A-list third-party plugins to improve WordPress site speed
Obviously we love our own plugins to help you speed up your WordPress website. But we don’t only use our plugins on our own sites. Here are the key third-party plugins we still reach for when we want maximum WordPress speed. If you are just getting started, read our guide on how to speed up your WordPress site first, then come back here to fill in the gaps.
Autoptimize
This plugin is great for minifying and deferring CSS and JavaScript. It will improve your PageSpeed and GTmetrix scores if that is something you care about, and it cleans up a lot of the render-blocking assets that themes and plugins leave lying around. On modern HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 connections there is little point combining files into one big bundle any more, so leave the aggregation options off and stick to minifying, deferring and inlining critical CSS. If you want the wider picture, see our guide on optimising front-end WordPress performance.
WP All Import
For general import jobs, I have always found this plugin to be the most scalable of the drag-and-drop importers. It can run from a real cron job which means you can avoid timeouts, if you run it manually it uses Ajax to run imports in batches, and the mapping interface is excellent. On top of that they only charge a one-off fee with updates for life.
These days, when the job is a large WooCommerce catalogue, I reach for our own Super Speedy Imports instead. It is SQL-first, writing products straight to the database rather than going through the slow WordPress insert functions, so it imports hundreds of thousands of products in a fraction of the time. WP All Import is still the more flexible tool for oddly shaped feeds and non-WooCommerce content, so both have their place.
- WP All Import for flexible mapping, unusual feeds and non-WooCommerce content
- Super Speedy Imports for large WooCommerce catalogues where import speed is the priority
Datafeedr
If you are building an affiliate store, this plugin is superb, especially when combined with our External Images plugin. Datafeedr gives you access to pretty much all of the data feeds from all of the affiliate networks around the world and makes it easy to build an affiliate store quickly.
When combined with External Images, you are not importing images and resizing them on your own server, which saves you both CPU and disk space. That means you can build a million-plus product store on a small Digital Ocean droplet rather than an expensive box.
Redis Object Cache
Redis is a fantastic object cache, and when you enable it, it also keeps transients out of your wp_options table, so you get a speed boost on two fronts at once. There are a few Redis plugins to choose from, but I prefer the one by Till Kruss. For the full setup, follow our guide on configuring Redis for WordPress and WooCommerce.
Set Redis up as an in-memory cache only, with no persistence to disk. A cache does not need to survive a reboot, and skipping disk writes keeps it fast and out of your way.
Nginx Cache
If you are using the Nginx FastCGI cache, you need an easy way to clear it. This plugin, again by Till Kruss, does exactly that from inside wp-admin.
Email delivery
You should not send emails directly from your web server. It adds load, and it is very likely you will not configure the server correctly to get emails delivered reliably. Instead, sign up for a dedicated transactional email service such as SparkPost, Amazon SES, Postmark or Brevo, follow their SPF and DKIM DNS configuration, then install the matching SMTP plugin so WordPress hands your mail off to them.
- SparkPost plugin
- WP Mail SMTP works with almost any provider
Backups using UpdraftPlus
When I first went looking for a best-of-breed backup plugin, I found that far too many of them assume your database and uploads folder will be tiny. Not so with UpdraftPlus, which handles large sites gracefully and offloads backups to remote storage. I have yet to find a better choice.
Ask for other plugin recommendations
If you are looking for a recommendation for any area not listed above, ask in the comments section below and I will reply here or create a specific guide for you.
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