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David Waumsley

The Breeze Cache plugin: How I set it up and why I use it.

UPDATE: March 2021.  I am presently using WP Rocket (again).  Breeze seems to be working fine, but there was small period in 2020 where my sites were experiencing long Time to First Byte.  WP Rocket introduced a few useful additions for me such as deferred loading videos scripts and optimized google fonts. I still think Breeze is a good option.

After three months of testing I’ve moved all our client sites to the (free from the WordPress Repository) Breeze Cache plugin from Cloudways.  Here is why and how we use it.

My main reasons for the move to Breeze were:

We moved from WP Rocket because:

Important:  I believe WP Rocket is still a great solution which outperforms Breeze on other servers and offers more.  However, I was facing a second time with WP Rocket where I needed to manually make changes across all sites.  As renewal was due soon it seemed a good time to re-evaluate. Of course, one good thing about paying for a solution is there is greater chance of getting update which is to be seen with the Breeze plugin.

I also tested Swift Performance. It was undoubtedly the fastest (as also shown here) of those tried, but I found the free version was heavy on the servers CPU and there were too many options for my clients.  I also had one layout issue, but if your priority is shaving off the most milliseconds , this is one to check out.

WP Fastest Cache was also recommended to me, but I found it much slower on my  server tests. The same was true with Super Cache which I used regularly before WP Rocket.  Many years back I tried W3 Total Cache.   Probably due to my ignorance it gave me problems so it was not considered. That concludes my cache plugin experience.

My Breeze Cache setting

My settings are specific to my requirement as someone who encourages client to make content updates with Beaver Builder. It also takes into account that I am using only NGINX servers via Cloudways and also with Digital Ocean and ServerPilot.

Breeze Cache Basic Settings

Breeze Cache Varnish

Finally, I wanted to say thanks to Clark Marshall (from Blue Dog Digital)  who was the first person I knew to move from WP Rocket to Breeze with a significant  number of client sites to manage and similar software. If you are a Beaver Builder user who use Cloudway too you wish to join his Facebook group where he’s shared some tips like the ones above.

If you are considering trying Cloudway, I can recommend it and have used my affiliate link here, but here is the direct link too https://www.cloudways.com/

Over to you… What cache plugin do you use and why?