What is the difference between WP Rocket and NitroPack?
Today I want to break down the differences between both the WP Rocket and NitroPack. Let’s compare them so you can better determine which one is best for your specific site based on their differences.
| WP Rocket | NitroPack |
|---|---|
| WP Rocket is primarily a caching plugin. | NitroPack is more of an all-in-one speed optimization plugin. |
| It doesn’t offer image optimization. | It offers image optimization. |
| It offers a CDN add-on that you have to purchase separately. | It features a built-in CDN with the plan. |
| WP Rocket is affordable. | NitroPack is more expensive. |
| They have no limit to website page views. | They have limitations on page views. |
| WP Rocket only supports WordPress websites. | NitroPack supports some other platforms. |
| This Can be used on unlimited websites. | 1 plan can be used on only one website. |
| This doesn’t offer different optimization levels. | This offers 5 different optimization levels. |
| WP Rocket does not offer a free plan. | Nirtopack offers a free plan. |
| It has a 14-day full money-back guarantee and a 30% discount on renewals. | |
| WP Rocket will be a good option If you run multiple websites. | NitroPack may be a good option for you if your site does not have a lot of traffic. |
As these are not the same, we will compare them based on their purpose, features, limitations, cost, documentation, and performance. So let’s start with the purpose.
WP Rocket vs Nitropack: Purpose
Both WP Rocket and NitroPack are plugin solutions to help you with your website page speed and core web vital optimization.
But the main difference is that WP Rocket is primarily a caching plugin and NitroPack is more of an all-in-one speed optimization plugin.
Despite both plugins having the same purpose, they differ quite a bit. Let’s take a look at the features of this.
WP Rocket vs Nitropack: Features
Both of these are great options, even if you don’t understand how to improve page speed or a lot of the jargon that comes with it and don’t want to dive into the code. Both of these can be set up pretty quickly and easily. let’s start with the NitroPack features
NitroPack Features
As I mentioned NitroPack is more of an all-in-one speed optimization solution. It offers
- Advanced caching mechanism
- An image optimization suite that has advanced lazy loading of images
- Image compression
- Adaptive image sizing
- Wp delivery
It also comes with a built-in CDN that has over 200 global locations. And it also has HTML, CSS, and Javascript optimization to compress and minify those scripts to improve your load time.
WP Rocket Features
WP Rocket has some great features as well. They offer
- Page caching – where the whole page is stored and then delivered to visitors.
- Cache pre-loading – this generates the pages before the visit.
- Html, CSS, javascript compression.
- GZIP compression.
- Lazy loading for images as well.
- Database optimization.
- DNS prefetching – so that it reduces the DNS lookup of external domains.
- Delays script loading for non-essential scripts.
Overall, Nitro Nitroback has more advanced features than WP Rocket because it’s an all-in-one solution.
When it comes to WP Rocket, they don’t offer image optimization, but NitroPack has a complete stack of image optimization.
Additionally, NitroPack features a built-in CDN (content delivery network), while WP Rocket does not, but does offer an add-on that you can purchase.
In case NitroPack is initially seeming like an obvious choice, remember that you also get what you pay for, so you’ll get more with NitroPack, but that doesn’t mean you need everything it offers.
We are going to look at the price so you can see what fits into your budget for the site. But before we get into the limitations, one thing I want to make clear about NitroPack is that they do have different optimization levels.
This allows you to perform five different optimization sets with just one button. Each level determines how much NitroPack optimizes the website.
Using these optimization levels, you can start lower and see how that works for your website, and then gradually increase the optimization levels until you find what works best for your website. Let’s take a look at some of the limitations.
WP Rocket vs Nitropack: Limitations
NitroPack Limitations
NitroPack’s price is a major drawback because it is going to be more expensive. In just a moment, we’ll compare and break down the pricing.
Additionally, NitroPack will have limitations on page views. If you use WP Rocket, for example, there is no limit to your website’s page views. When it comes to NitroPack, depending on the package you choose, you’ll be capped at a certain number of page views.
Consequently, the first paid plan on NitroPack has a limit of 50,000 page views, after which you will need to increase your package and therefore the payment.
NitroPack has another drawback if you are working on multiple sites, such as client sites, in that you will be paying per package per individual website.
On the other hand, WP Rocket does offer an unlimited plan, which allows you to use WP Rocket on an unlimited number of websites.
NitroPack does offer you optimization levels, and that’s a great feature. However, you should test this slowly and you shouldn’t jump right into the highest settings.
Even though they have some great optimization scores, this can lower your CLS and LCP scores, which are all about core web vitals testing. Therefore, you should try this out.
WP Rocket Limitations
The WP Rocket plugin does a great job of what it is supposed to do, which is to serve as a caching plugin. In the same way, it also has its limitations because it does not promise to be an all-in-one speed optimization package like NitroPack.
Depending on your setup, this can be beneficial for certain sites, and we’ll talk about that in a moment if you don’t need more advanced features.
Since this is not an apples-to-apples comparison, you’re going to have to match WP Rocket with some good quality hosting and a fast WordPress theme if you want to truly compete with NitroPack.
Additionally, there may need to be another plugin to assist with the speed in areas that WP Rocket doesn’t yet provide.
The good news is that they have some additional add-ons that can help improve the speed, so you’ll still pay less than NitroPack. Now let’s see how they differ in price.
WP Rocket vs Nitropack: Pricing
We just talked about limitations, and now we’re talking about pricing. Now let’s talk about the limitations of pricing for a moment.
WP Rocket does not offer a free trial or a free plan. However, they do offer a 14-day full money-back guarantee. So, you can get a full refund if you test this out on your website and it doesn’t work how you expect it to.
On the other hand, NitroPack does have a free plan that you can use, but it is very limited. The free plan is just meant to test this out; it’s meant for very low-traffic sites with 5,000 or fewer page views a month.
So if you get less than 5,000, this is something that can work for you and you’re only going to get 1GB of CDN bandwidth. Furthermore, you’ll get a NitroPack badge in the footer of your website, which you won’t see once you pay for one of the NitroPack packages.
WP Rocket Pricing
As of this writing, you can expect to pay $49 for one website with no limits on page views, or $99 for three websites. You can also have unlimited websites with their infinite plan for $249 a year.
- Single: $49/year
- Plus: $99/year
- Infinite: $249/year
This is a good option if you have a lot of websites in your portfolio or if you run an agency with lots of client websites.
NitroPacks Pricing
When talking about NitroPacks pricing, I mentioned that they do offer a free plan, but it is somewhat limited.
Now let’s look at some of their paid plans. As of right now, the first plan costs $17.50 a month for an annual subscription, assuming you pay for the year upfront.
It allows you to host one website with up to 50,000 page views a month and provides you with 25GB of CDN bandwidth per month.
The next package jumps up significantly to $42.50 a month with a 200,000-page view limit plus 100GB of CDN bandwidth, and beyond that, you’re getting plans with a million views.
With the basic paid NitroPack plan, you can expect to pay $210 a year if you pay for the year in advance, but it’ll be more if you pay month-to-month, while with WP Rocket, you’ll only pay $49.
Now, if you decide to add the CDN that is called Rocket CDN with WP Rocket, you will be paying $157 for a year instead of $210 for NitroPack for a single website.
Another option that you have is to use WP Rocket + Rocket CDN + Imagify – which is going to help you with that image optimization and many of the features that are available inside that NitroPack. There are now three plans offered by Imagify: free, $5/mon, and $10/mon.
$5/month is for approximately 5,000 images, and if we need that, the annual cost of all three options will be $217, unless you’re able to stay on the free plan and eliminate $5 per month, which will keep you at $157.
Although $217 may be a little more than NitroPack, what you need to consider is how many features your website needs within NitroPack.
And once your website starts getting those page views, your site is growing what the cost will be, because this price comparison is based on the basic NitroPack paid plan.
When you reach 50,000 page views a month, you will need to upgrade to the second tier of pricing plans, which will cost you $42.50 a month.
- Free
- Business: $17.50/mo
- Growth: $42.50/mo
- Scale: $146.67/mo
The initial cost may be lower than using WP Rocket for all the options, but as you grow well, WP Rocket will become less expensive.
This starts to come down to your budget, and you want to think about what is important to you in terms of your budget short term, but also the impact that may have on your long term.
In terms of pricing, I want to point out that WP Rocket does automatically provide a 30% discount on renewals after your first year. Now let’s look at the documentation.
WP Rocket vs Nitropack: Documentation
There is documentation available for both NitroPack and WP Rocket. Although I find WP Rockets more detailed and helpful. WP Rocket is also very well known; they’ve been around for quite a while. As a result, it is very easy to get support and find answers online if needed. And lastly, let’s look at performance
WP Rocket vs Nitropack: Performance
If we have to compare the two based on performance, well, NitroPack is going to be the clear winner.
And that is really because they’re the all-in-one speed optimization solution. They have everything that you could need inside of their plugin. So NitroPack is going to be a clear winner when it comes to features and performance as well.
But at the same time that does not mean that you cannot achieve great results when you use WP Rocket as long as you have some other good things in place.
We’ve used WP Rocket on a site before that really had poor hosting and it still really helped to improve the page speed.
As the site grew, I knew that wasn’t enough, and that’s where we needed to improve the hosting we were using to improve page speed.
At that point, we were able to use WP Rocket and a fast-loading theme rather than paying more premium fees for NitroPack. That was all we needed
WP Rocket vs Nitropack: Which To Use?
So let’s wrap this up. How do you decide between WP Rocket and NitroPack based on the site you have in front of you?
If you are already using a lightweight theme such as GeneratePress, which is designed for speed, and have a really good quality hosting like Cloudways, then the WP Rocket plugin should be best to help you with page speed.
If you have a heavy website that has a lot of things going on and you need an all-in-one solution, WP Rocket won’t be able to provide it, especially if you can’t change things like the theme, the hosting, and so on.
WP Rocket only works with WordPress websites, whereas NitroPack also works on some other platforms.
When it comes to features, I like how WP Rocket performs and what it does, but when it comes to the number of features, NitroPack wins.
The last thing you need to consider is your budget. NitroPack may be a good option for you if your site does not have a lot of traffic and you don’t expect large amounts of traffic now or in the near future.
If you start developing a portfolio of websites, working with many clients, and you want a good solution for all of those clients, NitroPack will become very expensive very quickly.
So these are all things to consider when planning your setup and selecting an option.
Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any questions or need help deciding. I hope this helps you decide which is better for you, WP Rocket or NitroPack. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.
Keywords: NitroPack Alternative, WP Rocket Alternative
