Perfmatters vs NitroPack – Which One Is Better?
Speeding up your website can feel like a complicated task. You might not understand all the technical terms you come across, like “leverage browser caching.” And if you are trying to fix everything yourself, it can take up a lot of time. Which I am sure you would not get into!
So, you must be trying to decide between NitroPack and Perfmatters to speed up your WordPress website. As these are the two most commonly used plugins for speed optimization of WordPress sites.
In this comparison of Perfmatters vs. NitroPack, we’ll look at how these two ways differ in making your website faster. Even though it might seem hard, making your site faster is important because Google cares about it.
Some NitroPacks seem good, but it is more expensive than Perfmatters. Now, I will compare both plugins to help you select the right one for your website.
Perfmatters: Overview
Brian Jackson and Brett Jackson are both well-respected in the field of programming and are the minds behind this awesome plugin. Brian has over 13 years of experience in WordPress and played a crucial role in launching Kinsta hosting. Read Perfmatters indepth review at GrabHosts.
Recently, Brian and his team developed the Perfmatters plugin for WordPress. This plugin boosts website performance for quicker loading. It addresses common issues like too many requests or loading too much at once so that it doesn’t slow down your website.
Who is Perfmatters most suitable for?
Perfmatters is ideal for anyone who wants to speed up their WordPress website without getting into technical details. Perfmatters is surely a user-friendly solution, and even people with practically zero technical knowledge can use it to enhance the speed of your speed. Thus, if you fall into this category, this tool is perfect for you.
It is ideally designed for different users such as bloggers, business website owners, and affiliate WordPress sites. Not only does Perfmatters enhance your visitor’s experience on your website, it also improves your core web vitals which in turn increases your chances of ranking your pages higher on SERP.
Nitropack: Overview
NitroPack was first made for OpenCart in 2012 and then became its own service in 2018. It is developed by Ivailo, Deyan, and Simeon by using over 36 different technologies. It increases the loading speed of your website by compressing files, changing them, and getting things ready before they’re needed.
Who should use Nitropack?
NitroPack is a popular speed and performance solution designed for affiliate websites as well as E-comm websites. The plugin is super compatible with not only the famous CMS WordPress but also works well with other platforms like Magento and WooCommerce.
I would recommend you get this plugin only if your site uses extensive images and videos. Using Nitropack, you can boost your loading speed twofold. If you are already using any other plugin for server-level caching, then NitroPack will be a waste of money for you. But if you need a good solution for loading heavy media easily without spending a lot of money, then this could be your go-to solution right here.
Distinct features of Perfmatters
1. Speeding up Your Website
Perfmatters has tools like Script Manager and Asset Loading Control, which lets you turn off unnecessary scripts and manage how files load on your website. The Preconnect feature makes early connections to external sites, thereby reducing wait time for the loading of your website.
Query String Removal helps make your web pages more compatible with caching, resulting in faster loading. DNS Prefetching prepares in advance for specific domains thus reducing the time it takes to connect to other websites.
2. Cleaning Up Your Website’s Engine
Perfmatters take care of backend tasks too. The Database Optimization feature cleans up unnecessary data, like old post versions and spam comments. It also removes WordPress Bloat and allows you to turn off features you don’t need. The Heartbeat Control feature manages the auto-saving and real-time updates. Thus, your website performs at its best always.
3. Protecting Your Privacy and Managing Resources
It makes your site faster by using fewer external resources. If you have an online store with WooCommerce, you get special optimizations, like removing unnecessary scripts and styles, which improves the performance of your e-commerce site.
Distinct features of Nitropack
1. Caching
NitroPack is specially designed to make your caching system faster. This is why they include unique features like smart cache validation, cache warmup, device-aware caching, and more to support the overall caching procedure that happens. This ultimately ends up making your site load faster.
But if you are specifically looking to enhance your server-level caching, then I would recommend you go for the LiteSpeed cache plugin. You can also explore its free plan on your website before you invest in its premium version.
2. Image Optimization
At times, when you use a plugin that loads your images faster, it ends up compromising on the quality of the image. This is not the case with Nitropack. Not only does it maintain the standard quality of images, but it also helps it load faster and smoother.
NitroPack ensures that the images on your website look good and load faster. It uses both lossy compression to compress images in a smart way. It even gets ready by sizing images ahead of time and converts them into WebP format, which is great for speed.
So, whether someone is using a big computer screen or a small phone, the pictures on your site look good and load super-fast, all thanks to NitroPack.
3. Testing Capabilities
NitroPack provides testing capabilities for risk-free implementation. The free plan, without expiration or credit card requirements, allows users to explore features without commitment.
The plugin operates on copies of site files, preserving original data integrity. The test mode enables users to experiment with features without affecting the visitor’s experience, ensuring a risk-free testing environment.
Perfmatters vs Nitropack: Lazy Loading
The lazy loading feature in Perfmatters works for pictures, videos, and other stuff. Using the lazy loading feature, you can select what you want your visitors to see when they click on your website such as the logo. You can also select what you want to defer until it is actually needed such as images and videos.
This unique feature helps your visitors to have a smooth experience as they do not have to wait for the images to load. This in turn helps your webpage to load faster than usual, serving the purpose of the plugin rightly. NitroPack plugin keeps an eye on your scrolling and loads things at just the right time, so you don’t have to wait for everything to load at once.
Perfmatters vs. Nitropack: CDN
With this plugin you can easily set up a Content Delivery Network (CDN) by entering its web address. Thus, automatically your website’s files use this CDN like images and other stuff. You can also choose which parts of your site to include in the CDN and skip specific files or things. It’s a simple way to speed up your website and give your visitors a better experience!
NitroPack also speeds up your websites with CDN. But, here it operates in a different way as it spreads your website’s content around the world to servers everywhere. So, when people visit your site from different places, they see the version that’s closest to them.
Perfmatters vs Nitropack: Security
NitroPack uses SSL/TLS (HTTPS); thus, you can be assured that your website is secured. It uses a kind of coding to make secure copies of your files, so all the details are kept private and safe.
By simply changing a few settings on your WordPress site, Perfmatters makes your WordPress site more secure. It lets you turn off features like XML-RPC, change your login URL, and hide your WordPress version. This makes it harder for the hackers to hack the website.
If you want extra protection, I recommend using other plugins like iThemes Security or Sucuri. By using Perfmatters along with these extra tools, you make your WordPress site safer and run better.
Perfmatters vs Nitropack: Pricing
Perfmatters Pricing
Perfmatters offers three pricing options, which means you can choose whichever meets your requirements. If you’re managing just one website, you can go for the “Personal” plan which will cost you $24.95 per year. This plan includes excellent support, regular updates, and a 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied.
If you are handling multiple websites, the “Unlimited Sites” plan is ideal. It’s priced at $124.95 per year. You get many additional features with these plans, such as multi-site management.
If you’re a small business owner or taking care of a few websites like me, then the “Business” plan is the one for you. It will cost you $54.95 per year for three sites. You can further get discount on Perfmatters using any coupon codes found here at GrabHosts.
NitroPack Pricing
NitroPack offers various plans to suit your needs and budget. The free plan is for testing, but it comes with some limits, like 5000 page views per month and 1GB of CDN bandwidth.
The Business plan is most suitable for small businesses or websites with moderate traffic. It costs $17.50 monthly. In this plan you get 50,000 pageviews and 25GB of CDN bandwidth.
If your website has higher traffic, the Growth plan is $42.50 per month (annually billed). It’s suitable for 200,000 pageviews and 100GB of CDN bandwidth, making it perfect for growing websites.
For sites with a ton of traffic, the Scale plan is available at $146.67 per month (annual billing). It includes 1,000,000 page views and 500GB of CDN bandwidth every month. They also provide custom plans if you have specific needs.
Conclusion
From both these speed optimization plugins, Perfmatters and NitroPack, I recommend Perfmatters. It’s simpler to use, cheaper, and does a great job in speeding up your WordPress site.
NitroPack could feel a bit tricky to use if you are not tech savvy. As a result, NitroPack is a great choice if your company’s focus is more on lead generation, product sales, or affiliate marketing, rather than leading generation and selling products.
However, I have been using Perfmatters on my sites as I prefer a simple and affordable way to speed up my websites.
About the Author
Yasar Ali writes about Web Hosting, WordPress, and Blogging at GrabHosts. He’s a Pro Content Writer and Blogger who loves to read, watch shows, and play with his two kids.
