Adding a cache plugin will only apply to you if you have a WordPress website.
So – you’d like to improve the performance of your website, and a friend suggested a cache plugin.
WOAH! Slow your roll there a minute! 🤚🏻
Before you start downloading any cache plugins, you NEED to check compatibility with your hosting company.
If you don’t, you could end up slowing the performance of your website, or break it altogether. 😱
All hosting is not the same. Different hosting companies use different web server software. Popular ones include LiteSpeed, NGINX and Apache.
You came for a question about caching plugins, but you’ve opened a can of worms and now we’re talking web server software, so grab a coffee and buckle up!
TLDR; If you’re in a hurry, and can’t be doing with reading about web server software right now, go sign up to the WordPress Pro package at Hostinger and thank me later. (Not an affiliate link) Hostinger
Still here? Great stuff! Let’s get stuck in…
Apache
This is one of the most popular types of server software. I like to think of it as the equivalent of what AOL is to email addresses. Everyone’s had one at one point, but there’s now better technology and if you are a photographer with an image heavy site, Apache is not going to give you the performance you need and no amount of caching plugins are going to fix that. ❌
Adding a cache plugin on an Apache server is like painting go-faster stripes on a Mark 3 Ford Escort. It will still be slower than everything else, and it’s just an embarrassing waste of paint.
Choice of cache plugin will still depend on the server configuration. If you’re on Apache though, instead of installing a cache plugin, I’d recommend moving to a hosting company that uses LiteSpeed. LiteSpeed can be up to six times faster than Apache, and wedding photographers with image-heavy sites need all the help they can get!
If you can’t bring yourself to leave, go with whatever your hosting company recommend.
There’s some colourful charts in this article comparing performance of NGINX, Apache and LiteSpeed: https://chemicloud.com/blog/litespeed-vs-nginx-vs-apache/
What Hosting Companies use Apache?
- Bluehost (if you’re with Bluehost, please switch to a better company ASAP)
- inmotion
- A2 hosting (the cheaper options are Apache, with the premium plans being Litespeed)
- Hostinger (the cheapest non-Wordpress packages are on Apache)
- Siteground (but they have added NGINX – see the outlier section below)
NGINX
Hosting companies that are built on NGINX sometimes have built in server-side caching (e.g. https://www.34sp.com/) – if you install a caching plugin you’ll only slow your website down. NGINX platforms are pretty good for photographers, but I do recommend hosting companies that use LiteSpeed for their web server software because it’s blazingly fast, and faster than NGINX.
What Hosting Companies use NGINX?
Article comparing both with lots of geeky charts: https://cyberpanel.net/blog/nginx-vs-litespeed-wordpress/
LiteSpeed
LiteSpeed is the current gold-standard of web server software. It’s amazingly fast and featurtes a combination of server-side caching and a dedicated and fully featured caching plugin that has some great image optimization features.
I recommend all photographers with WordPress website to be on a LiteSpeed server.
Whilst you can use certain other cache plugins with LiteSpeed, I recommend you stick to the LightSpeed plugin that was especially designed for this software.
What hosting companies use LiteSpeed?
US & UK
Hostinger (The wordpress hosting options)
WPX (I’m not a fan as it’s double the price of Hostinger but the same performance)
UK
Krystal Host – I recommend the ‘managed WordPress’ options.
Outliers
Let’s talk about Siteground!
Siteground uses a tech stack that combines Apache and NGINX.
The NGINX feature can be disabled when troubleshooting any glitches. If you’re siteground hosted website is running slow, check the NGINX feature is enable.
Personally, I’m not a fan of this set-up. It’s not the fastest, but it’s not awful either.
The quality of customer service has massively dropped over the last 6 years and I personally would never host with them. Here’s an article with an ex-fan discussing some of the issues with them: https://onlinemediamasters.com/siteground-wordpress-hosting-review/
Here’s an article going into a little more detail on this setup: https://nairatips.com/does-siteground-use-apache-or-nginx/