It's a known fact that the Elementor page builder is bloated and slow to load. This may not be an issue if you have a basic website with limited functionality, but the second you add any advanced features, effects, or content, the front end loading becomes noticeably slow. Elementor has been trying to improve the code boat for some time now, but it still is problematic.
You want your Elementor website to load quickly because it increases conversions, user experience, and search engine ranking placement.
This article is going to take a look at two caching solutions, one that is free, and one that is paid. Implementing any cache will work wonders for the speed and performance of your Elementor website. Regardless of your budget, there is a solution out there for you.
Caching plugins help a website load quicker, but what exactly do they do? When your website loads, there's a back end process that uses PHP to grab information from your WordPress database. This information is dynamically populated into an HTML page, and then pushed to the browser for your visitor to explore. This is a multi step process, and it puts a heavy load on your server's processing power. If you have a slow server, or need to push a lot of data to your visitor, then it may slow down the front end loading experience.
An Elementor website has two major issues. First, the amount of code that is required to render a page is fairly high. This increases your dom, page size, and overal loading time of the site. Elementor also makes it very easy to create complex web sites, which typically come with a lot of queries. The more queries you have, the more information is required from the back end, which slows down the loading of this page.
That is where caching comes in. virtually every single website benefits from this technology, which essentially stores data that is commonly requested in an accessible spot, so it can load more quickly on the front end.
Basically, it completes the process of grabbing the data and rendering the page, before the visitor even requests it. When the visitor enters the website, instead of dynamically populating the data and rendering the page template, it simply serves a static version of that pre generated page, foregoing the process of queries and PHP.
This seriously speeds up the loading time of your website on the front end, minimizes the load on your server, and makes your visitors happier. Of course, implementing caching is only one thing of many that you can do if you are looking to speed up your Elementor website. We recommend watching this hour and a half video that our founder made that discuss is everything that you can possibly do to speed up a website. Caching is only one element of that ( but after good hosting, this is the most important thing to get right).
So, we have established that caching is an absolute necessity for any element or website period now, let's take a look at two of the best caching solutions that you can use to speed up the front end loading time.
The best cache for Elementor is a subjective question, because it depends on the use case and your budget period first, in our opinion, the best caching tool for any WordPress website is WP Rocket. However, WP Rocket is a paid plugin that comes in at about $40 per year. If you have the money to spend on it, it is definitely worth going for it.
This incorporates a cache, but it also has a ton of additional optimization tools, such as code minification, and deep integrations with CDN's.
This plugin has the basic caching feature, which generates static versions of your website pages, and serves event to visitors. Whenever you update any page, it generates a new static version of it, so the information is always up to date. However, this tool is designed to be as simple as possible. The second you install the plugin, the caching is initialized. There's virtually no setup that you need to do, though you can fine tune a collection of settings to ensure that your website loads as fast as possible.
This also has two other helpful features when it comes to performance caching, which includes cache preloading, and sitemap preloading. By preloading the cache at set intervals, the static pages already generated, leading to a quicker user experience, even if the visitor is entering your site for the first time.
There is also browser caching built-in, which stores static components of your site such as JavaScript, CSS, and images directly on the browser. When a visitor goes to another page on your Elementor website, this static content doesn't need to be loaded again. Not only does this help with loading times, but it minimizes the bandwidth transfer, which you may be paying for on your hosting plan.
On the topic of bandwidth, WP Rocket also utilizes gzip compression, expires headers, and E tags which help optimize the type of content transferred, how often it is transferred, and minimizes bandwidth.
We have used WP Rocket with Elementor on many client projects, and have always had a great experience with it. It never breaks the website, and helps us get around the negative performance issues that we experienced when building with Elementor.
So, to answer the question of “what is the best cache for Elementor”, WP Rocket is hands down. However, if you're looking for a free solution, there are a ton out there. None are as good as WP Rocket in terms of simplicity and end performance, but as we said in the beginning of this article, implementing any type of cache is a good idea.
The best free caching plugin to use with Elementor is one that not many people have heard of. For the past several months, we have been using a plugin called Cache Enabler, which is a powerful, simple, and free way to enable PHP caching on your Elementor Site.
In our opinion, this is the best free optimization and caching plugin for Elementor, but it only is good for a small website.
Now, there are always exceptions to this recommendation. For example, if you are using Cloudways, we definitely recommend going with their Breeze caching plugin. If we were using ServeBolt, go for the ServeBolt optimizer. If you're using hosting that includes LiteSpeed technology, use the LiteSpeed cache.
Keep in mind, because there are so many free solutions, it is definitely in your best interest to try many of them out, utilizes a website performance testing tool like GTMetrix to understand the impact that they have on your website, and then go with the best one.
To conclude, the best caching plugin for Elementor is hands down WP Rocket. If you're looking for a free alternative, Cache Enabler is great for a small website. We also really like Breeze if you are using Cloudways Hosting.
The moral of the story is that you should always include a caching plugin with your Elementor website. It really helps address the performance and negatives that come with the page building tool, and ensure that you have a fast loading website which results in a better user experience and ranking placement on Google.
but i feel nitropack hides problems and is more placebo