FlyingPress is a paid WordPress cache and optimization plugin built to improve the performance of WordPress sites (developed by Gijo Varghese, a promising WordPress speed expert). You can get a superfast WordPress site with it.
Nowadays, most cache plugins don’t improve website speed; they try to justify the price by adding useless features like removing XML-RPC, links, etc.
However, FlyingPress doesn’t have a ton of features or a hard setup. You can use it seamlessly, even if you don’t know the basics. The good thing is that F-Press optimizes the website’s speed for both humans and speed metrics.
Most WordPress cache plugins are developed to trick page metrics by skipping some elements of the pages, but for actual users, the website is super slow. This plugin has been my go-to for almost four years, and I haven’t found one better.
A screenshot of a report generated by Page Speed (GTmetrix):
THE PLUGIN is not just about caching – it also offers a lot of useful front-end optimization features that help speed up your website. Read more about WordPress caching in this article: server-side and cache plugins.
Disclaimer – I use referral links to FlyingPress and admire your help.
1. Simple User Interface
A good user interface makes a product more valuable. Imagine cache plugins like W3 Total Cache, Swift Performance, or even LiteSpeed Cache; the UI for those plugins is not easily navigable, particularly W3 Total Cache.
They make it easy for non-techies to mess up (even for developers). However, FlyingPress is the most straightforward user interface cache plugin I’ve found. Sure, plugins like WP Rocket and WP Fastest Cache user interfaces are ideal, but their features aren’t that impressive. (They lack features and are outdated.)
FlyingPress simplifies website speed optimization for new or experienced WordPress users thanks to its uncomplicated, user-friendly interface.
Users can clear and preload caches and remove unused CSS with a few clicks. You don’t have to configure many settings, but it’ll speed up your site.
Hence, if you love simple UI/UX without difficulties, it may be the most suitable cache plugin. (whether you’re a novice or pro).
2. Image and iFrame Optimization
Media files and images are one of the most significant resources for website owners. Also, one of the biggest reasons websites take so long to load.
Image Optimization
Optimize your images before uploading them to a website. To compress or resize your photos, use online tools like Image Resizer or software features like Adobe Photoshop’s save-to-web.
Cache plugins usually don’t optimize images – however, FP has valuable features for optimizing images, and FlyingCDN makes it even easier.
- Lazy load images: A common feature in cache plugins – the good news is that FP lets you exclude pictures above the fold from lazy loading, allowing you to exclude images from the top of the page. If you want to exclude them manually, just add the image URLs.
- Fill in missing dimensions: Automatically add missing width and height attributes to images to minimize layout shifts.
- Local Gravatar: It downloads and saves Gravatar images on your web server to speed up your site. And minimize external requests.
- Preload critical images: Preload images for the first render, such as a logo, header picture, and other images above the fold required for the first view. It minimizes the impact of overall layout shifts.
- Responsive images: Image optimization at the CDN edge, but you have to pay for FlyingCDN – Adapt your images to fit on the page.
IFrame Optimization
Iframes are HTML frames that load a different HTML page within a layout. They are commonly found on websites such as embedded YouTube and other videos. FlyingPress has two essential features for iframe optimization:
- Lazy load: This stops iFrames from loading until needed.
- YouTube placeholder images: It’s handy if you use YouTube videos on your site. It replace YouTube iFrames with placeholder images and load the video only when the user clicks on the image.
3. Automated CSS Optimization
There are a lot of factors that make a WordPress site challenging to optimize, and CSS is one of them. Most cache plugins don’t optimize CSS correctly and cause websites to crash. However, FlyingPress CSS sets are safe, will not cause your site to crash, and include some clever methods for CSS optimization.
Minify CSS:
Remove empty spaces and comments and reduce property values to make CSS files smaller. Thanks to this safe CSS refinement feature, any site won’t crash.
Unused CSS:
WordPress has a lot of unused CSS that needs to be optimized. Regarding this issue, most plugin refinements cause the website to crash.
However, Flying Press allows you to optimize unused CSS effectively. It lets you load unused CSSs asynchronously, on user interaction, or by removing them.
“Remove” option works fine for small sites. Asynchronously or on-user interaction is the safest way to load unused CSS after rendering used CSS for other average and dynamic sites.
Don’t be afraid to test what works for your website. I usually use “on-user interaction.”. Users can ignore stylesheets by entering the URL or path of CSS files that shouldn’t be removed.
Lazy render elements: this strategy allows you to skip elements on a page until the user attracts them. It can speed up the site and improve page load time. Use this feature by choosing CSS selectors that target the parts to lazy-render. WP elements like comments and footer parts don’t need to load fast. With the latest update, users can even pick elements from the block AND Gutenberg editor.
4. Simple Font Adjustments
Sure, fonts are simple, but most aren’t optimized and can significantly slow down WordPress websites, especially if you use Google fonts. Hence, the most effective strategy to avoid external fonts messing up any website is to use one or two fonts and host them on your server instead of external ones.
With the FlyingPress cache plugin, users can optimize both Google fonts and those hosted on the web server by combining and self-hosting them.
It allows users to preload font files that should be preloaded as a high priority for self-hosted fonts. It also supports fallback fonts, so it’s good to keep text visible when web fonts are loading. You have to add fonts before preloading.
Display fallback fonts fix adds font-display swapping to CSS so text remains visible during webfont loading – Prevents invisible text from flashing.
5. Easy Bloat Removal
Bloating any website or database can result in the website running slowly or not working correctly. Most WP themes and plugins, even the WordPress core features, contain many bloated/unnecessary elements.
This cache plugin does not have asset optimizations like Perfmatter. However, it has a few basic bloat-removal features that are useful for most websites.
- Disable Google Fonts: If you don’t use Google Fonts on your website, this will reduce your external requests.
- Disable XML-RPC: There’s no reason to keep XML-RPC active since it’s not needed anymore. It also leads to security holes.
- Disable RSS feed: Users can keep track of their favorite sites with RSS feeds. But I think this is outdated and doesn’t matter anymore.
- Disable Emojis: Emojis in WordPress core aren’t necessary. It’s not a big deal, but you can remove it by ticking the box.
- Control Post Revisions: I think 5 revisions are enough for an average site. This will keep you from adding too much bloat.
- Control Heartbeat: You can set the heartbeat frequency and control the WordPress Heartbeat API using this. Most sites don’t need to change anything, but this can help if your site has high CPU usage.
In addition, there are a few more settings that you can disable, such as oEmbeds, Block Editor CSS, jQuery Migrate, Dashicons, WP Cron, etc., but you may not have to disable them all.
6. Optimizing JavaScript For Performance
JavaScripts are a prevalent part of websites and often cause them to run slowly. Almost every theme and plugin in WordPress uses JS.
Third-party Scripts, like ads, banners, analytics codes, etc., can be tricky to optimize. That’s why Flying-Press has ingenious JavaScript optimization features:
- Minify JavaScript: Like CSS, FP optimizes standard JS to reduce file size by removing white spaces and blocks and reducing data sizes.
- Defer JavaScript: JS and inline JS can be deferred to execute JavaScript after rendering HTML. Also, you can exclude scripts that shouldn’t be deferred. But you should be careful with big websites.
- Delay JavaScript: This feature allows you to reduce the impact of third-party codes delaying external Javascript, such as ad networks, analytics, or other third-party scripts. Aside from the fact that third-party code slows down the website, it makes it difficult for your visitors.
- Delay method: FlyingPress lets you delay all scripts or just certain ones. Simple sites work well with the Delay All option. However, for dynamic websites, the delay-selected option is the most reliable.
Depending on the website, delaying all JavaScript might not be a good idea. However, users can use it for most websites because there’s another way to exclude scripts from the delay. You will need to know a few things about optimization and understand the types of JavaScript that shouldn’t be delayed. If you’re using WordPress documentation plugins, be careful with this feature.
7. Several Cache Settings
FlyingPress is a cache plugin, so caching is its primary feature – the cache is enabled by default; you cannot disable it with a check box.
The only option is to ignore the pages manually or deactivate the plugin. But it contains helpful cache control features, such as:
- Cached logins: This feature is not recommended for most websites because it generates cache pages for logged-in users. However, if you want a logged-in user to see what your website’s cache version looks like, you can test it. I don’t think it’s for regular use.
- Auto-preload cache: This feature preloads all the cache pages whenever you save settings or events. It’s ok for small websites or average static websites. However, auto-preloading can be resource-consuming for large sites with tons of pages or dynamic sites.
- Scheduled preload: You can set a time for the cache to automatically preload (regenerate), for example, every 2 or every 6 hours. But you can preload manually, so I suggest ticking the “Never” box.
- Preload the cache with existing data: This new type of feature allows users to overwrite cache pages with old cache pages.
- Purge everything and preload: Users can use this to remove all cached pages and generate updated cached pages.
- Full Page Caching: FlyingCDN now offers edge caching on Cloudflare Enterprise with other improvements.
Flying Press is quick at caching and preloading compared to others. You’ll see the results in a few seconds, but it should have the option to disable caching.
For instance, it’ll be handy for people who want to use optimizations. It’s possible that server-side caching is more effective than PHP caching.
8. Settings Beyond The Default
There’s an advanced settings section in FlyingPress for advanced users. These changes can be helpful sometimes, but not all websites require them.
- Exclude pages from caching: To exclude specific pages, you can specify the URL or path of the pages that should not be cached. It’s suitable for dynamic sites. Enter the page URL and save.
- Ignore query parameters: Some URLs have query parameters at the end. They give the host extra info when someone makes a request. For most sites, this isn’t necessary. However, it can be helpful for big sites.
- Bypass cookies: You can enter their names in separate lines if you want to ignore some web cookies by caching.
- Include query parameters: For example, you can enter their names to keep a separate cache for some query parameters.
Aside from the “Exclude pages from caching” setting, other settings do not need to be altered unless there is a specific reason (useful for large websites with many pages). Most static websites are OK with default settings.
9. Pricing Strategy
Here’s the most important part of our FlyingPress review—the pricing.
Flying-Press maintains a good pricing strategy, like a reverse version of hosting service prices. In the first year, you have to pay the exact cost. Then, every plan has a lower renewal rate for each subsequent year.
For example, it charges $60 for a personal license for the first year but $42 annually afterward. The developer plan is for 5 websites, and the first year is $150, but after – $105. You can get the Professional plan for $250 for the first year – then renew it for $175 annually if you manage less than 50 websites.
FlyingPress’ pricing strategy changed – Renewal is not offered at this time; there is just a flat rate for each plan.
FlyingPress pricing:
- Starter: One website for $49 per year
- Pro: $99 for three websites
- Business: $199 for 25 sites
- Unlimited: Unlimited websites for $249/year
Still, FP is the complete opposite and offers a money-back guarantee. No risk is involved, so you can get a refund if you aren’t satisfied within 14 days.
10. Feature-Packed CDN
FlyingPress cache plugin offers a CDN service called FlyingCDN – previously used BunnyCDN but now uses Cloudflare Enterprise.
I’ve written an article about FlyingCDN if you want to know more. And I like this updated version of FCDN because C-Enterprise provides enhanced protection, stability, and network features unavailable with other services.
These days, Cloudflare Enterprise is famous among WordPress enthusiasts, and hosting providers have already incorporated Cloudflare into their platforms.
WP Rocket also offers a CDN service known as “RocketCDN,” which uses Bunny servers but does not include optimizations—it’s just a CDN.
FlyingCDN has a lot of cool features, like:
- Full Page Caching: probably one of the most amazing features of this CDN service, you can get fast TTFB with it. It lets you cache whole pages so they load quickly – get even faster full-page caching with Cloudflare’s 300+ edge locations. Web hosts like Rocket.net use Cloudflare’s full-page caching.
- Image optimization: To reduce image file sizes, it uses Cloudflare Polish image optimization to compress without decreasing quality, which resizes to fit the render size. Also, it converts WebP without rewriting URLs.
- Optimized for WooCommerce: Users can get cached pages for faster navigation, even with shopping cart items.
- Security Features: FlyingCDN offers some nice security features, like DDoS protection, wildcard SSL, WAF, Bot management, etc.
- Free trial: Still, they offer a 7 day free trial without requiring a credit card.
- Easy integration: Adding or updating your DNS records makes it easy to integrate with FlyingCDN.
FlyingCDN Price?
Pricing at FlyingCDN depends on how much data you transfer. And each 100 GB costs $5 per month. This is similar to Pay As You Go, but each site is subject to a minimum charge of $5/M (regardless of usage).
11. All-Round Compatibility
FlyingPress is compatible with any web host or server setup, like Vultr. However, some cache and optimization plugins aren’t compatible with particular server conditions or don’t work correctly in some situations.
For example, LiteSpeed Cache is only compatible with LiteSpeed servers or QUIC.cloud. Most web hosts have their server-side caching setups.
Most managed web hosts, like Kinsta, WPengine, PressLab, Servebolt, etc., won’t let you use most caching and optimization plugins. But FlyingPress can run on all web hosts and server conditions, like Apache, NGINX, Litespeed, etc.
All CDN services: CloudFlare, Akamai, Bunny, CloudFront, Fastly, Google, etc. Works with LiteSpeed Hosting, and LSC doesn’t have to be the only plugin.
I have not experienced any issues with other themes or plugins. THE plugin is compatible with SEO plugins, content optimizers, etc. But it’s not gonna work with other cache plugins like Rocket, WP-Optimize, W3TC, etc.
12. Speed Up To Real Humans
Speeding up to real humans is the most valuable part of this plugin because most plugins and WordPress optimization strategies try to refine things for algorithms.
There are a lot of speed methods for WP that simply cheat for page metrics by skipping the elements on the page.
When real people come to your site, everything loads slowly. It’s like writing for SEO instead of humans because you optimize your WP website for speed tests rather than real people.
FlyingPress is rated at the top of the Google Core Web Vitals Technology Report, with a reasonable user experience. The UX Report also shows that it often performs better than similar plugins – Here
However, FlyingPress optimizes pages both for humans and for metrics. You can nip the test of page metrics such as CWV, GTMetrix, Pingdom, etc.; it also speeds up real humans instead of bypassing elements on a page.
Optimizing for users means serving up the ideal user experience, but for speed page metrics, the goal is to load fewer requests first. Even with high-performance scores, that doesn’t mean your site is fast for actual users.
Try looking up some well-ranked websites and seeing their speed rankings.
It doesn’t mean page speed metrics aren’t essential. There are points for metrics like TTFB, content paint, first input delay, and cumulative layout shift.
Downsides of FlyingPress
- Short explanation: FlyingPress’ documentation isn’t very detailed. It’s not a big deal because it’s simple and has minimal settings (not complicated). But I think some of its features should be explained in more detail.
- Cache-control isn’t advanced: The plugin caches all your pages by default. To stop some pages from being cached, you must manually exclude them. There’s no one-click way to turn off caching.
- Object cache isn’t included: I would suggest that there is an option for add-ons for Redis, Memcached, and Varnish; that would be helpful.
I don’t see many cons to FlyingPress, but it’s up to you; everything’s not perfect. However, FP is an effective solution for most WordPress sites and compatible with WordPress cloud hosting control panels.
Conclusion: Is FlyingPress Right For You?
In short, Yes, but it’s all up to you. From my experience, it is the most potent caching and optimization plugin for WordPress and provides many features to speed up modern WordPress websites without complicated settings. Whatever your skill level, from beginner to pro, you can speed up your website with FP.
In this FlyingPress review, I have listed 12 good reasons to use this cache plugin and all the potential disadvantages that might arise afterward.
I recommend using Cloudflare APO with this plugin because it will give your website a faster TTFB by caching the entire page. You can also use FlyingCDN or RocketNet to use Cloudflare at the enterprise level.
LiteSpeed plugin is suitable for those who want a free cache plugin, but the main downside is the lack of cache preloading – BUT fine for developers.
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