App for Cloudflare® vs W3 Total Cache

Unlock advanced Cloudflare features without being a network administrator or developer. Works with any Cloudflare plan (including Free), no Automatic Platform Optimization (APO) subscription needed. Cache HTML at network edge Preload JavaScript and CSS View/set all Cloudflare settings Fixes Cloudflare Flexible SSL redirect loops Fixes situation when IPs are coming through as Cloudflare IPs rather than user IPs Cloudflare web analytics support Cloudflare analytics on dashboard Purge cache Automatic image transformations (automatically serve AVIF/WebP versions to browsers that support them) Turnstile CAPTCHA system for registrations, logins, password reset, comments and/or third party plugins View Page rules, Cache rules, Firewall rules, IP Address rules, User Agent rules View Zero Trust Network Access setup View DMARC statistics Included tools: HTTP request trace, IP address details, domain details, WHOIS Directly cache HTML App for Cloudflare® can automatically cache your HTML pages at Cloudflare data centers in 330+ cities. “Standard” WordPress caching plugins can’t escape the laws of physics because information can’t travel faster than the speed of light (even if the page is cached, the cache exists on your physical origin server, which can be over 20,000 km from an end user). Caching content in Cloudflare data centers makes your website faster by putting your website cache closer to end-users (95% of the world’s population is within 50ms of a Cloudflare data center). This can be done without Cloudflare Workers or even a Page Rule (done with a single Cache Rule on Cloudflare’s side, and custom code in the plugin). Preload JavaScript and CSS Speed your site up by using the option that instructs browsers to preload JavaScript and CSS used to render the page being viewed. Can be used on its own, or in conjunction with Cloudflare’s Early Hints function. Manage all Cloudflare settings All Cloudflare settings can be changed directly within your WordPress admin area. Includes Easy config function that will optimally set your Cloudflare zone settings for WordPress. Fixes Cloudflare Flexible SSL redirect loops Automatically fixes HTTPS redirect loops when using Cloudflare’s Flexible SSL option (traffic between user and Cloudflare is encrypted, but traffic between Cloudflare and origin server is not). Handles user IP addresses Automatically handles the situation where your web server is passing Cloudflare IP addresses rather than the IP address of the user making the request. Turnstile CAPTCHA Cloudflare Turnstile CAPTCHA support for registration, login, password reset, comment forms, WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, Elementor Pro, HTML Forms, MetForm and/or WPForms. Single-click setup (done transparently via API call). Network analytics View network stats for your website directly within your WordPress admin area with a dashboard widget. View rules & firewall Quickly review your site’s Cloudflare rules and firewall settings from within your WordPress admin area. Includes: Page rules Cache rules Firewall custom rules IP address rules User agent blocking DMARC management Track third parties that are sending email on your behalf (for example an email provider you have authorized like Gmail or Outlook). You can also see unauthorized email senders or spammers sending email on behalf of your domain. Multisite network support You can have a network-wide Cloudflare API token that can be overridden on a per site basis. In the case where a multisite network operator has the site domains in a single Cloudflare account, they can allow the site users to use Cloudflare features for their individual site without disclosing the underlying API token. Additionally, a single Pro license for the main network site allows the media from all sites in the network to be stored in the cloud, within a single Cloudflare R2 bucket. Image Transformations Supports Cloudflare’s Image Transformation service, which allows Media images to automatically be served in the best format that a browser supports (AVIF, WebP, etc). Additionally, smaller images can be automatically served to users on very slow network connections. No web server configuration required. Store media in the cloud [Premium] Easily and seamlessly store your WordPress media in the cloud with Cloudflare R2. This allows you to offload resources (both bandwidth and disk space) from your server. The first 10GB is free, and only costs $0.015 per GB thereafter (ex. if you had 100GB of media, it would cost $1.35 per month to store it in the cloud). Includes the ability to migrate existing media from local filesystem to R2 (or from R2 to local filesystem). Works with individual media, or all media in bulk (includes web-based migration as well as a shell/WP-CLI option). Automatically convert uploaded images to AVIF or WebP This is done with a free companion plugin, Image Shift (includes the ability to apply watermarks). Protect admin area [Premium] Utilize Zero Trust Network Access to authenticate users before they access your WordPress admin area. Manage rules & firewall [Premium] The premium version unlocks the ability to manage (create, delete, suspend and unsuspend) Cloudflare rules and firewall definitions. In addition to defining your own rules, you can deploy useful rules with a single click: Block traffic from certain countries (or Tor exit nodes widely used by spammers and hackers) Block AI scrapers & crawlers (block bots from scraping your content for AI applications like model training) Force a challenge before users can register (bot/spammer mitigation) Cache static content Automatically block the IP address(es) of spammers for a period of time Backup & restore [Premium] You can backup and restore some of your most important Cloudflare configuration settings: Zero Trust Access Policies Firewall Rules Firewall IP Access Rules Firewall User Agent Blocking Page Rules Cache Rules Backups can be restored to different zones (for example if you had extensive configuration for a zone, you could give another zone the same configuration through a backup restore). Other features API calls are done exclusively through API Tokens (with the minimum required permissions) and not a Global API Key. Global API Keys are an incredibly bad idea from a security standpoint. Ability to purge Cloudflare cache from WordPress admin (or via WP-CLI). Ability to copy Cloudflare zone settings from a different zone on the same Cloudflare account. Cached pages are automatically purged when a post/page is edited (just the necessary pages, not all pages). Stale content is not served to users. Ability to designate an individual admin user to manage settings (maybe you don’t want all admins to have the ability to change things in Cloudflare). Ability to use WordPress filters to add your own logic to things (for example, maybe you don’t want to cache a certain page or post for whatever reason). All JavaScript is native (no dependencies on jQuery or anything else). No third-party PHP libraries used (no dependencies on other libs).

W3 Total Cache (W3TC) improves the SEO, Core Web Vitals and overall user experience of your site by increasing website performance and reducing load times by leveraging features like content delivery network (CDN) integration and the latest best practices. W3TC is the only web host agnostic Web Performance Optimization (WPO) framework for WordPress trusted by millions of publishers, web developers, and web hosts worldwide for more than a decade. It is the total performance solution for optimizing WordPress Websites. BENEFITS Improvements in search engine result page rankings, especially for mobile-friendly websites and sites that use SSL At least 10x improvement in overall site performance (Grade A in WebPagetest or significant Google PageSpeed improvements) when fully configured Improved conversion rates and “site performance” which affect your site’s rank on Google.com “Instant” repeat page views: browser caching Optimized progressive render: pages start rendering quickly and can be interacted with more quickly Reduced page load time: increased visitor time on site; visitors view more pages Improved web server performance; sustain high traffic periods Up to 80% bandwidth savings when you minify HTML, minify CSS and minify JS files. KEY FEATURES Compatible with shared hosting, virtual private / dedicated servers and dedicated servers / clusters Transparent content delivery network (CDN) management with Media Library, theme files and WordPress itself Mobile support: respective caching of pages by referrer or groups of user agents including theme switching for groups of referrers or user agents Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) support Secure Socket Layer (SSL/TLS) support Caching of (minified and compressed) pages and posts in memory or on disk or on (FSD) CDN (by user agent group) Caching of (minified and compressed) CSS and JavaScript in memory, on disk or on CDN Caching of feeds (site, categories, tags, comments, search results) in memory or on disk or on CDN Caching of search results pages (i.e., URIs with query string variables) in memory or on disk Caching of database objects in memory or on disk Caching of objects in memory or on disk Caching of fragments in memory or on disk Caching methods include local Disk, Redis, Memcached, APC, APCu, eAccelerator, XCache, and WinCache Minify CSS, Minify JavaScript and Minify HTML with granular control Minification of posts and pages and RSS feeds Minification of inline, embedded or 3rd party JavaScript with automated updates to assets Minification of inline, embedded or 3rd party CSS with automated updates to assets Defer non-critical CSS and JavaScript for rendering pages faster than ever before Defer offscreen images using Lazy Load to improve the user experience Browser caching using cache-control, future expire headers and entity tags (ETag) with “cache-busting” JavaScript grouping by template (home page, post page etc) with embed location control Non-blocking JavaScript embedding Import post attachments directly into the Media Library (and CDN) Leverage our multiple CDN integrations to optimize images WP-CLI support for cache purging, query string updating and more Various security features to help ensure website safety Caching statistics for performance insights of any enabled feature Extension framework for customization or extensibility for Cloudflare, WPML and much more Reverse proxy integration via Nginx or Varnish Image Converter extension provides modern image format conversion (e.g., WebP, AVIF) from common image formats (on upload and on demand) W3 Total Cache Pro Features With over a million active installs, W3 Total Cache is the most comprehensive WordPress caching plugin available and has robust premium features that help deliver an exceptional user experience. Full Site Delivery: Serve your entire site from a Content Delivery Network (CDN), ensuring faster load times worldwide. Fragment Cache: Optimize the caching of dynamic content while still improving performance. REST API Caching: Speed up your headless WordPress site by caching REST API calls. Eliminate Render-Blocking CSS: Ensure your CSS doesn’t hold up page loading, providing faster initial paint. Delay Scripts: Improve performance by delaying the loading of non-essential scripts until they are needed. Preload Requests: Boost page performance by preloading critical resources before they’re requested. Remove CSS/JS: Clean up unnecessary CSS and JavaScript files that slow down your pages. Lazy Load Google Maps: Load Google Maps only when it’s visible, reducing unnecessary requests. WPML Extension: Optimize performance on multilingual sites powered by WPML. Caching Statistics: Get detailed insights on cache usage and performance improvements. Purge Logs: Keep your site clean by automatically purging unnecessary cache logs. 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee Try W3 Total Cache Pro risk-free with our 30-day money-back guarantee. If you’re not satisfied, we will refund your purchase. PAGESPEED SCORE IMPROVEMENTS To help you understand the impact of individual features on your website’s performance, we’ve tested each feature separately to see its effect on Google PageSpeed scores. While optimal results come from configuring several different caching tools together, the following individual features also show significant improvements on their own: Remove Unused CSS/JS This feature removes CSS and JavaScript files that are not needed for the current page, reducing the load time. Added over 27 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 57.2 / After: 86.7) Reduced the Potential Savings From Unused JavaScript from 127.5 KiB to 84 KiB View the test results Full Site Delivery Full Site Delivery optimizes the delivery of your entire site, enhancing the server response time. Added a 99% performance enhancement to the Average Server Response Time (Before: 3413 ms / After: 34 ms) View the test results Eliminate Render Blocking CSS This feature eliminates CSS that blocks the rendering of your page, speeding up the initial load time. Added over 17 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 53.75 / After: 71) Reduced the Potential Savings From Render-Blocking Resources by over 94% (Before: 2432.5 ms / After: 125 ms) Improved the Largest Contentful Paint time by over 56% (Before: 7s / After: 3.04s) View the test results Delay Scripts Delay Scripts postpones the loading of certain scripts until they are needed, reducing initial load times. Added 14 points to the Google PageSpeed Performance score (Before: 54.25 / After: 68.5) Reduced the Time Third-Party Code Blocked The Main Thread For by 62% (Before: 825 ms / After: 197.5 ms) View the test results Rest API Caching This feature caches API responses, reducing server load and speeding up API interactions. Reduced the Average Server Load by 40% (Before: 0.62 / After: 0.37) Sped up API Responses by 84.5% (Before: 968ms / After: 150ms) Reduced the Average Server Load by 24% under during a major traffic spike (Before: 34.55 / After: 26.19) View the test results Modern Image Formats Converts images to modern formats like WebP or AVIF, which are more efficient and faster to load. Added over 9 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 84.67 / After: 93.83) View the test results Lazy Load Google Maps Delays the loading of Google Maps until the user interacts with them, reducing initial load time. Added 10 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 66 / After: 76) Reduced the Total Blocking Time Performance score by 72% (Before: 287.5 ms / After: 80 ms) View the test results Speed up your site tremendously, improve core web vitals and the overall user experience for your visitors without having to change your WordPress host, theme, plugins or your content production workflow. What users have to say: Read testimonials from W3TC users. Who do I thank for all of this? It’s quite difficult to recall all of the innovators that have shared their thoughts, code and experiences in the blogosphere over the years, but here are some names to get you started: Steve Souders Steve Clay Ryan Grove Nicholas Zakas Ryan Dean Andrei Zmievski George Schlossnagle Daniel Cowgill Rasmus Lerdorf Gopal Vijayaraghavan Bart Vanbraban mOo [villu164] (https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/researchers/villu164) Please reach out to all of these people and support their projects if you’re so inclined.