and other static CDNs.
• Built in image optimization features to optimize image using quick.cloud (WEBP), I find that personably using external lazy loading plugins and external image optimization plugin work better in my point of view, but that my personal opinion.
• Advanced page optimizations such as;
  • CSS settings, minify, combine, generate UCSS, UCSS inline, CSS combine external and inline, load CSS asynchronously, CCSS per URL, inline CSS async lib and font display optimization. That's a huge selection of CSS optimizations, but use these carefully, as enabling all of these can break your website.
  • JavaScript (JS) settings are quite advanced too inside Litespeed cache, it comes with JS minify, JS combine, JS combine external and inline and with the possibility to Load JS Deferred. These are some great JS settings, but again use these with caution as enabling JS combine features can slow down your website and also slow break some of the website features such as login, theme design and other modules which use JavaScript.
  • HTML settings such as HTML minify, DNS prefetch which is great for speeding up load of any website by pre-fetching any external scripts and website links. Also comes with DNS Pre-connect, HTML Lazy Load Selectors great for lazy loading any modules below the screen, HTML keep comments, remove query strings, ability to load google fonts asynchronously, ability to remove google fonts completely speeding up any website, remove WordPress emoji and remove no-script tags.
  • Media settings such as, lazy load images, image placeholder for lazy loader, responsive placeholder and responsive placeholder SVG. It also comes with responsive placeholder colour settings, LQIP cloud generator, LQIP quality and minimum dimensions, ability to generate LQIP In the background. And finally, Lazy Load Iframes and add missing sizes.
  • VPI settings, ability to adjust viewport images with image URL paths. This is great for excluding certain image from lazy loading, especially if they are above the screen and should be set to load instantly.
  • Advanced media exclude settings such as, lazy load image excludes, lazy load image class name excludes, lazy load image parent class name excludes, lazy load iframe class name excludes, lazy load URI excludes and LQIP excludes tuning settings, which are quite advanced and great for lazy loading certain elements are required.
  • Localization settings, gravatar cache, gravatar cache cron, gravatar cache TTL, ability to localise resources with scripts input field, this can speed up loading of any external scripts such as GDPR settings cookie consents and other external scripts.
  • My most favourite feature is the fine-tuning settings which comes with some advance tuning settings for JS delayed includes, JS excludes, JS deferred and delayed excludes, guest mode JS excludes, URI excludes, ability to optimize for Guests Only and Role Excludes. 
  • Tuning Settings for CSS is also a very advanced feature, great for optimizing CSS, this comes with CSS Excludes, UCSS file excludes and inline, UCSS selector allowlist, UCSS URI excludes, separate CCSS cache post types, separate CCSS cache URIs, CCSS selector allowlist, critical CSS rules.
• Comes with database clean up optimizations, post revision and ability to remove any wordpress and unwanted transients.
• Built in crawler settings to load cache automatically, it's server IP based so if your server doesn't allow creation of personal cookie crawling bots, this feature will not work.
• Advanced tool box to edit purge cache settings, import and export settings, edit htaccess, minimise the WordPress heartbeat script to speed up your WordPress by minimising background Ajax Crons, report, debug, log view and beta testing features.

 

As you can see from above, this cache and optimization plugin comes with tons of professional and advanced features, which are all free.

The only downside to this WordPress plugin is, if anyone using Litespeed cache plugin has basic knowledge of website optimization, they will most likely will find it very hard to use this plugin and would not use the full potential that it provides.

As looking back, when I first started with web design, this plugin went over my head and I had no idea what the heck I was doing. 

Also, I don't recommend enabling every feature on Litespeed cache, as some features will slow down and or break your website. The best way to do this is to disable everything and turn everything on one by one, and test each enabled feature throughout individually. 

 

WP Fastest Cache Main Features

This cache plugin is lot simpler to use, and great for beginners, it only has few features, but lacks in advanced features, which Litespeed cache contains.

Here are the features of WP Fastest Cache;

• Cache System
• Preload cache feature.
• Cache for logged-in users.
• Mobile cache (separate cache for mobile phones, and desktops)
• Mobile Theme cache (this is pro version only).
• Ability to clear all cache when a new post has been posted or updated.
• Minify HTML (with no advanced settings)
• Minify HTML Plus (only for pro version)
• Minify CSS, works great and minifies the CSS as expected.
• Minify CSS Plus (only for pro version)
• Combine CSS, this feature works great!
• Minify JavaScript (JS) only for pro version. 
• Combine JavaScript (JS), this feature works great and speed up website drastically.
• GZIP to GZIP website, works great, make sure Brotli is enabled on server for this to work.
• Browser caching.
• Ability to disable emojis.
• Render Blocking Js (only for pro version)
• Google Fonts (only for pro version)
• Lazy Load (only for pro version)
• Delay Js (only for pro version)
• Comes with image optimization features but only for pro version.
• Excludes features for cookies, user agents and excluded pages from caching, also ability to exclude CSS and JS which is right at the bottom of the page and not highly visible.
• CDN features such as CND Bunny integration which is superfast, Cloudflare and other CDN providers.
• DB optimizations, which is only available for pro version users.

 

The WP fastest cache is a great caching plugin for any beginner, or anyone who wants to add a quick cache plugin to their WordPress website with minimal work required.

The free version and free features are limited, but they can still improve page speed drastically and provide good web vital results. 

 

The difference?

1. WP-Fastest cache plugin can be loaded on any WordPress and enabled within 1 minute, and be fully functional. Where it could take a day or 2 to fully optimize LiteSpeed cache for its full potential.
2. LiteSpeed cache is lot more advanced and provides lot more features.
3. WP-Fastest cache is easier to use, but most of it's advanced optimization features are paid.
4. LiteSpeed cache is completely free with few subscriptions for cloud and image optimizations.

 

So which is better?

In my opinion as a blogger, Litespeed cache is better since it provides lot more advanced features, server tweaks, script tweaks, extra guest optimizations, and some advanced fine-tuning settings.

But it's quite complicated and can get overwhelming trying to get the correct settings, since the plugin provides a wide ranger of settings and fine-tuning features.

Saying that, I still use WP-fastest cache on some of my websites, since it's easier to deploy, once I get more time I will move these over to LiteSpeed cache, as I know it could take a day or 2 to fully optimize this WP plugin.

Also, WP-Fastest cache can be deployed and turned on within 1 minute of installation, that's as a plugin inside WordPress, so it's ideal quick to go to cache plugins. 

 

My top possible questions and answers are shown below, to help anyone looking to use any of these cache plugins listed above;

 

Looking for advanced cache plugin full of advanced features?

Then, go with LiteSpeed cache in my personal experience and opinion.

 

Looking for a cache plugin that easy to set up and works?

Then, WP Fastest cache will do a great job, but lacks in some advanced features in my opinion.

 

Looking for a cache that's easier to set up inside WordPress?

Then, my advice is to go with WP-Fastest cache, it's very easy to configure and get it up and running.

 

Looking for server based cache WordPress plugin?

Litespeed cache support server based caching instead of caching inside WP cache folder. Improving speed and loading times. 

 

Can WP fastest cache be optimized for mobile and desktop Google vitals page speed pass score?

Yes, but only with pro paid version, it's quite hard to pass all vitals on both devices using free WP fastest cache. From my past-experience of using this cache plugin.

 

Can LiteSpeed cache be optimized for mobile and desktop Google vitals page speed pass score?

Yes can easily be adjusted and modified to reach both passes on mobile and desktop devices on all google vitals page ratings, but can be quite complicated since it comes with advanced features, good thing about Litespeed cache is that no pro version is required, to pass google page vitals scores. 

Personally, from past-experience, I find that using Litespeed cache with a combination of Cloudflare cache at the same time and enabling the Cloudflare pro page optimizations, these settings will basically put any website on "HULK MODE" when it comes to speed, that's if Cloudflare pro version is used.

 

That is all I have to say about these 2 caching plugins!

I hope my feedback, experience and personal opinions based on past optimization experience will help users make the right decision of selecting the correct WordPress cache plugin.

 

If you have any questions drop them below and I will do my best to help!